Tag: independent business

Categories
News

Succeed with Your New Startup Business Against the Odds

Some people are born with it, others need a little nudge to get them going. Either way, you are choosing to start clearing your own path to start a business, now, against all odds. Regardless of what it may look or feel like, you can stack the deck so that the cards are in your favor, so you can succeed with your new startup business against the odds.

7 Steps to Success Against the Odds

1. Have a Clear Vision

Start with a plan, and using your imagination, see your business at the height of success, of you were able to launch your business, and everything went your way, what would your business look like in five years? In ten years?

In the beginning, also have the end in mind. Will you sell your business and retire, start another one, pass it onto your heirs, or will you keep it to add to your growing portfolio of businesses?

Feel into the vision of the life of your business before you open for business, and document you’re doing so.

2. Know Your Why

This is the reason you are starting your business and why you are doing it now, and it has to be more than for money. Income is not enough of a why to get you through the tough times, and your why will be different than anyone else’s. What drives you to start a business against the odds?

Is it to provide for your family? To build a fortune to leave to your heirs? To help others who you feel compassionate towards? To break you and your family out of the trap of poverty? To make a stand against “the man” and to break free from wage-earning prison? To be an inspiration to others who doubt that breaking free is not possible for themselves?

Why? Make your why as powerful and you can, because the strength of your why will help empower you to push-though when the going gets rough. When you are face-to-face with what seems to be insurmountable circumstances, remember your why. This is how you succeed against the odds.

3. Personal Mission Statement

Once you know your why, you can craft your personal mission statement. Before you start creating your business mission statement and plan, start with you, your personal mission statement. Incorporate your vision, your why, and your core values. This defines you and helps you to make decisions based on what serves you and your highest and best. Let this define the kind of business owner you are and the kind of businessperson you want to be in the future.

4. Consider Failure

Understand that failure is a necessary component of success, therefore it is important not to look at failures in your business as failures but as invaluable information gathering data. Throughout your business journey, you will try things, like promotional campaigns, some will fail, so you examine them to find out what went wrong.

Do not look at failure as if it is were a single devastating final blow. If you get kicked off the horse, get back on quickly as possible, even if your business ends up not working out as you had planned, do the same thing. Look at every detail, extract the learning, and try something else.

Also, keeping an eye on the failures of others can help you learn from their mistakes (which doesn’t cost you anything) and figure out a better way to connect to your market.

When you do fail (and you will) fail forward.

5. Create a Team

It is hard to start your business venture from scratch, but you can help to support yourself, your vision, and your business by creating a team to launch in concert with. By having co-founders, you can have a camaraderie of cohorts to support you and give constructive criticism along the way. This can help ease the pain of those moments when things look less than optimistic. “We are doing this together” is more comforting than “I am doing this all by myself.”

Plus, having different perspectives to draw upon is invaluable, and masterminding with a group of supportive individuals can help you to access knowledge and inspiration that would not be accessible any other way.

6. Network with Businesspeople

Keeping your ear to the ground, you can hear or feel challenges as they are headed your way. Some of the obstacles that your business will be facing will also be coming to other types of businesses, or maybe they’ve already leaped over the hurdle and can help to prepare you for what is coming.

Join a group of business owners and/or entrepreneurs and participate in the meetings. This would be a good reason to join a local chamber of commerce, to network with other business owners. Many businesspeople join a Chamber of Commerce to make more money: Not the right motivation (plus, this is not a very good method to accomplish making more money), but the networking, connecting with other businesspeople is priceless.

7. Your Contribution

Looking at and maintaining the contribution of your business to your community, the greater community, and the world, is empowerment realized by you, your clients, and supporters. How are you giving, giving back, and helping to make the world a better place through your business efforts?

Are you offering employment opportunities, enriching the lives of participants, clients, and the recipients of your products and services?

How are you and your business impacting the world and the planet for future generations?

This is your legacy.

 

Categories
News

How Many Small Businesses Have Closed Due to COVID?

Hundreds of thousands of businesses have closed permanently due to COVID. We have seen the loss of retailers, bookstores, antique stores, restaurants, fitness centers, health clubs, private schools, theaters, gyms, and many other independent businesses lost forever.

The list of business survivors includes mostly the biggest corporate chains with the wherewithal to withstand temporary shutdown or slowdown, while others were deemed essential and have thrived exponentially due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Small Independent Businesses

The smaller independent businesses are those hardest hit by the pandemic. These businesses are run by individuals with modest means who have taken the step to get a piece of the American dream, to be your own boss, do what you love, and let the world support remunerate you accordingly.

Unable to finance their businesses while waiting in hibernation for the pandemic restrictions to be lifted, forced these people to abandon their businesses forever. In one fell swoop their American dreams were smashed once and for all.

How many small businesses have closed due to COVID?

This is such a tragedy. Most of these businesses supported the everyday lives of entire families, who could have not seen this coming. Most of these businesses survived marginally, paying the bills, and taking care of the family on the difference. Instantly, all financial support stopped, and some owners were able to walk away with little more loss than their wounded pride, while others were disgraced, headed to bankruptcy courts, and feeling as though they let their families down.

