Category: Entrepreneurship

“Strive for progress, not perfection!”

That’s a quote I’ve heard several times over the past couple of weeks, and I think it’s a brilliant summary of what we, as business owners, need to do. (I really don’t know who said this, by the way.)

We get so caught up in a lot of the hype that’s out there, and judge our success against what other’s are doing, rather than what we are doing ourselves. And as a result we become overwhelmed with so much to do; frustrated that we’re not achieving the same results as everyone else (so-and-so’s just had a $10k month, why can’t I do the same??); and just plain exhausted by the busyness of each and every day.

However, if we were to just take a pause … breathe … and focus on our own progress and what we’re doing each day to take our businesses forward, a lot of the problems currently being experienced would simple fade away.

For example:

How many people have you shared your business with this week? It could be through an in-person networking event; a one-on-one conversation with a potential client; hosting your own teleclass, or being a guest on someone elses’; or some other way that you’ve connected with people.

Jot down all that you’ve done this week to share your business … that’s progress.

What marketing activities have you done this week? Building regular marketing activities into your business, however small, will see your subscriber base grow week after week. Have you posted to your blog? Updated social media? Shared an article with your clients/colleagues? All of these small, quick marketing activities, when done regularly, lead to more subscribers.

I’ll give you a little sneak peek into my marketing activities… I have a weekly Monday Marketing appointment with myself that happens every Monday morning from 12-1pm Eastern. This is when I update my blog, schedule social media posts, record my podcast audio etc. It happens every week … it’s on my calendar!

What project have you moved forward with this week? We all have projects that we’re diligently working on behind-the-scenes. Some of them are huge projects that are ongoing over several weeks (such as a new program launch), and others are much smaller and can be accomplished quickly.

Jot down those projects that you’ve taken action on this week, however small and imperfect that action has been. You’re still making progress.

Next time you’re in overwhelm mode, just take a minute to acknowledge the progress that you’re making in your business … and don’t worry about it being perfect. If you waited for everything to be perfect, there never would be a right time!

Article Contributed by Cristian Ángel

In order to efficiently take the first steps of transforming an idea into reality through an entrepreneurship, there are key issues that we must consider in order to raise our few possibilities of success in the medium and long term. According to small business growth expert and entrepreneur Carl Hall, these key issues include creating management structures and sales forces that clearly understand the company’s culture and strategy, as well as technical innovations at every level of company operations.

I’m sorry to tell you in such an honest and direct way that a “brilliant” idea only is of no use. We must understand as from day one that the idea by its own has no value, and on the contrary, the implementation means everything!

As in any other area of a job, there are key requisites that will determine the success of failure of our project. That is why I would like to share which are the essential aspects to start correctly with an online entrepreneurship.

1) The differential must be at home (no matter what!)

I constantly hear this famous phrase at meetings, conferences, talks and lunches of entrepreneurs:  “do you know where I can hire a good programmer?” This is the first wrong requisite.

It’s not that we don’t need a programmer. On the contrary, we need one, and a lot! This is why we must think of the possibility of hiring a developer. We should consider making him an integral part of the entrepreneurship.

None of these are important. To start with, our system can even be slow or have a design that is not that tidy. The real key to success is to solve a real problem that the client is willing to pay to have it solved.

Are we on the right track? Let’s leave the computer, look for our potential clients and sit them in front of the system that we are developing. Let’s see how they interact with it without making any comment, just watching. Towards the end we ask them if they would be willing to pay for that service, not if they would use it. If the answer is positive and they want to pay for it, then we are on the right track.

If the answer is negative, then we must, as it is known today, “pivot.” We must listen to our clients to find out what it is that they really want, what their problems effectively are and adapt our software to their needs. Nobody will know what the clients need better than themselves, not even us (the founders of our own entrepreneurship.)

Why should we ask if they would pay for it instead of asking if they would use it? In time we will understand that in almost 100% of the cases, people will congratulate us and answer that they would use it when ready.  The truth is that they don’t want us to have a bad image of them. That is why they try to be kind, nice and positive. But when we ask them if they would pay for it and invite them to sign a service contract (for example, for 3 or 6 months), no matter how cheap it may be, it ends with any kindness and we’ve got the answer we were looking for with effectiveness.

The idea for this requisite is to avoid the BIG mistake of developing something that we “think” would be useful and when it is done and we go out to sell it, we realize we’ve lost all of our money, time and effort without any sense.

3) Rising to the next level

Once the two previous requisites are covered, we start with this one. This last requisite consists in making our entrepreneurship grow into a medium and long term enterprise/company.

