Month: February 2014

Five Tips to Keep in Mind When Applying for a Business Loan

Post author By Pamela Swift
Post date February 25, 2014

small_business_loan

Every business starts with a dream — something you’ve always wanted to do or create. As you invest time and money into your project, you may find you need financing to grow beyond marginal profits at six months to the booming profit-machine you dreamed up. Applying for a business loan may be the answer. With a small business loan, you can get the money you need to purchase your own space, hire new employees, manage inventory costs, get new equipment and cover marketing costs.

If this is your first time applying for a business loan, it may be difficult for you to obtain financing right away. As a new borrower you’re more of a risk to lenders, but there are several tips that can help you prepare and present yourself as a prime candidate. Keep in mind, each lender is different and different rules and requirements may apply.

Outline the core elements of your business: Most lenders will want to know a little bit about you before loaning you money. A short summary should include your products or services, employees, competitors, current financials and plans for your future growth. You may need to provide records of your personal finances as well.
Know what type of loan you need: Knowing the type of business loan and loan amount you need shows lenders you have done your research. Think about why you need the loan. Are you trying to grow working capital, purchase a new space or hire new employees? Using a business loan calculator can help you decide how large a loan you need and what type of loan suits your needs.
Develop a relationship with your banker: Look for a lender who has worked with companies your size in your industry as they will have a better understanding of what you need. Communicate your goals and financial plans clearly and patiently. You may be emotionally connected to this project, but a lender is looking at it strictly from a risk-reward relationship. Helping them see your vision may help them be more invested in your project.
Come prepared with answers: Your lender won’t be afraid to ask the tough questions, and you should be prepared to answer them. Know what you’re willing to offer as collateral for the business loan, what your risks are and how you plan to counteract them. Other questions to be prepared for are:

How do you plan to repay the loan?
How do you plan to meet your projections?
Do you have previous business experience and can you provide references?
Can you support your projections with facts?

5. Maintain your credit and borrowing credibility: Before you apply for a small business loan, obtain a copy of your credit report and do whatever you can to improve your score. Show the lender you have a strong borrowing history with evidence of paying down student loans or car loans and making regular mortgage payments. It’s also important to show you have the resources to support the loan aside from the earnings of this business. Whether it’s in the form of savings, a spouse’s income or a co-signer, this will make you less of a risk.

Be confident and prepared when applying for a small business loan

Lenders want to see that you have a plan and a back-up plan. Go into your meeting with confidence in your strategies, and be open with the lender about any flaws or potential areas of risk. It’s also important not to go on the defensive. Accept any criticism they have and ask them how they suggest you improve in order to obtain the loan.

Entrepreneurship

Converting a Hobby to a Business: The Reality #entrepreneurfail

Post author By Pamela Swift
Post date February 24, 2014

entrepreneurfail--pasion

Pursue your passion…and you’ll never work on your passion a full day in your life…

Wait…that’s not how the old adage goes, is it? Isn’t it true that you if you work on something you love, your’ll never work a day in your life? What’s this about not being able to work on your passion?

Well the truth is, while there are benefits in pursuing your avocation as a vocation – you’re not going to have too much time to work on that passion when it becomes a business. You don’t get paid for just pursuing your hobby! You get paid for distributing and selling your passion.

Freelancers know this all too well. Say you have a talent that you want to share and monetize: Baking? Web Development? Design? As you start offering your service, the most of your time will not be working on your expertise. The reality is that business development, marketing, sales, finances, tech support, and other day-to-day activities will take a longer portion of the day than the actual skill you are offering to clients. Also, many solo entrepreneurs have a side job to help make ends meet as they are growing their businesses.

For bloggers, Derek Halpern from Social Triggers says most spend 80% of their time creating content and 20% promoting it; these proportions are exactly the reasons why most bloggers fail. He claims that the most successful bloggers don’t spend most of their time blogging! In fact they spend 20% of the time creating content and 80% of their time promoting it.

All in all, the thing to remember is that starting a business involves MUCH more than just your skill set and yes, you will have to wear many, many hats and serve as a jack-of-all-trades for a while.

Did you pursue your hobby as a business? What was your experience? Did you get to spend enough time working on your talent?

This comic has been adapted from an original post on #entrepreneurfail: Startup Success.

Finance & Capital

Debt Recovery Options and Help for Businesses in Financial Trouble

Post author By
Post date February 20, 2014

financial-trouble

Dealing with repetitive creditor pressures and late penalties can be extremely stressful, especially when you’re facing multiple debts and have a great number of monthly obligations. When a company’s assets exceed its liabilities it is legally considered to be insolvent, at which point the risk of liquidation/bankruptcy arises. Many times the only way to save the business is to act quickly in determining a suitable course of action. Depending on the severity of the situation, one of the following three options should be able to help almost any struggling company escape insolvency as long as recovery is still a viable outcome.