No Unemployment

Unlike Americans who were sent home with no job due to the pandemic, the independent business owners who lost their businesses will not be entitled to unemployment, though family members who were employed by the business, would qualify for unemployment compensation.

Huge Fines, Restraining Orders, Jail Time

A few businesses have tried to survive and remained open to operate their business in order to survive as their business was the only method of supporting their family. Any of these businesses were fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and forcibly shut down and some of them went to jail.

One such restaurant near me, Spiffy’s, did dare to make a stand and was fined and restrained in court, and there are others everywhere all around the country. Businesses being court-ordered to shut down or else.

If my business was the only way I could feed my children, and I was ordered to shut it down, if I’d put all my life savings into this business and I had nothing else to fall back on, I might do the same. I can’t imagine what someone in that situation might do.

New Business Startups

On the other hand, while businesses are crashing and burning all around us in the wake of the pandemic, more new business startups have been launched than ever before in U.S. History.

People who have lost their jobs, are pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and are starting their own businesses (ones that would be authorized to function during the pandemic lockdown) to better take care of their families.

I know a lot of these millions of new businesses that were launched during the pandemic, some of them were likely former independent businesses that were forced to close their doors forever. I know that is what I would do.

 

Categories
News

How Are Small Businesses Surviving the Pandemic?

Times are tough and business consultants are frantically teamed-up with their clients to make the adjustments necessary to save failing businesses that are disintegrating due to the current pandemic restrictions. For those small businesses surviving the pandemic, their success is attributed to being flexible, adaptive, and acting quickly for sustainability.

But coming up with a plan to transition to this new economy is not a one-size-fits-all strategy as every business, every market, and the surrounding socio-political environment is unique, and therefore, the solutions are just as unique to each business.

Digital Marketing

Short of hiring a Certified Digital Marketing Specialist, there are many digital marketing opportunities that can be effective in maintaining connection and public relations active but this is an activity that, if not managed well, can run away with the potential profits which are sorely needed in these unprecedented times.

Certainly, there are many free digital marketing tools available to the pandemic-bound business and organization, but they take time for your digital staff to deploy. When your business is hanging in the balance, one wrong move in your digital marketing effort could do more harm than good.

Businesses need to embrace the digital connection methods but must closely monitor what is working and what is not and be able to make the necessary adjustments as quickly as possible.

It is About Them

When reaching out to your client base remember, they are more considered about “what’s in it for me.” They are turned into WIIFM, and if you are not speaking to them about them, they will be listening and responding to someone else who is talking to them.

You must be able to identify your target market and get to know them better than ever so that you can reach out via your digital marketing efforts to connect to them. If you know exactly who your market is, what they like, what they do, how do they make decisions, where they hang out, what they do for fun, you will have more ways to target your marketing to them and build relationships with them.

Stop making your message about you and make it about them. Use the word “you” as often as possible in all your digital marketing efforts. This makes them feel like you are talking to them, and make your message all about them, and yes, what you can do for them and how they will benefit from your product or service.

Selling Online

Transactions made over the Internet are different from transactions made face to face, in brick-and-mortar retail establishments, or within office spaces. You must be able to plug into the digital economy, enable clients to interact with you and/or your staff, to order and pay online quickly and easily.

Connect to your clients using technologies such as Skype or Zoom, and make sure your appearance and presentation represent how you want to be seen by your audience. Wear appropriate attire, have good lighting, audio, and a nice backdrop for your videoconferencing.

Selling online will also mean re-evaluating your delivery systems to deploy your products and services to reach your customers at home.

Increased Value

In the digital marketplace, you need to provide your clientele with as much value as possible. So, creating and supplying workbooks for virtual presentations, providing tools and guides that they can use and will make their lives better, these are things they are looking for. Plus, anything you can give them to download, view, or print, means more potential for connection, and building that invaluable relationship after the online exposure has taken place.

Lead with your most valuable information first. The rule of thumb is to

Tell them what

But don’t tell them how

Leave “the how” specifics for a more detailed and intimate conversation at a later date (and higher price point).

Do not worry about not making the sale immediately. Business is conducted differently online. Take your time building the relationship in the selling process and let them come to you in the instant they are ready to press your Buy Now button.

Conduct Webinars

Online webinars appear to be the most effective way to bridge the gap between your pre-pandemic and pandemic clientele. Live presentations in public are considered too dangerous during the pandemic, so conducting virtual events is the answer. And you will be pleasantly pleased to discover that virtual seminars are far less expensive than their live counterparts but must be conducted completely differently.

These online events will increase your exposure and increases your credibility and connection with new and existing clients. Remember to provide value and educate your audience via your webinars.

Communicate Communicate Communicate

You must regularly communicate with your target audience to maintain connection and relationship. Enroll them in drip campaigns, let them opt into your mailing list, and provide them with regular updates. Let them know what you are doing, and how you are doing.

Increase your connection, not only with your target market but also with others in your field who are also trying to survive the pandemic. Together we can weather the storm and make it to the other side.

We are all in this together.

Exercise empathy, compassion, and humility in your communications, but be careful not to overdo it. This applies to all communication with clients, potential clients, employees, business associates, and peers. You do not want your audience to unsubscribe, delete your messages, or even worse, mark your messages as spam.