Author: Pamela Swift

Categories
Finance & Capital

What to Do When You Don’t Have 30K But You Want to Start a Business

Article by Hannah Whittenly

You’ve got a great idea for a new business and a solid plan, but you may find coming up with the funds is the real challenge. Total up a list of your expenses, including materials, labor, office equipment, licenses, permits, insurance, and a little operating capital. Here are some ways to raise that seed money.

Find Lenders

Banks can be very fussy about new business loans, knowing that many new businesses fail. You may have to go to great lengths to get the money. You could consider applying for a personal loan instead. Credit unions and small local banks can also be easier to deal with than large commercial banks. There are also small business loans from online lenders. Be sure to look into government loans for small businesses.

Use Personal Assets

If you have good credit, your credit balance or a new credit card can provide funds. You may have equity in your home you could borrow against, or stocks, bonds, and retirement accounts that could be cashed in. Vehicles, jewelry, antiques, or anything else you feel is valuable can be sold or used as collateral. Look for ways to cut expenses. For example, you could buy recycle pallets, like those from Smart Pallets, for your warehouse so that you don’t have to buy brand new ones.

Locate Investors

Wealthy “angel” investors may have deep pockets, but usually want a share of your company and its profits. Venture capital firms invest in small companies as a business, but expect some level of control. In return, they may also provide advice and guidance. You could also try crowdfunding sites. Numerous individuals may be willing to donate small sums either in exchange for public shares, or as simple donations to a great idea. Decide which kind of investor relationship you can work with, and focus on finding and winning them over.

Scale Back

About $39,000 AUD is the typical startup cost, but micro-companies can get started for under $3,900. Consider going into operation with whatever you can afford, even if it’s a bare-bones home business. If you can get established with some good revenue and faithful customers, other funding will come easier. You may even find that the best financing option is to reinvest your profits into your company.

Borrowing money or courting investors is often not a realistic option for entrepreneurs who have a good idea but little else. If you can’t seem to make an impression, carefully weigh your options, minimize your costs, and try every other means of obtaining whatever funds you can.

Categories
Social Marketing

How to Develop a Powerful Social Chain

Social media has become a very powerful tool for promoting ideas, marketing concepts, and actualizing product branding. Companies who want to take advantage of social media to develop and grow their brands need to take into considering the opportunities that lie in social chain. A powerful social chain essentially utilizes creative methods, strategy, influencers, and events to engage people on social media. To succeed, you must understand the language of your audience, offer them something unique and be ready to communicate your brand in the most creative way you can ever imagine.

Come Up With Something Creative

Being creative is not easy. You have to be some mind reader of a sort in one hand and a genius in another. Your social chain campaign has to stand out, engage people and be very entertaining. You can begin your creative desire by searching for viral and award winning campaigns to see what other people are doing. Take your time to work and build a big idea. You may think that the bigger and more creative your idea is the more people it will attract, however most social campaign ideas are actually very simple and straightforward.

Have a Strategy

The success of your strategy will depend on the kind of people on your team. If you don’t already have one you need to set up a group of intelligent, creative, hardworking and passionate people. Identify your business goals and build your strategy in a way that will satisfy it. Not every marketing campaign can work for you, come up with something that specifically deals with your marketing objectives and targeted towards your specific consumer base.

Take Advantage of Influencers

Influencers are celebrities, content creators and social media stars that have a large following and are committed to a particular style of publishing. Whatever you do, there are social media influencers out there that can help spread the news about your campaign and get millions of people to like your page within a very short time. Making use of influencers generates high-quality leads, improve search ranking, engage new target audiences, drive conversion and build trust between the senegence distributor and the audience. Also, influencer marketing is native, so it performs better than traditional ads, increase your ROI and offer immense opportunity to do something differently.

Understand your Audience

Knowing your audience is key to your social media campaign. Do a little research about the kind of people following you and try to come up with the ideas they will find more interesting and fun. Remember, everyone is looking for something that will give them excitement and make them feel they belong, something they can share with family and friends. Conducting a market or online consumer behavior survey might be necessary. Check comments, likes, and shares and conduct interviews if and when possible.

Make Use of All Avenues

One good thing about social media is the various platforms available. When carrying out your social chain, make use of all the social media platforms that are relevant to your campaign strategy, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google Plus, LinkedIn, etc. Take advantage of tools that allow you to attach timing to your postings so you can deliver it to your audience exactly when most of them are available online.

Your social chain has to be well thought out before you get it out there. You don’t want to send it out only for people to point out errors. Know your audience, come up with a creative plan and put up a strategy that is unique and unbeatable. Make use of social media platforms relevant to your business and deliver a message people will be talking about for a long time.

Categories
Online Business

Building a Location-Independent Ecommerce Business… (That can even be run from a van!)

Article Contributed by Robin Behrstock

It’s true! You can build an ecommerce business that can be run from anywhere, at anytime. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Determine your product or product line

You may already have an idea for a terrific product. If so, great! However, most successful businesses have a full line of products, so think about how you might expand and offer a variety of product options. If you need help finding a product to sell, you can sign up for programs like JungleScout.com. This service shows you which products are selling quickly on Amazon. If that product has little competition, it’s likely a good option. Thoroughly research the competition… Are there many other sellers or ecommerce websites with the same products? Do you have a unique selling proposition that offers a higher value?