Emergency Funding and Cash Advances

Invoice factoring might allow you to sell some of the company’s accounts receivables to a third party in order to generate some cash flow. This is an ideal option if you have multiple clients who currently owe you money and are bound by contract to pay in the future. You can convert these future payments to cash quickly, and then use the funds to repay existing/overdue debts. With the help of an experienced insolvency practitioner you might also be able to gain approval for a secured loan by using some of the company’s assets as collateral. Although this would technically be the equivalent of creating a new debt to dissolve old debts, it does help the business by alleviating pressures and postponing or completely preventing any legal action taken against the company.

Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA)

Even if you’ve already tried negotiating with creditors in the past, a professionally drafted and formally proposed company voluntary arrangement may offer a higher chance of approval. If this route is taken, an insolvency practitioner will create a proposal that asks the creditor to consider extending the length of the loan and/or accepting smaller monthly payments, in order to grant the company the leniency needed to make repayments without default. If the creditor feels that the agreement outlined within the proposal is feasible, they may agree to it, at which point they’d no longer be able to petition the court to wind up the company unless the terms of the CVA are violated.

Pre-Pack Administration

If the outlook is relatively poor and there doesn’t seem to be a prospect of recovery, the only way to continue operating the business may be to dissolve the company and have the current directors purchase the assets of the company during its liquidation. The directors would then transfer the assets to a new company in a process known as “phoenixing,” which bares its name because the new company essentially rises from the ashes of the old company, much like the legendary firebird. This is usually the last resort that is considered when recovery does not appear to be an option, as it does result in the official closure of the original company. However, it is also a preferable alternative to losing all of the assets (including clients, equipment, employees etc) that you’ve worked to earn with the old company.

Entrepreneurs

Quiz: Which Social Networking Platform is Right for You? Part 1

Post author By
Post date February 19, 2014

Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Google+ — oh my! If all the different social networking platforms are making your head spin, this quick quiz should help you get a handle on which social networking platform is right for you.

Now while the quiz itself (including the personality types in the answers) are all in jest, there IS a method to my madness. Mainly, know that social networking platforms DO start to take on their own personality as they mature and become more popular. And this is important because it leads to some interesting results:

• There is a definite bias around the social networking platforms each person prefers — and personality types do seem to play into those preferences.

* BUT what’s also interesting is how people will also adjust their personalities depending on which platform they’re on. Just like in real life, we show a different side of us depending on if we’re at work, at a family function, out with friends, etc. We also show a different side depending on which social networking platform we’re currently on.

* AND because each social networking platform attracts a different personality type, what each type is EXPECTING from each platform is different. And why does that matter? Because depending on what YOU want to see happen as a result of your social networking activities, different platforms may make more sense for you to focus on. (I.e. some platforms are better for blog traffic, some are better for networking, and some platforms need you to tweak how you use it if you want to see more blog traffic and/or networking.)

Make sense? Great – now on to the questions!

1. You’re a professional athlete/celebrity/politician who is feeling a bit bored in your life and you want to spice things up a bit with some sort of scandal.

2. You’re over 25 and you love the idea of multi-tasking — a.k.a. keeping an eye on your kid’s social networking activities while promoting your biz.

3. You’re uncomfortable letting it “all hang out” when you’re marketing your biz (and you privately feel like sharing too much personal stuff is just plain wrong). You prefer your social networking platform to be as professional as you are.

4. You love letting your creative side come out and play — and the more visual the better!

5. Ever since you were a child, you knew you were destined to be a movie star, or at least have your own television show. You love nothing better than to ham it up in front of the camera.

6. You love being on the cutting edge of the next “hot” social media platform, because once it catches on, you’ll reap that many more benefits as one of the first to use it.

So today, we’re going to talk about the best social networking platforms for 1-2 above, and next week we’ll discuss the matches for 3-6.

On to the answers!

If you’re a 1: Twitter.

You love being in the middle of it all! On your bucket list is to be in Times Square when the ball drops on New Year’s Eve and, if you haven’t already, you’re definitely going to be a part of flash mob one of these days.

You know, Twitter is sort of the online equivalent of a flash mob. Something happens and everyone jumps to provide their feedback/commentary/opinion – and that leads to topic trending (or Twitter exploding).

And maybe THAT is why it’s also the sole social networking platform people use to get themselves in trouble! There is a flash mob mentality to Twitter; something rises up out of nowhere, and disappears almost as fast. You never hear about controversial quotes from something posted on Facebook or Linked In. But random tweets (or, worse yet, pictures of tweeted unmentionables) are always making the news. And it’s not like it’s any less work to post a tweet versus a post in any other social networking platform.

Alas, you’d think by now people would have figured out that tweets (especially tweets you have no business tweeting) last forever.