For that, we need to understand how the online world works and to find the key point in which we can define the distribution channel of our service for the mass generation of our clients with the objective of raising our revenues (invoicing.)

There are a lot of mechanisms through the Internet, from social network marketing, affiliate marketing, search engine marketing (Google, Bing and Yahoo) to even ads display.

In a case like ours that we started with our own resources (no external investment) and we go on in that way, what gave us best results was working through SEO (Search Engine Marketing) for the generation of new clients for our start-ups.

An excellent resource to begin and use is the SEOMOZ community, in which tutorials, guides and explanatory videos about SEO are offered. I recommend this because we must first learn what SEO is about and then we should implement it, and finally, measure the results.

This marketing mechanism is not learnt over night and, in addition, it constantly changes; the strategies that worked last year might not work this year. Lastly, the results are not seen overnight; it requires effort and dedication over time to be able to reach excellent achievements. But definitely, effort and tidy work in this medium bring highly valuable rewards.

About the Article

Article written by the online developer, Cristian Ángel for elMejorTrato in Argentina, now expanding to Brasil, Mexico and Colombia.

Article Contributed by Chris Burgess

As the job market gets more competitive and the promise of a career for life goes the way of the dodo, entrepreneurship has become more popular than ever, with many schools and colleges now offering classes in private enterprise. Go to any bookstore, and chances are you’ll find literally dozens of books on the topic, each promising to hold the key to startup success.

But can entrepreneurship really be taught in school, or does it represent a more intangible set of skills that can only be acquired through real-world experience?

Educators will argue that learning entrepreneurship isn’t really all that different from learning business, and that most of the same skills apply. This argument is bolstered by the fact that research in the field has improved drastically in recent years, with educators now much better equipped to help students avoid many of the pitfalls of turning their dreams into reality.

Some lessons are still best taught outside the classroom

While it’s true that many of the skills that underpin good entrepreneurship, such as effective time management and financial planning, can certainly be taught, there are a handful of less-easily-defined skills and qualities that identify the real entrepreneur – and many would contend that the only way to gain them is by doing.

One of these is, quite simply, people skills. As an entrepreneur, it’s inevitable that you will have to deal with many different personality types. Virgin founder Richard Branson, who was actually a painfully shy child, was thrown into the deep end at age 7 by his exasperated mother: she dropped him off several miles from home, requiring that he find his own way back. He didn’t show up until 10 hours later, but in that time he’d learned many invaluable lessons on how to communicate with adults in order to arrive home safely.

Another is the ability to take on calculated risk, along with the willingness to accept failure and uncertainty. At the end of the day, you simply have to do it, and this will get easier with experience. Otherwise you risk getting stuck in an endless cycle of planning and product development.

Instinct is important, but data is better

Many entrepreneurs pride themselves on their impeccable business instincts and their innate ability to spot trends before the competition does. “Gut feel” is a good thing to have, but it shouldn’t take the place of hard data if available. One common example is underestimating the time and resources required to have everything in place and reach a state of profitability.

If self-employment remains your dream but your fear of failure is too great, there are still options – you could buy a franchise, for example, or partner up with someone with more business experience.

While there’s no substitute for simply doing it in some areas, the teachability of entrepreneurship continues to increase, due to the emergence of alternative learning methods such as role playing, self-evaluation exercises, and working with mentors. The result is that while not everything about good entrepreneurship can be taught, most of it now can. It just takes time, commitment, and acceptance that not everything in life can be predicted.

About the Author

Chris Burgess is the CEO of Mailplus and has extensive experience in the courier services and business-to-business service market, having successfully franchised over 150 territories throughout Australia. Mailplus currently has franchises for sale in all major metropolitan areas.

It’s a familiar scenario: Solo business owner is swamped just wading through emails, keeping up with social media, serving customers. No time to create new products or work on that marketing campaign.

Is this you? If so, I have four proven ways that successful solo entrepreneurs use to wrestle back control of their business, get the daily job done and still have time to grow their businesses.

1.    Tame Your Inbox

Email is probably the number one task that sucks up our time. Answering customer questions, reading newsletters, responding to joint venture requests, communicating with your support team — it can add up to dozens of emails seemingly needing your instant attention. And even if you clear your inbox in the morning, new emails come in hourly that can distract you from tasks that require concentrated attention.

