It is no surprise that there will be from time to time employees that steel from your company. Many times it is as small as a few pens and post-it notes—other times it could be they are doing the unthinkable and steeling money from you. Whatever it may be the fact is that according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, employee dishonesty costs business owners around $50 billion a year. Because of this it is time you start thinking about simple ways to stop employee theft from your company.
Lights
Just adding some lights to the outside of your business can do wonders and save a lot of money when it comes to business security options. If your parking lot is brightly lit it will be harder for your employees or anyone else to steel anything from your business. Keeping the outside well lit will also keep from anyone hiding in dark places who could jump out and attack someone on their way to their car—making your employees feel safe.
Video Camera
If you have a video camera installed in your stock room and in high secure areas it should help prevent your employees from shoplifting at your store. If your parking lot is prone to vandalism having a well lit parking lot and a video camera can do wonders. Cameras come in all shapes and sizes and finding an inexpensive camera should be fairly easy.
Card Access Terminals
Card access terminals are a great idea and fairly inexpensive way to keep track of who is coming in and out of your office or store. These devices will be able to keep track of each employee so if a situation arises you will be able to know if he or she was in the office during an incident.
If your company doesn’t already have a business security system it is defiantly time to start thinking of cost efficient ways to monitor your business. It doesn’t have to be the latest state of the art system—minor changes can really do wonders for your company and could end up saving you money in the long run. One last tip to remember is to check with your insurance company for deductions if a business security system is implemented. Many times you will find that there are deductions for having some sort of security system for your office.
Shannon Suetos is a writer based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for Resource Nation, an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Author: Pamela Swift
When you look at your Facebook friends, or your LinkedIn network, or your Twitter follower list, do you see only people you know? Or, like me, do you have a mix of people you know well, some you don’t know that well (yet), and maybe even a few people who reached out to you, and you’ve never met or talked with them?
As easy as it ease to connect on the social networks (usually just a click and a quick message of Hello!), more and more people are wondering how open they should be with their social network acceptances. Some people are locking down, and only accepting people online that they know in real life. Others are accepting everyone who meets a certain standard of engagement or professionalism. And still others are accepting everyone who asks.
With the site-wide roll out of new privacy settings on Facebook, the questions of how open to be on your social networks is becoming more and more relevant.
While I certainly don’t have all the answers, let me give you a few areas to consider.
How open you should be on your social networks is based on what you’re using your social networks for.
For example, if you are using your Facebook account primarily to stay in touch with friends, family, and neighbors, you can set the most stringent privacy settings- the ones where only friends can see your details. This is also a smart move, perhaps, if you share a lot of details about your life, and want to retain some amount of control over how this information is distributed. Of course, remember that anything that goes online is never really private, or undiscoverable, so keep that in mind when you share.
If you are using Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn to build your professional network, I would suggest being a little more open about who you accept. My rule of thumb, generally, is to accept most people who approach me, after I’ve checked out their profiles, and recent updates, and satisfied myself that I’m comfortable with being associated with them. I call this approach the “giving people the benefit of the doubt” stance- I will connect on the social networks unless or until you give me a reason not to do so.
The third way to approach your social networks is to accept everyone indiscriminately- just to boost your follower ratio, or just because you’re lazy. I definitely do not recommend this, for several reasons. First, it can damage your reputation or standing. Let’s say, for example, that you accept a bunch of people who are porn spammers on Twitter- wouldn’t that negatively impact your brand? (Of course, right, unless you’re a porn spammer yourself, in which case you’re probably not reading this anyway…). The second reason not to accept just everyone is because now that the content of Twitter and Facebook updates are now searchable, you don’t want any ill considered tweets or updates to show up in your stream or on your Wall and be associated with you. Not saying this is exactly how it will work, but better safe than sorry, especially with new technology, right?
If you do any directed promotion online, such as a teleseminar or webinar, be sure you are careful about how you manage your social network additions in the days and weeks after. I have had people who were in my classes or trainings approach me to connect, and you want to encourage this as much as possible in order to build your positioning online. If I were too stringent and denied everyone who wanted to connect with me that I didn’t yet know, I would have pissed some people off, and kind of cut off new potential business relationships before they really began. This is why, for business, I recommend the “give people the benefit of the doubt” approach as a general rule.
Part of the value of social networks is that you can engage with and connect with more people than you might otherwise be able to reach. The value of this is diminished if you are too stringent in your networking, or, conversely, too open with it.
Like the fairy tale of Goldilocks, the goal with social networking is to not be too stringent, nor too open, but instead, just right.
Dr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation. Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog
Article Contributed by Jim DeLapa
Among the very first decisions you, as a future business owner must make is whether to write your own business plan, or turn that over to someone else. By taking ownership of this first, most important step in building your business, you will gain far more than a crisp document to be read by others. You’ll develop a deep understanding of what it will take for your business to succeed. For this reason, it is essential that the business owner be the primary thought leader or sole author of the business plan. Outside help should be reserved for fine tuning, validation and in some cases to prepare financial projections.
