Tag: entrepreneur

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Does Starting a Business Sound Stressful?

Starting and running your own business can be stressful. You can reduce the stress by educating yourself about your business in advance. Learn about your market; what products they are currently buying? What are the weakest links in your target market? How can you, your product, or service fill in the gaps in the market? What skills and abilities will the need to make it happen?

Does Starting a Business Sound Stressful?

Isn’t it stressful to be working for someone looking over you, and managing you to get you to meet their expectations?

I would gladly trade the stress of socially acceptable slavery for the stress associated with starting a new business from scratch any day. Plus, doing so, gives you the possibility of achieving a level of freedom that could never be accomplished working from someone else.

But I Love My Job

You may love your job. It is doing a good job of taking care of you and your family, good enough, anyway. You feel like there is challenge and room for growth and expansion with the company. You can imagine feeling fulfilled for life or at least until retirement. That is, until your company is bought out and you are forced to prove to yourself worthy of your job, or worse yet, you come into work and are greeted with a pink slip. How do you like your job now?

You are Worth 5-times What You are Being Paid

The good news is, there is a good chance that you can still do all the things you love about your job working for your own company for five-times what you are being paid to do your job now. (Did you catch that?) If the company that you are working for is successful, they operate on a profit and loss formula, which dictates that every employee must have a value of five-times their pay, in order for them to survive.  So, you could easily start your own business and charge two-and-a-half times what you are being paid now, and still be a bargain.

Can be Scary

Granted there may be fear associated with starting your own business because you have never thought of it before or you thought the idea of stepping into entrepreneurship was too far out of reach. I hope it helps to ease your mind, that right now is the best time to start a business of your own. In fact, more people are starting new businesses now, more than at any other time in history.

10% America Staring New Businesses Now

Ten percent of the workforce in America started new businesses last year, and there is no slowdown now. It’s like today is the new frontier.

Of course, you will have doubts about your ability to pull this off, as anybody, even the most experienced serial entrepreneurs, have doubts, but they do what is necessary regardless of what they feel. Even if you just charge ahead, it is good to do what you can to manage your efforts effectively by getting the maximum results from the least expense of cash or energy. By managing your energy exertion in your business building efforts, you can minimize your potential for unnecessary stress or burnout.

Self-promotion

You will need to promote yourself and your business to increase your success rate. Many people are afraid of sounding like a salesperson (probably because they don’t like salespeople). There’s a good chance that if you don’t like salespeople, you were probably the victim of a predatory salesperson who took advantage of you. You will have to get over that and let it go. Just because you have had a bad experience doesn’t make you a predator. You can promote yourself and your business with integrity. Don’t worry, staring and promoting your business will not turn you into a snake in the grass.

If you think about it, you have been selling and promoting your whole life. You have been promoting the company you work for, you have sold people on how to think of you as a person. If you are a religious person, or a member of any group or affiliation, you have probably presented them in the best light. If you are in a relationship, it is likely it took some salesmanship on your part to close the deal on that one. These are also considered sales, marketing, and promotion efforts, where you are already experienced in.

Believe

The more you believe in your own products and services, the easier your sales, marketing, and promotions will be. You can also find inspiration in believing that you are actively doing something good for others or in making the world a better place.

This is your time to shine and be all that you can be.

Spread your wings and fly to be free.

 

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55 and Older Workers Lost in the Pandemic

Millions of workers aged 55 to 70 lost their jobs, and most of them lost their jobs forever. On the surface you might think that these advanced-age workers were in their retirement years anyway, so what is the big deal? The fact is these older workers cannot survive on Social Security or the combination of retirement benefits they receive monthly to live on. So, they need to work well into their retirement years into their eighties and nineties, if they can.

Granted, these are high functioning older Americans that are not only able to fully function in the job marketplace, but they are driven by a force that makes them want to participate and contribute by working and serving the community when their peers have opted out of working altogether.

Returning to work post-pandemic is not looking good for many of the seniors because there is likely to be so many more youthful workers flooding the job market that there will be little or no room for the older workers.

Many of them are already waking up to the realization that the prospects for employment in the future is bleak, so they are looking for other alternative and finding opportunities in entrepreneurialism. They are among the record-breaking numbers of unemployed in America who are starting new businesses to replace their lost income-earning ability since the pandemic.

As necessity is the mother of invention, so has entrepreneurialism become the answer to joblessness.