Ways to take control of your inbox:

• Unsubscribe from half of the newsletters you are currently getting. Starting with the ones that you haven’t had a chance to read in the last few months. If they were important to your business efforts now, you’d be reading them. You can always sign up again later.
• Deal immediately with items you can delegate, respond to in less than two minutes, or file away.
• Set up filters to put certain emails into different folders. Gmail makes this easy. Client emails in one folder, newsletters in another, to-dos in a third. Keep your inbox focused on items you need to deal with this week.
• Check your inbox twice a day, and turn it off the rest of the time. This allows you to focus on other work without the distraction of incoming emails. [Disclosure: It’s great advice although I find it hard to follow myself!]

2.    Use Social Media Tools to Schedule Your Tweets and Facebook Posts

One of the keys to successful use of social media is to post updates at the times your audience is most likely to see them. But this doesn’t mean you have to be on Twitter and Facebook every hour. There are many tools that allow you to pre-schedule both tweets and status updates, minimizing your actual time attending to your social media efforts. My favorite tools are Hootsuite and Pluggio. My virtual assistant uses Hootsuite once a week to pre-schedule posts that I put out regularly and I also use it to automatically tweet new blog posts, YouTube videos and more (via the RSS Feed functionality.) I use Pluggio to pre-schedule tweets on a daily basis — I can sit down and in one session schedule retweets, answer questions and thank those who have mentioned me, without flooding the tweet stream with a dozen posts in a short amount of time. And Facebook now lets you schedule status updates to publish at a later time/day.

3.    Go With The Flow

Some days, you just don’t feel like working on the items on your to-do list. Other times, you may find yourself up in the wee hours of the morning, on a roll. GO WITH IT. If you find yourself stuck (and there is nothing you really have to do right now(change to then??), go for a walk, take a nap, play hooky and go shopping. Too many times we set artificial deadlines for ourselves and then stick with those deadlines, pushing through when we are struggling to concentrate – making the task take far longer than necessary, and sometimes resulting in less than our best work. Be flexible with yourself and your deadlines (isn’t that why we are solo business owners?) I guarantee that when you are truly ready to tackle that task, it will go more smoothly.

4.    Mistakes Are OK

One of my favorite sayings is: “ If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t moving fast enough.” It doesn’t have to be perfect, whether it is an email, a newsletter, a product, or a marketing campaign. Business owners tend to have exceptionally high standards for themselves, but are very understanding and forgiving when others make mistakes. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Get it done, get it out there; you can always fix any missteps later.

 

A new year means new opportunities for entrepreneurs around the world. What do you need to know for this year? Well, you need to know how to be better than you were the year before. That’s what being an entrepreneur is all about: constantly moving forward. Smart entrepreneurs know how to develop new skills, as well as hone in old ones. This year, you need to make sure that you’re at the top of your game. Nothing should be overlooked or neglected.

Develop Better People Skills

As an entrepreneur, you encounter people everyday. You need to know how to interact with them in a way to build trust and confidence in you as a person. Only once potential clients trust you will they ever be able to trust your product or service. Spend time studying how to perfect your people skills. Quiet entrepreneurs that keep to themselves may need to speak up more, while loud, “in-your-face” kind of salesmen may need to cut back a bit this year.

Know How to Make a Decision

Ultimately, entrepreneurs are businessmen. Businessmen must know how to make tough decisions. In 2013, put away the Magic 8 Ball and start making the difficult decisions you need to for your company.

Ditch the Napkin and Make a Plan

Many entrepreneurs are notorious for flying by the seat of their pants, so to speak. This year, take time to actually write a business plan and some goals for your business. As you grow, planning is going to be an essential part of your success. Whether you’ve been doing this a month or ten years, you still need to learn new and better ways to plan your business.

Take Some Time Off

This is something that most entrepreneurs never learn. Taking time to disconnect from the business for a while is a foreign idea to people that start their own businesses. However, you need to have time that you can get away from everything and relax your mind. Take friends or a loved one to a nice dinner a couple of times a month, use GOLFZING to plan a weekly game of golf, or simply take an hour every morning for some yoga and meditation. Whatever you decide, disconnect and enjoy it. Your business won’t run away while you’re gone.

Don’t let this year pass you by because you didn’t take the time that you needed to develop new skills and hone in old habits. Entrepreneurs face many difficulties and you need to be able to handle each and everyone that comes your way this year. It may be a good year or it may be a difficult one for your business, but that does not take away your responsibility to get out there and be better. Whether you need to know how to interact better with the people around you or take a vacation and relax while playing on some golf courses in LA, do it. Your career may depend on it.