Each and every one of you were born with a set of skills that you can monetize. Even though life is chaotic and unpredictable at times, you naturally forget who you really are, what you truly live for, and what you were born to do. As a first step on the right path, remember a point in your time when you were your happiest. What were you doing? Who were your friends? Who were you helping? The very, very first milestone in living a life of entrepreneurship is looking deep inside your subconscious. It is about finding your life purpose, your passion, which is interconnected with your upbringing, when life was a smoother ride.
Is business all about making billions on top of billions of dollars? NO! It’s about exceeding accepted standards, creating a strong purpose, creating opportunity from risk, creating more freedom, and a life well lived. These are only a few of the traits and activities you need to add to your thought process not only for you, but also for the greater great of humanity at large. In this post, we will briefly cover what it takes to be the spearhead of your omega point.
Are you a natural go-getter? Are you crawling, walking, running, flying, or teleporting into or towards your dreams? Will your life be a true rags-to-riches movie shown to all? It will, of course, depend on how much knowledge you absorb, and how much courage you have to make it real. There are plenty of people out there who know what steps they have to take, but they hesitate when it’s “let’s go” time. Some of the excuses you hear will revolve around not having time, not enough money, not enough social support, etc., etc. Their own self-imposed disbelief is the driving force of their subconscious that results in no results.
Working from home is a totally different game to play by than your standard corporate-y office environment. Sure, you’re always hanging out at home and more likely to lose focus on daily tasks or personal phone calls, and that’s exactly why you need one room dedicated to intense, monk-like thinking to get work done, SON!
On the other hand, there are people out there who are on a very tight budget, the ones who work even harder to equip / fashion their home office to their own unique style and feel. In this post, I will go over the universal tips and tricks that apply to any area, big or small. All you really need is a space to put your mind into overdrive and pray for productivity.
Business isn’t just about getting as much as you can from the consumer, it’s really about over exceeding their expectations of what they consider normal. The amount you rake in is just a measure of how well you are doing it right. People love people who follow through on what they promise and delivering much more than originally thought.
It is a delicate dance between what you believe you are worth and how much money you need to keep the operation going. Have a look at what the competition across town is charging. Anything in life can be classified into three categories: hell (low quality), human (average quality), heaven (high quality). In general, we suggest you set reasonable rates for what you do and what you sell, and give unheard of value for cash money.
You have a very important role to play in life, and a God-given right to transmutate the world around you, and help humanity for eons to come by furthering knowledge, enlightenment, and mutual understanding of each other. Inspire faith, moral principles, and honesty in all aspects of your business (corporate, social, and personal). Bring people on board your entrepreneurial ship who firmly believe that their work is towards a visionary dream meant to come true.
Have a purpose, a mission, a life quest, and make it much more important than money. When you think money, you lose money. The goal of this post is to help you understand why it is much more important to put your purpose in front of mere dollars. It is about what you were born to do, what you are giving back to humanity, and how it is bettering the lives of other people.
The only way to a rich life is to help others, period. It’s a delicate dance between yourself and others. By knowing and understanding the intricate details of this equation, you greatly amplify your broadcast signal to bring forth your wishes and dreams, which will appear in many different ways that, if you think deeply enough about it, makes you question everything you know about this thing called life, reality, or perception.
We all know by now that mobile phone usage is on the rise, so we can safely assume that those numbers will keep on climbing for years to come. In this post, I am going to quickly show you how to claim your piece of the mobile pie by branding and marketing your small business on several mobile platforms. With that in mind, here are some tips and tricks that you can work in, fairly easy I might add, to your own mobile marketing plan(s).
Make your website mobile friendly
Have a look at the following links to see how your company’s website looks on iPhones, iPads, Android phones, crackberries, and tablets:
So you’ve absorbed as much as you can from detailedreams and real life business owners. You’ve finally took the steps to create a lasting website with all the bells and whistles one could ask for. On top of that you’ve took the time to write highly informative articles for your blog covering your industry. You also created a Google+ business page, a Twitter account, and a LinkedIn profile to boot.
Now you eagerly wait for the masses to congregate in and around your website, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It’s been weeks and months, but the amount of traffic is dismal at best. What the heck is going on? What are you not doing right?
As we all know by now innovation is at the forefront of every living breathing soul. It’s one of many hidden, subtle gifts of life. So how can you and your small business bring about the potentiality of all? Well, it’s so simple that it’s unbelievable for most who are without faith backed by action…
Create a brain trust
Lay a foundation where smart people are freely open to express their inner most desires, no matter how “out there” they may seem. It’s about tossing around invisible energy, thoughts, so that they may snowball into a force that breaks through everyone’s plane of thought. Hold a contest to see who can bring the most insightful, most intriguing, most inspiring individual they can find, from anywhere, to share hidden principalities that most have forgotten.