Each of us has a unique set of skills or natural ability that can be easily turned into a business. And older Americans, while they may not be thought of as technologically inclined as a younger workforce, they bring something far more valuable to the marketplace.

Though not all Americans are aging gracefully. Not feeling as though one has a reason to live, living under stressful circumstances, being angry, or worrying about things tend to add to complications during the aging process and these concerns shorten life expectancy.

Often, because of their age and experience, older people bring a perspective that is unique and rare, something that could be regarded as “wisdom.”

Some cultures consider their elders to be highly regarded in terms of their experience and wisdom if they have earned it by living a good life. These older members of society are honored and invited to participate in leadership or support roles, and they are consulted with prior to making decisions that may have an impact on the greater community.

Cultures that hold the wisdom of their elders in high regard include Native Americans, Greeks, Indians, Koreans, Romans, and Chinese. Though the present-day Chinese reverence for their elders is waning due to the westernization of China in general.

Our elders have so much to offer, and the lack of jobs in America today encourages them to embrace their strength and wisdom to reach out and serve the greater community at a higher level than just trading effort for a dollar in a work-for-wages scenario.

Many of these new advanced-aged entrepreneurs are profiting handsomely and being wildly rewarded both financially, and feeling as though they are adding value to their communities, increasing their desire to give back, and to even make the world a better place.

They have a new, revived sense of purpose in their later years.

It is this driving sense of purpose that is extending their high-quality years of life.

 

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How to Turn What You Love into Cash

You have a good idea what you love to do, but how do you turn what you love into a cash machine?

First off, do not let yourself brush this project aside because it sounds ridiculous or too good to be true. I have seen so many people turn the things they love into successful businesses, things that you would have never imagined would turn into successful business ventures. So, hang in there.

And don’t forget the job market that already exists. If there is something that you love to do, there is a good chance that there is someone else out there getting paid to do it, who probably doesn’t even like doing it. That is another opportunity for you either as an entrepreneur or as an employee.

You would be so much better performing that thing than anyone else who thought they were just doing a job for someone else’s business. You could get that job or start a business that provides this service to other companies.

There’s nothing wrong with getting paid to do what you love to do, while working for someone else, but consider this: If you are doing what you love for someone else, your employer is making five-times what you are getting paid off of the work that you do. By starting your own business, you can easily double your income by offering your services to others.

How to Turn What You Love into Cash

Take the leap: Create your own dream job by starting your own business offering your unique skill, service, talent, gift, or teach others to do what you love to do.

If you were to take a look at the most successful people in the world, you would find them doing what they love, and enjoying every moment of it, while watching their bank accounts grow exponentially.

You could be doing the same thing, too.

If you have no experience in running your own business, do not worry. You can stick your toe in the entrepreneurial water to give it a try inexpensively with little or no risk. In fact, this is the preferred method of trying out your idea on others before making the big leap.

You don’t need a license to do business under your own name, so just use it to test your idea out before you get distracted by the business if doing business. Just keep track of your income and expenses while you are testing the waters.

Your primary goal is to present your idea to someone and to get someone – anyone – to pay you any amount of money to do what you would like others to pay you for, which would be the focus of your business venture. This is how you vet your business idea.

While vetting your business idea, spend as little as possible advertising your service. Use community bulletin boards, leave flyers in offices, place small, classified ads, use craigslist.org, advertise on Facebook marketplace, you get the idea. Get free business cards (yes, free business cards are a thing… Google it). Make phone calls to businesses or individuals who might be likely candidates for your services(s). Spend very little and the idea is only to get one paying client before you proceed.

If you are unable to get someone to pay for your service, put this idea on the back burner and try the next idea.

If you have a paid client, you are to perform the service and request that your client gives you a positive review of your performance. With this/these review(s) in hand, you are ready for the next step.

 

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Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow

You have heard that phrase, “Do what you love, and the money will follow,” and it might make you wonder, “What does that even mean?” and if you could understand it, “Could it apply to me?” It may mean more to you now, more than ever. This year has brought us the most business startups than ever, and yours might be the next one to make its debut.

If you do it right, you can stack the deck in your favor and enjoy making a successful venture based on doing the things that you love to do. The things that love more than anything and enjoy yourself immensely while people are paying you handsomely to do it.

So many people (millions of them) are taking this opportunity of being on unemployment, or just being unemployed, or unemployable, to start their own businesses based on their passions, gifts, and special abilities.

