Tag: small business

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Building Your Business on Nearly Nothing

You have done some research test marketing and have a good idea that your good idea is worth taking to the next level, but you still have little or no financial wherewithal to do so, no problem. No need to walk away from your project. Instead, start building your business on nearly nothing by expanding the possibilities. Let us take a look at the many ways you can build your business with a limited budget.

Self-financing

While you have been starting your business with little or nothing, you have been selling your product and service and saving your profits to reinvest into your business expansion. This is one of the ways you can capitalize your business venture. Make sure that you are smart about how you invest your profits because it makes a difference.

Make a Plan

Chart out a six-month course. Be honest with yourself. Know what you want your goals to be, how much revenue you will need to make it through the six months, how much income you will have, and how much you have saved up from past profits. Allow a certain percentage for miscalculations and prepare for contingencies that were unaccounted for (because you never really know what to expect until you are in the midst of the game).

Top 10 Ways to Build Your Business with Little or No Money

1. Watch Your Expenses

You can maximize your limited budget by playing it smart. Outsource to your heart’s content. Instead of hiring someone to perform a task for your business, find someone who offers that service to business on an a la carte basis. Just pay for what you need piecemeal, no need to hire someone full-time.

Apply this principle to everything you can.

In the beginning, lease, do not buy. This goes for everything from real estate to business furnishings. In this way, you can have more available cash in these critical first stages, when your survivability is of primary importance.

In-house Funding Sources

2. Offer Memberships

You can offer memberships, where your customers pay a fee for members-only discounts or premium services.

3. Offer Packages

Package purchased can raise revenue that you can use today against goods or services at a later date, like by 12 for the price of 10 by paying in advance and get 2 free.

4. Host a Sale

Have a sale. You can run a limited-time discount on goods or services and promote the heck out of it to your existing customers and invite people who may not have even heard of you, yet, to take advantage of the special offers.

5. Expand Your Services

Expanding your services is another excellent way to raise revenue. Give your existing customers more reasons to support you financially by giving them more ways to do so.

Outside Funding Sources

Even with the best plans, the day may come when you will need more cash than you are able to raise through making sales and watching your expenses. Don’t be shy about seeking out investors. Besides, you are not just monkeying around, your operation may be the next big thing! What an opportunity.

So, go ahead, approach your

6. Friends and Family

They can be investors and get a piece of the action, or you can just borrow money and agree to pay them back with interest, whichever way seems best to your supporters. Make sure you have it in writing, so there is no confusion later.

7. Finance Your Business Expansion with Crowdfunding

50 Billion dollars of funding is solid proof that crowdfunding works for raising the cash that has helped to launch or rescue business owners and entrepreneurs of all kinds. So, check out popular crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, and Patreon, and find one that you think will work out best for you and your project. Don’t just put up a campaign willy-nilly. Research each platform and look for projects, like yours, that are received well by their audience, because each has its own following. This will maximize your fundraising efforts, and the best part is, crowdfunding money need never be repaid. It is a gift.

8. Get a Business Loan

You have built your business, and banks do offer loans to businesses. Generally, if you are thinking about taking out a small business loan, you should think about going to the ban that hosts your business account first. Online business loan brokerages are often more lenient but beware of the high-interest rates.

Also, see if you can get a business line of credit (LOC). This works like a credit card for your business expenses, and you only pay for the credit that you use.

9. Business Grants

Granted, business grants are harder to uncover and qualify for, but many clever entrepreneurs are keen at sniffing them out and landing them, which is an excellent skill set if you are so inclined. If not, you might seek the services of an experienced grant writer to do the heavy lifting for you. The best thing about grants is that they are gifts without any need to repay.

10. Angel Investors

Angel investors are wealthy individuals who invest venture capital in your business. The amounts offered are varied and do normally come with attachments. They may want repayment at high interest or a piece of the action. They want to be involved in the day-to-day operations or important management decisions. So, you are well-advised to check them out, look before you leap, and know what you are getting into before signing on the dotted line.

You can find angel investors online at AngelList, SeedInvest, and/or FundersClub.

 

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Top Business Growth and Expansion Concerns

Okay, you are starting your business, working from home, and you are ready to take your business to the next level. If so, you are going to need to have your ducks in a row to ensure your probability of successful growth and achieving your full potential in the marketplace.

Of course, all businesses are different, though there are certain characteristics that remain constant among businesses that have successfully made the leap from an independent solo operation to an exciting full-featured business organization, a player in the community, and a positive contributor to the world at large.