Arrange manufacturing process

Will you create the products yourself? Your sales capacity is limited if your production capacity is limited, so I encourage you to find a manufacturing solution that allows for growth. You can find a factory that makes similar products and hire them to make yours. Or import products from another country by working with a factory or trading company. You can get in touch with many factories around the world at Alibaba.com. If importing, you’ll need to hire a shipping company and customs broker who will help you get the products across borders and determine the import duties you’ll be required to pay.

Warehousing and Fulfillment

If you’re making the products yourself or just getting started, your sales volume is likely low, so you can warehouse the products yourself and ship each order. However, if you’re dealing with larger quantities, you should look into a 3PL (Third Party Logistics) warehouse. Stick to what you’re good at, and let the experts handle the warehousing and fulfillment logistics. Before sending your products to a warehouse, you’ll need to assign some identifiers to each product.  Each item should have a product name and SKU (stock keeping unit – a product identification code).  If you plan to sell your products via distributors or resellers, you’ll also need a UPC code. UPC codes may be purchased from GS1, or from a UPC reseller like upccode.net or simplybarcodes.net. If you want to sell your products on Amazon, Amazon will assign an ASIN number and barcodes that need to be applied to each item. Amazon has its own network of warehouses and can handle your warehousing and fulfillment at a low cost. If you use Amazon’s warehouses, your products will be eligible for “Prime” shipping and will have better sales results versus products that are fulfilled by you, the seller.

Build your sales channels

Now that you have products, warehousing and fulfillment set up, it’s time to sell! You can sell on an existing platform, like Amazon, Etsy, Jet, etc, or you can create your own ecommerce website. I recommend selling on several different platforms. Some people think building an ecommerce website is something only tech people can do, but nowadays it’s easy. If you are able to create a PowerPoint presentation, you can build a website. Companies like www.Shopify.com make it easy with templates and step-by-step instructions to get your products displayed, accept credit card payments, and even integrate with shipping software. You can also diversify your business with offline sales channels like selling to a distributor, selling via a rep group, and building a network of wholesale customers who will resell your products in brick-and-mortar stores. You’ll need to price your products with the appropriate margins if selling to distributors and resellers.

Accounting

Don’t underestimate the importance of accounting and taxes. Unless you have an accounting background, I recommend hiring an accountant to help with this. Tax rules are always changing, and it’s best to get your books organized sooner rather than later, before things get complicated. Keep your accounting books in the cloud using programs like xero.com or Quickbooks Online. This way, you and your accountant can access the same files without being in the same place.

Customer Service

Customer service is extremely important. Since there’s no face-to-face interaction like there is at your local gift shop, emails are everything. You need to answer customer emails quickly and effectively. Set up standard procedures for returns. Products can be returned to your 3PL warehouse, or to a different location where they can be evaluated and possibly resold as an “imperfect” item. Start doing customer service yourself, but eventually you should outsource this job to a virtual employee and focus on bigger picture aspects of your business. You can keep customer service requests well organized with programs like Zendesk.com.

Marketing

After your products are available for sale online, you need to help people find them. First, determine your target keywords for each product and incorporate those words as many times possible in the product name, description and metatags. If you’re selling on a platform like Amazon or Etsy, that company will introduce you to marketing opportunities. If you’re marketing your own ecommerce store, you should get started with Google Adwords and retargeting ads. You can try to set it up yourself and learn from online tutorials, or hire an independent Search Engine Marketing Consultant to help. Incoming links are often free and help improve search engine visibility, so get your website’s link published on as many other websites as possible. You can sign up for different directories, or write blog posts for other publications that direct readers to your website. Social media is also a great way to get incoming links, and more importantly, to engage with customers. Create a Facebook page, Twitter, and Instagram account and build your audience by posting useful and entertaining content. Follow users who follow similar companies and they will likely be interested in your products as well. Use popular and relevant hashtags to help increase the reach of your posts. Lastly, collect email addresses and build an email marketing list. Sign up for an email marketing program like Mailchimp and send out emails to your database with exciting news like new products and sales.

Expand and Improve

For any successful product and business, competition is inevitable. Continue improving and growing your business by expanding the product line, sales channels and marketing efforts. Listen to your customers and create new products based on what you hear from them. Work on improving your operating procedures so business runs smoothly and you can outsource as much as possible.

 

Embrace the Freedom

All of these aspects of building and growing an ecommerce business can be done anywhere! So feel free to hit the road and work from coffee shops or wherever you find reliable wifi. Work hard, be nice, and enjoy life!

About Author

Robin Behrstock, author of ADVENTURES OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS: Stories That Inspire, started Alchemade, a copper mug business, just as they became a popular trend. In less than three years, she grew the business to annual sales of $3 million. Behrstock is currently a partner in Radius Partnership, a consulting firm focused on working with small businesses.

For more information please visit www.AWEbook.com.