Can you imagine, doing what you love and being able, not only to get paid for doing it, but possibly making even more that you might ever make working for someone else? What an incredible way to finance yourself and/or your family. Right?

This is better than winning the lottery. Most people who win the lottery are broke not long after the win, but not you. If you convert your passion to an income-generating machine, the money keeps coming in month after month.

Regardless, if you are like the rest of us, you have been told that you were never destined to be a business owner, now is the time to let go of that dark programming, reignite the passion that you may have denied yourself in the past, and start to see the world of opportunities that is all around you, right now.

You came to this planet with a distinct purpose, mission, passion, and message to share with the world. Even though the societal engineers of the industrial age would like you to believe that your only function was to work for someone else.

On the other hand, you have heard of those incredible rags to riches stories where someone with minimal skills, talent, and. or financial resources breaks through the barrier from ordinary life to join the rank of the “one percent.” Could you be one of them?

One thing is for sure, if you do not try, you will not be one of them.

What do you love?

Make a list of all the things you love to do, those things that when you are doing them, time just slips away. What activities did you get lost in when you were a child? Might you like to do them now?

Do you look up to someone? Anyone? What do they do for fun? Would you like to do that? If so, add it to your list.

Has anyone ever told you that you were particularly good at something? Did it seem so natural to you, that it did not seem noteworthy or magical to you (but it did for others)? Write it down.

Are people attracted to you and ask you to help them? Is there a particular theme that resonates throughout their requests for assistance? If so, that’s a clue.

After a few days of creating this list of “My Favorite Things,” go through them and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being that you would love doing the most.

Next, you will have to figure out how to turn what you love into cash.

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Something More in This Life

Ever have that feeling like there was something more in this life? You may have found yourself with some free time on your hands since the pandemic, and you may have found some peace and quiet, enough to hear a still small voice say,

“There is something more in this life.”

You could do what most other people do when they hear that little voice, brush it aside as a silly thought, “It must have been something I ate.”

Only there is nothing silly about it. It is your truest most high part of yourself, reaching out to you. This voice knows who you are, who you really are.

You are so incredibly special, and part of you has forgotten. Oh, you knew who you were. You knew you came to this planet with a purpose, message, passion, and mission. There was a time when it was so very clear. Then slowly, your birthright was beaten out of you by the social construct, and by the time you were seven years old, any remembrance of it was gone.

Have you had the thought that maybe it is time to strike out on your own, to take the reins of fate into your own hands? You have not missed a thingThere is no better time than now to spread your wings and fly, but to achieve your highest and best, the best thing you could do would be to fully embrace your purpose, message, passion, and mission.

Everything you do when you are aligned with your sacred and highest good, especially if you are considering an entrepreneurial venture. Imagine how powerful your adventure could be empowered by your full power potential.

What is your purpose? The answer is the key to your massive successful endeavors.

A look back at your life, everything that has led to this moment, is a rarely looked at map that leads you here and into the future. Once you look at your life from the vantage point of your higher self, all the chaos, drama, and trauma, all makes perfect sense.

Can you remember what you wanted to do with your life before you were seven? You might be surprised how it all lines up so perfectly, pointing where to go next.

Now you have to prepare to launch the new you, your new enterprise in harmony with your powerful authenticity.

For the first time in ever, you can use technology to access the world with your unique message, even under pandemic lockdown.

There has never been a better time to start a movement and align with like-minded people just like you who share a passion for what you are feeling led to do, and help others that need to hear your message. There are people who desperately need to hear what you have to say. You could be saving lives this year.

You were meant for more than this.

You are the light in the darkness.

Let your light shine.

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How to Start Your Own Business

With millions of new startups during the pandemic, shouldn’t your new business be one of them? What kind of business would you open? Certainly, one that fits into the new economy, one with low overhead that you could start from home and take advantage of outsourcing any of the services you need to launch your new startup.

Today, you do not need a lot of capital to get your new business started and you can take advantage of all the digital and online support services to support your new endeavor.

Where are your passions? What are those things that you love to do more than anything? What are the activities, that when you do them, time just passes by? Next thing you know, hours have passed by, and it seemed like only minutes. That is when you and “in the zone,” when your passion is engaged, and this – if you could manage to find a way to get people to pay you for it – is the sweet spot of your entrepreneurial future.