Top Business Growth and Expansion Concerns

1. Control

The first thing you want to think about preparing for is gaining full control of your business. When you are small, it makes perfect sense to outsource as much as you can to reduce operating expenses, but it puts an incredible amount of control of your organization in the hands of others, which can compromise your business as you grow, so move these services in-house. You want direct control of all these services, which means that you will have to learn enough about these services that you can rigorously evaluate performance directly as you move them in-house.

2. Money Management

Bookkeeping and accounting may be effectively outsourced but if you are expanding your business, one of the first things to bring in-house is all of your money management. You need control of your finances, and that’s what it’s all about, right? Right. You need to keep a close eye on your cash-flow to make adjustments quickly on-the-fly to maximize your capital performance. Your money manager needs to be kept close-by and aware enough to keep you in the loop at the first hint of change in cash flow, and you need to decide what to do based on your gathering all the necessary information. Keep your attention focused on the marketplace and be on the lookout for ways you can channel your revenue into research and development, upgrades, and expansion opportunities.

3. Public Relations

Public relations (PR) encompasses your image to in the marketplace and your message to the world. Easily outsourced in the beginning, your message and image are too sensitive to trust to an outside source. You must reign in all your social media, online and offline advertising, and other publicity. You also want your business to be seen and heard in the community where your target audience hangs out. Maintaining the image that you want your business to consistently adhere to maintain the connection to your audience is vitally important and you want someone in your organization whom you can trust to be in charge of your image.

4. Mistakes and Failures

Mistakes and failures happen all the time in business, and you need to be keenly aware and connected in order to identify any flaw that may appear as it is noticed as early as possible. Often early detection can help to intercept a potential landslide, so keep your ear to the ground. Have an in-house MFT (Mistakes and Failures Team) who you trust and can brainstorm with to quickly intercede when any mistakes or failures show up on your entrepreneurial radar.

Growth does not take place without change and nothing is more conducive to initiating growth and change than mistakes and failures. Know they will come, embrace them, and act quickly to counteract them when they do.

 

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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.

 

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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.

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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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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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Make Your Own Work from Home Job Online

Feeling like you are missing the boat? You see your friends are telecommuting and working from home but you have not been afforded the same opportunity. How would you like to create your own work from home opportunity?

You could wait to be invited to remote working for your employer or even pitch your willingness to work for your current employer by telecommuting, or you could become the master of your own fate and start working from home under your own terms and start your own work at home business.

There are tons of opportunities for you to take a stab on, and in most self-employed remote workers, you will find yourself freelancing, offering services to a few clients (or many clients) to create your full-time income stream.

So, keep that in mind as you prepare to more your self-powered job online, and also note that the remote work services that you offer to provide can be anything you like to do. You need not pigeonhole yourself into any one particular offering.

Of course, before you make the leap, you will need all the tools necessary to conduct your services from your at-home office.

When you start putting yourself out there, you will tend to offer more for less. This is based on insecurity when you are starting out, which may lead to your being overwhelmed, with more work than you bargained for.

If you can avoid burnout, you can take the time to hone your offerings so that you can still offer a value but get more than what you are actually worth. And believe me, you are worth far more than you think you are.

Think about this, whatever any employer is willing to pay you or someone in your field, your value is actually five-times what you or anyone else is getting paid. Now that you are your own CEO, you are entitled to a bigger piece of the action.

Start out with what you think is reasonable, then prepare to continue to raise your rates.

As early as possible, try to wrap your head around the idea that you are it. When you are working for someone else, you are at their mercy, but you have someone to complain to, someone to fix things when they break, someone to back you up when needed. When you are on your own, it is all you. There is no one else to fall back on. This is the price to pay for independence.

You will be in charge of rewarding yourself. No one is there to recognize you for your efforts but you. You are the only one to impress with your prowess, so it is up to you also to reward yourself for a job well done.

You are responsible for your own bookkeeping until you grow to a point where you can hire out that part of your work from home enterprise. If you are not keeping the books, sending out invoices, tracking expenses, then you are not getting paid. It may not be your most desired duties (and it often is not among freelancers working from home) but you must do it unless you consider your services to be a hobby on-the-side.

As a self-employed teleworker, you are responsible for figuring out how to provide your own insurance, benefits package, as well as reporting and paying taxes, because you are now not just one of the many people who work at home, you are your own boss of your own home business.

The good news: No one gets to tell you what to do, what not to do, how to act, dress, or boss you around. You get to join the others who are working from home and enjoying all the benefits of remote work.