Categories
Online Business

How to Successfully Manage a Remote Business from Anywhere in the World

Article Contributed By Alex Schnee

How and where your workplace is has changed drastically over the past few years. As remote work becomes a popular option for large corporations and small start-ups alike, you might be wondering how it’s possible to manage so many different aspects of a business while in various locations. Fortunately, there are a number of tools that can help you make the switch a more remote-friendly working space.

Here are some ways you can successfully create a business that works from around the world.

Hire the right people

Some people love to head to the office on a daily basis. They love the idea of meeting with coworkers and sharing space with others. That fuels them to work with others and to come up with positive solutions to many problems. Others feel more productive in their own spaces and welcome a chance to work from home or a separate office. When you hire new workers, you want to know that they are doing their jobs—even if they aren’t being constantly monitored. It takes a special kind of person to be self-motivated enough to accomplish their tasks without being prompted.

Have the right tools

Your employees will need to have access to a number of files that might have been available in an office environment. This might mean that you have to move documents online, have programs that allow employees to access files, and that help you to keep in touch with one another. This might mean that you have to purchase some of these tools or learn to work with free ones. Even free programs like Google Docs can work if they are used correctly for your business.

Be flexible

Having remote workers around the world means that you might need to be a bit more flexible with due dates and the time that your workers are available. Different time zones and schedules means that you might have to require a certain amount of hours logged each month, but you can’t expect employees to be online during the hours that work for you. Flexibility is incredibly necessary when you are looking to create a business that is based in multiple locations. You also have to be willing to meet employees where they are at.

Encourage creativity

Like being a flexible business owner, you also have to be willing to think outside the box a little bit and to encourage employees to think of creative solutions to problems. The issues you run into as a remote business are probably much different than the ones you would face if you had a home office where you could see your employees in person every day. You want to be in a place where you can encourage your workers to have a stake in the company and to think of new and innovative ways to approach any issues your business is facing.

Be open to offering benefits

Loyal employees can be earned in a number of ways. Just because your employees work remotely doesn’t mean that you can’t offer them reasons to enjoy working for your company. This might mean providing health benefits (or at least a stipend), offering to pay for continuing education, or giving them time off when they ask. Remote work isn’t an excuse for making things cheaper for you—it also means that you still need to think about your employees and how you can help them do the best job they can.

Switching to a remote environment can be beneficial in a number of different ways. However, before you make the change, think about how you can do it seamlessly and successfully.

Categories
Starting Up

What I Learned from Multiple Failed Startups

Article Contributed by Jenn Livingston

Startups are great ways to enter the professional scene and make your name heard around the world. Nevertheless, they can be difficult to execute correctly in high-pressure situations. There are many lessons to be learned from failed startups.

Impressions

When you are trying to promote a startup, you will inevitably come into contact with many other executives. If your startup eventually fails, do not worry about leaving a bad impression. Your first impression is usually perfectly fine, but other aspects of the startup are unsuccessful. Continue to put your best foot forward when meeting new CEOs and presidents. It is a common mistake to be turned off by failed startups. The truth is, your first impression is the best you can do at that moment. When things are out of your control, you should not worry about them until they become relevant. Make your name heard and don’t worry if your initial portrayal does not work out. In this industry, a lack of confidence is one of the worst traits a leader can have. You need to be decisive and confident in everything you do. From handshakes to text messages to apparel, a solid image can go a surprisingly long way. It is worthwhile to compare your demeanor between startups and how it changes over time. Tracking your disposition is one of the most clever ways to make progress. At each failed startup, you will show improvement and eventually stray away from a hesitant outlook. I learned this lesson the hard way, but by starting now, you can avoid these simple mistakes.

Following Up After the Failure

Failure can be difficult to deal with. Nevertheless, it is important to follow up after the incident instead of completely abandoning the project. I see a lot of young entrepreneurs noticing success and immediately moving on to the next project. While this might save a small amount of time, you won’t be able to recover lost data and information. You also won’t learn from your mistakes. When I encountered a failed startup, I would take the next few days to reflect on what went wrong. Did I overcommit to one entity? Did the project have a misguided direction? By jotting these mistakes down in a notebook, I was able to look at this for future reference and fix my errors. You can take a similar approach with multiple failed startups. Send as many as emails as possible to employees, officers, and clients. With the right documentation, you can again track progress and make a firm statement.

Importance of Recruitment

Recruitment is at the foundation of every startup. In the past, I used to neglect this step in favor of a speedy hiring process. This is completely wrong. A steady recruitment session is necessary to determine the best workers for your startup. There are many ways to go about this process. If you are familiar with the strongest marketing techniques, you can use this as a basis for recruitment. Young entrepreneurs much like yourself will flock to the startup to prove their worth. Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is another fantastic strategy. When you outsource communication, you make it much easier for contacts to find your business in a heavily populated sea. In our world of market drivers, material analysis, and market overviews, it is important that you approach such a problem from multiple angles. After multiple failed startups, I decided that this technique is one of the best ways a young leader can take charge.

Conclusion

A failed startup is not the end of the world. If you treat these as learning experiences and take their lessons into your career, you will improve as a professional. Eventually, your failed startups will turn into successful ones and you will be on track for a lifetime of excellence.