Business opportunities come and go and markets shift and change over time which causes stress on any business, but if you are engaged in a business that you are extremely passionate about, you will have the wherewithal to sustain any bumps in the road for expanded survivability.

If you are going to get into the marketplace of the new emerging economy, you need to determine to the best of your ability, what would be the best investment for you to consider? Will you launch your new business based on goods or services?

Will you be selling a product that you manufacture or buy wholesale? Can you sell digital information? Can you provide services that can either be performed as labor or be delivered digitally?

Home Manufacture

Current examples include making and selling customized masks would be manufacturing.

Wholesale / Retail

If you buy something to resell, that would be buying at wholesale (low-priced or factory-direct) and selling it retail or for a higher price and you pocket the difference.

Digital Information

Could include anything from sharing your family recipes to how-to manuals in digital format, live-streaming demonstrations, or online training.

Regardless of how you decide to structure your business, try to make sure it is something that excites you, something that you are passionate about.

Your Business Name

Next, you will need a name. Your business name should be about your brand, and people should be able to figure out what you do by just hearing or reading the name of your company. If you are an individual providing a service, you could use your name, especially if you have somewhat of a following where people associate your name with what you do, like John Q. Public Accountant.

Do not decide on a name until you have been able to secure the dot-com for your business name, which you can get for less than $15.00. For example, if you want to call your business AAA Plumbing, and aaaplumbing.com is already taken, keep searching for variations of dot-com names, until you can find one that fits, and name your company that. So, if you were able to get aaasupremeplumbing.com and you felt like that would be a good brand for you, then get the dot-com, then register your business name (AAA Supreme Plumbing) with your local and state agencies.

Web Site

Hooking up a preliminary web site to your domain name would be the next thing you would want to do.  The website need not be extravagant, mostly an online business card which establishes your brand, and gives your potential online clientele a way to find out about you and contact you on the world wide web. A basic web site will run about $20 a month or less.

Physical Products

If you are selling a physical product, one that you package and ship, think about this: You could have Amazon, promote, sell, package, and ship your products for you by participating in their FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) program. You package and ship your products to one of their warehouses, and they take care of the rest.

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New Pandemic Businesses are Killing It

You have heard the worst of it; most pre-pandemic businesses are down and out, or on their way out. Some workers were forced to work from home, while others were sent home with little or nothing to look forward to. No doubt, times are tough, but there is good news: New pandemic businesses are killing it.

Whether you are a fan of “when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” “when life gives you lemons make lemonade,” “growth necessitates change,” or “necessity is the mother of invention,” amidst these worst of times, even during the pandemic, millions of new businesses were launched, and they are making a killing while others suffer.

Your first reaction might be to be upset, but there is something invaluable to learn from the crisis, the lockdowns, and shut outs associated with it, and examining how a few Americans, roughly 1 out of 10, are taking advantage of the pandemic.

We were all in the same boat in 2020, but ten percent of us put on our thinking caps, took action, and started something new, new businesses that helped to establish independence and to secure our future well into the future, post-pandemic.

These were not the corporate moguls taking advantage of COVID-19, no, these are everyday citizens, half of whom have dipped their toe into the water of entrepreneurialism before, the other half? No businesses experience whatsoever, and they are satisfyingly successful, equally including telecommuters working from home who used their extra time to develop their new business, while the rest had been laid off, on unemployment, or had no job whatsoever.

Some of them launched new businesses that were hugely successful, others moderately, but successful enough to not have to depend on an employer, handouts, or charity to survive and feed their families.

Of all the 2020 new business startups, you might find something that appeals to you. You might even think of throwing your entrepreneurial hat into the right yourself. Or simply opening your mind to the idea of possibilities that may be waiting for you to launch your own inspired new business that will take you to the next level.

Starting your own business today is the answer to the question,

“If I am going to have to work from home, anyway, why not do it for myself?”

You do not have to be the victim or take the pandemic lying down.

I can be my own boss and not have to kiss anyone else’s arse. I can become the master of my own fate and destiny.

Here are some ideas that might inspire you.

Top 10 New Pandemic Businesses in 2020

1. Handmade Face Masks

Many handy home seamstresses are turning their skills into bank by creating unique facemasks. People are required to wear them anyway, might was well make a statement while you are forced to don PPE out in public, right?