Let it be YOUR plan.
As the founder and business owner you will be charting the course for the business. It will be important that the business plan be an extension of your personal vision for the company. For most entrepreneurs, the opportunity to call the shots and lead the way was an important part of why they wanted to get into business. Now is the time to start being a leader. Leaders develop their own plans and call the plays along the way. When it’s not your plan, you relegate yourself to performing as an operator. You will find yourself going back to the business plan someone else wrote to occasionally re-read the directions, or ignoring it altogether. Either way, the value of having a plan has been greatly diminished.
The Value is in the Process.
The act of writing a business plan is one of forced discipline, problem solving and reconciling the results. When approached and completed in this manner the end product and the process itself will increase your self-confidence and assuredness about where your business is headed.
Starting with a simple business plan template, and there are lots of them available, force yourself to think through all the critical aspects of the business. This will be an iterative process that you repeat, fine tune and re-write. As you develop each section of your business plan, your thoughts about the other sections will evolve—even those that you’ve already written. You go back, edit and in the end, you make it all work together. That’s the idea. You are developing an understanding of the relationships between every aspect of your business.
To underscore the importance of writing your own business plan, take this little exercise. Read the paragraph below as fast as you possibly can. Then stop, take a breath and move on to the next one.
Who will my customers be? What problem will I solve for them? How much are they willing to pay to have this problem solved? What are my costs associated with each sale? Why will customers choose to buy from my business? How will I find customers? Who will sell, produce, and deliver? Which markets will I go after first? Why? How much will it cost to operate the business each month? What will my breakeven point be? How fast can I get there? How much startup capital will I need? How will I succeed?
Okay, slow down now and consider this: The most important question isn’t listed. The most important question is, “How are these factors interrelated?”
Imagine that today someone handed you the answers to all of the questions from our fast-read drill above. It would certainly save you a lot of time. Better still, these wouldn’t be just any answers, but they would be the right answers from a solid business plan for a business that had already been proven to be successful, a business just like the one you’re planning to start. You could read and re-read the answers many times over, practically memorizing them. You would know that they were the right answers. Yet, doing so will not help you develop an understanding of how the answers are interconnected.
If you change the way you plan to find customers, how will that impact your monthly operating costs? If customers are only willing to pay 80% of your planned price, what will that do to your breakeven point? How will the answers to these two questions impact how much capital you need to start the business? This example looks at just two questions. Realistically, the answer to each question is highly dependent on the answers to several of the other questions. In the end they must all work together and you must understand how they all work together.
If you develop your own business plan, section by section, thinking through all of the answers to the critical questions, you will also develop an intuitive sense of how they work together. It will require a lot of thinking and rethinking of your ideas and it will take time. It’s not a fast drill. In the end, it will be the difference between ‘memorizing the lines’ and actually ‘being the character.’ Small business ownership is not the place to be reciting someone else’s lines. You are the character. Write your own lines. Be the leader.
When to Bend the Guidelines
There are some times to reach outside for help. For example, perhaps you would say, “I’m not a numbers person; I don’t think I can do the financial projections.”
First, plan to become more of a numbers person because business ownership is about numbers. Sales, expenses and profits are the three that are most important. Even so, many business operators who have a good feel for the numbers need assistance with spreadsheets and financial statements. It is okay to get outside help preparing your financials, just be sure that you understand them when they are complete. If you are going to pay someone to prepare them, be sure that they also save time to go over them with you from top to bottom. Ultimately they are your numbers.
Others might say, “I have great ideas, but I’m not a great writer.” It’s understood that there can be a lot riding on someone else reading the final product of your business plan—such as a loan or an investment decision. For that reason, if you are not a strong writer you should start by going through the process of organizing, writing and rewriting your own business plan as best you can. Force yourself to go through all of the steps of writing, rethinking and rewriting as your ideas evolve. Then, have someone else take your finished draft and craft the final polished document. What is important is that the final document must accurately reflect your concepts, ideas and thought process, not the editors.
What if I Just Can’t Do It?
Finally, some would say, “I want to start my own business. I am a strong operator, but honestly, I don’t think I could write a business plan myself. What do you suggest?” Simple: Buy a franchise! They are perfect for people who are strong operators where someone else provides the strategic plan, the systems and some guidance. This might be the best ownership model for you. That’s a topic for another day.
About the Author
Jim DeLapa is the founder of GreatBusinessPlans.com, a leading provider of small business plan assistance for current and future small business owners. DeLapa has launched and invested in numerous successful startups and played an active role in nurturing two of those from inception through being acquired by publicly traded firms.
Categories
Stop Chasing People!