Anyway, on to Twitter and your business. My personal experience with Twitter is while it does work, it’s not as good as some of the other social networking platforms out there. Maybe because people aren’t really looking to click on a link to leave Twitter; they’re there to be a part of the action! But even the clicks I do get from Twitter seem to be weaker (i.e. less likely to opt in or take action) than clicks from other social networking platforms.

However, there’s no question it does add to your promotional efforts, so I wonder if it’s a bit of a multiplier – if people see enough of your tweets and start to get comfortable with you, when they do finally click on a link (either in Twitter or a different social networking platform) they may be ready to take action.

The really nice thing about Twitter is it’s the easiest to add automation to in order to augment anything else you’re doing, so it really doesn’t take a lot of time to have it be a part of your promotions.

But if YOU have a different experience — like Twitter is THE place for you to get leads, I’d love to hear your story. Just comment on my blog LINK and let me know (especially if you think I’m just totally off base here).

If you’re a 2: Facebook.

You love a good party — not too big mind you (it at least needs to fit inside a house) but there’s nothing better than hanging out with 200 of your closest friends playing all the fun 80’s tunes you grew up with.

Yes indeed, Facebook has now become “your grandfather’s social networking platform.” That’s right, if Facebook is where you love to hang out, you are now officially old and square. (Oh wait, am I sounding even more dated now?? Does “so last year” work or is that just so “not cool” too?) Kids today between 16 and 25 prefer Twitter and think Facebook is for communicating with their mothers and any of their older friends who aren’t hip enough to be on Twitter. (I guess when your mom sends you a Facebook friend request, it dampens your enthusiasm.)

Of course what’s so ironic is Facebook started as a place for college kids to hook up! Ah, how times have changed.

Anyway, for the moment (and who knows how long THAT will last since the kids aren’t crazy about it) Facebook appears to be THE place to find clients and prospects via socializing and networking(unless of course your ideal clients are the 16-25 year olds – then you should definitely be tweeting up a storm).

Now, while there is no question you can get some decent blog traffic posting your blogs on Facebook, the real gold is the networking. (In fact, if you can fold your blog posting into your networking activities, that seems to work the best.) Facebook truly is the “party” social networking platform, so by augmenting anything you’re doing in Facebook with some personal connection and networking, you’ll definitely see better results.

And stay tuned for next week where I’ll talk about the best social networking platforms for you 3-6ers.

Tags entrepreneur, facebook, Google Plus, linkedin, Networking, social networking sites, social networks list, Twitter, what’s social networking

Operations

Automate Your Business! Top 5 Automation Tools

Post author By
Post date February 18, 2014

Part of running an efficient and organized business is making full use of the technology and resources available to you. It’s great to set up systems and processes and have them work for you, but in order to fully automate your business you also need to know which technologies are going to work best to support you in that.

Over the years I have worked with many different automation tools (either in my own business or for my clients) that have helped to support an online solo business owner, and today I’d like to share my top five favorite ones with you. All of these tools I use in my own business today – and they’re a huge timesaver as well as creating a more streamlined and automated business for me.

1. 1ShoppingCart – this is my shopping cart, autoresponder, broadcast, and database management systems all rolled into ONE system. I especially like this service because everything is done in one place which really does make for a more streamlined business. It is possible to use one service for your shopping cart activities (i.e. product sales) and another service for your autoresponder/broadcast (i.e. sending out your newsletter) but the danger with this is that you are running two different databases and at some point it will become cumbersome and may even start to become unmanageable. An example I see a lot is using Aweber for list management, and then using Paypal to accept payments.

2. TimeTrade – this is probably my favorite find and is such a huge timesaver for me; I’m so grateful to one of my clients for putting me onto this service. It’s a system whereby you can get your clients to self-schedule their appointments with you, avoiding the back and forth of emails that happens when you’re trying to arrangement appointments and, of course, the time spent doing this. You simply give your clients/colleagues the special link that’s generated by TimeTrade and they are able to see your availability (which you have pre-determined) and therefore schedule accordingly with you. It works with both Outlook and Google calendars.

3. BYOAudio – as well as using this service to record and host all my teleclass audios, I make full use of their Podcast feature. You can record your podcast episode directly into your podcast, and they will share and syndicate it with the top podcast directories – even iTunes – immediately it’s published! Those directories, in turn, come and get your podcast, index it, and make it available to their visitors. All this takes is about 10/15 minutes of my time to record my podcast episode and publish it to my podcast. Another great strategy for building my list that really takes no time at all to implement!

4. “Sharing” WordPress Posts – if you have a WordPress blog and post regularly, there is an option called “Sharing”. If you add your social medial profiles to this, any time you post a new blog post, it will automatically be posted to your social networks.

5. Instant Teleseminar – I love this service for running all of my workshops (both free & paid). Not only is it a teleconference line, but I am also able to show slides and create an interactive experience. The automation piece comes because, as soon as your training is over, your replay page is produced automatically!