2. Home Product Manufacturing

We are seeing a lot of people carving out their own niche using whatever crafty skills they might have. Artists, woodworkers, craftspeople of all kinds are making homemade products and selling them on eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. Creating new products and brand identity, while others are oblivious that these opportunities exist.

3. Physical Subscription Service

Now is the time to start your anything-you-can-think-of-delivered-to-your-door subscription service. America is forced to stay home, and Jeff Bezos need not be the only one providing everything to the rest of us on lockdown. Sure, you could deliver whatever you want onesie-twosie, but those new companies who are killing it are offering their wares on a recurring subscription basis. Everything from aromatherapy to farm produce and products, so the sky’s the limit.

If you need more help thinking of ideas for subscription service, here are some good ones: meals-in-a-box, family activities in a box, home beauty kits, natural spa-at-home kits, homemade organic products, just let your imagination flow, anything that can help make being on lockdown a little more tolerable.

4. Got a Way with Kids?

This is the time to create youth-focused learning exercises and games for children and young adults who are celled-in for the pandemic. You would be surprised at how many parents who are working from home are taking advantage of online activities that can keep the kids occupied while they are on conference calls or trying to get work done. If you can come up with toys, products, activities, apps, or online webinars that captures the minds of American youths, then now is the time to launch it

5. Online Coaching

You may have spent your life helping others out with their personal problems, and if these people are naturally attracted to you, you may be a Life Coach just waiting to be released into the mainstream. In these tough times, people need other people and they are reaching out online to form associations with life coaches who can help them make the best of these tough times, via phone, Zoom, Skype, Facebook Messenger, however you can connect to your potential clientele. Life Coaching can cover any areas of specialty, such as Business Coaching, Wellness Coaching, Financial Coaching, Spiritual Coaching, etc… Get your FREE Life Coach Certification today and start tomorrow.

6. Virtual Personal Trainer

With gyms shutting down all over America, the trainers are taking to the Internet and are developing online virtual classes for pandemic shut-ins. You could od this. Anyone could do this. Anything from working with free weights to yoga and meditation sessions.

7. Digital Marketing Specialist

As you may have guessed, with all this online activity and rush to the Internet to conduct business in America, there is an increasing demand for digital marketing specialists who can help to fill the promotional gaps in any business’ attempts to profit from online exposure. Services cover the entire spectrum of marketing, but you could specialize in what you are already good at, such as web site design, content creation, Facebook posting, social media management, SEO services, online branding and advertising, or other digital marketing consulting. You could consider becoming a certified digital marketing specialist.

8. Virtual Teacher, Trainer, or Tutor

With all this extra time on their hands, people are taking the time to expand their horizons, and learning new things, so that post-pandemic, they will have a better outlook and increased possibility of living a better life. Help them learn something new, increase their skillset, speak a second language, get ready to take college entrance exams, or help young online students get better grades.

9. Pet Products and Services

With more people being restricted to their homes, the pet companion industry is taking off like a rocket. Pets are making perfect home companions. If you offer a mobile pet washing/grooming service or can come up with special diet delivery, customizable pet treats, or toys, this could be the perfect time to launch your pet company.

10. Virtual Assistant

Long before the pandemic, the Virtual Assistant (VA) industry was a well-established goldmine for people (primarily office workers) who wanted to work from home and they are still dominating the online job market. Thanks to the coronavirus, this is still a huge expanding marketplace, and there is no reason you shouldn’t be doing this, if you have skills, such as data entry, phone skills, or online marketing.

I know, you are wondering what is next? Here are the Top 20.

Top 20 New Pandemic Businesses in 2020

1. Handmade Face Masks
2. Home Product Manufacturing
3. Physical Subscription Service
4. Youth Services
5. Online Coaching and Consulting
6. Virtual Personal Trainer
7. Digital Marketing Specialist
8. Virtual Teacher, Trainer, or Tutor
9. Pet Products and Services
10. Virtual Assistant
11. Commercial Cleaning Services
12. Delivery and Errand Services
13. Landscaping and Lawn Care
14. Telehealth Services
15. Home Improvement
16. Telecommuter Team Support
17. Online Babysitting
18. Graphic Designer
19. App Developer
20. Accounting and Bookkeeping

Of course, the handmade face masks opportunity will fade quickly following the pandemic mandates are alleviated. But the rest of these new businesses are expected to thrive following the pandemic threat.

Shouldn’t your business be one of them?