Article Contributed by Cody “the Retire Before 25 Guy” Miller
If you’re like most young entrepreneurs, if you’re like me, you’ve chased some people around before. You like what you have to offer and you believe in working for yourself, so naturally you want others, especially family and friends to feel the same way.
Well, stop.
Amateurs “sell”, Pros “sort”. Amateurs try and convince people of why they ought to purchase their products, invest in their company or start up with them, while professionals walk right by.
Why do pros sort? Sorting is much easier than selling. I don’t have to convince anyone of anything. I simply share the information with them if they’re “open for more information”. Practice that phrase, “Are you open for more information?” If they are, give them some, not too much but just enough to satisfy them. If they aren’t interested, Rejoice! You’re one person closer to someone who is interested. Move on and stop bugging the same people time and time again.
Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about, you’ve stalked people around like Godzilla, you’re the person they pretend not to be home for! Knock it off! Most of the people you’re trying to convince to do something wouldn’t be any good as an entrepreneur (or they wouldn’t enjoy your product) anyway. So leave them alone and start looking for people who are interested.
The reality is, out there, somewhere, there is someone who is looking for exactly what you have to offer. Your job is to find them and give them more information. That is, if they are open for more information.
Marketing is a numbers game. Expose as many people as possible to your business and sooner or later someone will be interested – it’s the law of averages and it works, every time. It’s all a matter of “sooner or later”. Just keep going, keep working, keep promoting and keep believing.
Everyone has a number. This is not a magic number but a very practical number. You see, everyone has an exact number of people that they need to talk to in order to reach their income goals. For you it may be 1,000 people, for some it may be 1,000,000. It all depends on how big you dream and… chance. Yep, dumb luck. No one knows what their number is until after the fact. So keep count and let me know what your number is once you’ve achieved your dreams.
About the Author
Cody blogs at RetireBefore25.com, a site that provides tips, resources and ideas for aspiring young entrepreneurs. Cody may also be reached at:cody@retirebefore25.com
Article Contributed by Eric Gruber
When you write articles, if you don’t keep your audience in mind then you are insulting them. Let me show you an example (unrelated to article marketing) of what happens if you don’t keep your targeted audience in mind.
Recently my girlfriend, Kristina Jaramillo, attended one of the worst bridal showers ever. I’ve never heard of a bridal shower where more than 75% of the guests left insulted, have you?
Here’s one of the reasons for the total disaster…
The bridesmaids thought it would be funny to put on a clothesline the different types of underwear to represent the different phases of life and marriage ending with Depends. Now this would have been a perfect gag for a bachelorette party, where all the guests would have been in their 20’s and 30’s. But not a bridal shower, where at least 75% of the guests were ages 55 to 75.
The bridesmaids totally forgot who their target audience was.
Out of respect for the bride, the guests did not leave, even though they were disgruntled. However, if you write articles or website content that’s not geared for your targeted audience, people will leave.
Keep reading this article below to find out if you’re insulting your targeted audience – without even realizing it.
3 Mistakes Most Article Marketers Make That Insult Their Audience
If you’re making any of the mistakes, then you are insulting publishers, prospects and readers alike.
Mistake #1: Failure to identify your audience.
I search the Internet all time for articles that can help me build my different online businesses. There are many times that I won’t open an article because I don’t know if it’s for me. And, because my time is valuable, I don’t want to waste it on an article that isn’t for me. That’s a slap in my face. So identify your audience in the title, in the introduction and in the bio box.
Mistake #2: Failure to use examples that resonate with your targeted audience.
Let’s say you write a sales article titled, “How to Double Your Sales in the Next 60 Days.” And, let’s say you use examples from the financial services sector to reinforce your points. Then, you target an online publication that’s specifically for IT sales professionals. And, although your tips, tools, information, systems and products may work for a broad variety of industries, if you don’t tweak your article examples, to show that you understand my industry – you lose instant credibility. It’s an insult to think that you can connect with me, even though you don’t show me that you have experience with my particular industry.
Mistake #3: Giving the wrong level of information to the wrong audience
One of my article marketing clients is a career coach who would love to get more 100K+ executive clients. The problem is that every article he writes has basic information that recent college graduates need – not executives who have been through the job searching process many times. If he wants to attract higher-level clients, then he has to stop insulting their intelligence and start writing articles with information that resonate with that specific audience. When you write, you have to keep your audience in mind and write to their needs, wants and desires.
That’s why it’s important that you write a variety of articles. To get started, check out my FREE Instant Article Writing Templates at http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com
About the Author
Article Marketing Expert Eric Gruber teaches experts, authors, small business owners, entrepreneurs, speakers and internet marketers who want more publicity, prospects and profits how to write articles that persuade and motivate prospects to take immediate action. Now, you can get 3 of his favorite instant article writing templates that will help you write your articles in 30 minutes or less at: http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com