After learning from others who’ve started their own business, we thought it would be a good idea to share those tales of strife and struggle so you can learn from their experiences – the important life tips that you’d tell your younger self when embarking on that first journey into the world of business.
Have the courage to fail
Your biggest mental / soul block to achieving your dreams is not having enough courage to fail. Your path is unknown and at times scary. Yes, it’s very easy to lose control and feel dread, but you must not let fear hold back your power to create, to turn unreal real. The more you fail, the less time it takes to get to the top.
As you know by now, selling is the foundation of any business out there. A business won’t last that long without sales, and if your operation leans quite heavily on a sales force that needs to go above and beyond the call of duty, it’s critical that you make sure you have the right folks in the right place to get the job done.
Here are some common traits that all successful sales folk have …
They want to learn
The ability to want to learn about something new is a very important attribute to possess, because it shows that they’re more than willing to seek the answers to the questions and to understand it thoroughly. They’re patient people who take it a couple steps above the rest to know the customer, and will recommend the right solutions when all the pieces come together. Having a knack for self-education is key when it comes to breaking into the mold and establishing customer relationships.
As you’re out and about putting the commas between the zeros, you don’t spend too much time worrying about how your customers feel for your performance. If you lose a customer here and there, you can lean on the rest for stability. But in a rough and tough economy, it’s critical that you get as much feedback as possible.
By understanding your products and services through the experience of your customers and your employees, you’ll have a deeper insight into the inner workings of what will make you make it. Plus, it’s something anyone can do. How about working the social media angle by asking (incentivizing) your followers to participate in an online survey (3 choices max)? The results will blow your mind.
Learn to live like water
Being a small-business owner is a guarantee to live a life of failure after failure. At times failing or stumbling through life will be the best thing that happens to you and your business, so take the time sit back and see things in a greater vision, learn what not to do the next time around, and keep on keepin’ on. The business owners out there who learn to live like water will flow through, over, under, and around any obstacle, real or unreal.
You’re a student of the omniverse
As you close up shop when the day is done, keep in mind that your employees should be seen as your #1 customers. They’re the ones who are investing their lives into your business, and if you don’t show appreciation of that fact, it’s almost a guarantee that your best will head out the door with no remorse.
Here are some tips and tricks to make your best people feel more at home in the business…
You’re not uptight, are you? (Adam Carolla)
No one likes to work with super neurotic coworkers, especially if it’s the boss. You have to watch out to make sure that you’re not micromanaging off the charts, which is any employee’s career hell.
As you’re business starts to grow beyond local boundaries, you soon realize that you’re not just a small-business owner, you’re a world changer. Honing your skills as a leader is mandatory if you want to keep this gravy train a’ rollin!
Here are some tips and tricks to pull you through on your way to bigger and better things…
Inspire employees
Even though most people honestly believe that being the one in control is the true meaning of leadership, it’s actually a belief that can slow your growth. By slowly handing over more and more responsibility to your best over time, you’re inspiring them to better manage their roles as an average employee. For a blooming business, this is key, because not only does it creates a sense of purpose for those who want to take on more titles to keep the business going, it also gives you much-needed time to handle big picture tasks.
Feeling for your people isn’t something that just happens by random chance, it’s a choice that you consciously make. So the only real thing you have to think about is: Have I made the choice? If you’re stumbling with your thoughts, your people will feel that vibe, and they’ll spend their time and money on someone else.
Here are some tips and tricks to get you more involved in the lives of your customers/clients/prospects.
Speed up the rate of your personal connection
Small business owners have been known to live like water by flooding, washing away, and eroding anything that stands in their way. You can live the same way, even if we’re all experiencing a slow economic time. But have no fear, I is here.
Here are some tips and tricks to scale your business, no matter how heated the political firestorm.
Put the money back into your business
No matter if you’re on a shoestring of a shoestring budget, it’s key to put whatever you can right back into your operation so you keep smashing into the future, such as updating your company’s design. All day, erryday, you as CEO of your own company, ask others to take a chance on you. If you’re not a part of the daily process of things, you’re not giving people the right feel to bring you on board with their operations.
When you’re living a life of business there is a lot of chatter about the significance of customer loyalty. Even a lot of small business owners out there overlook the importance of their people, but not reminding yourself of what they contribute to the mission can be a wrong step in the direction of bankruptcy. If you haven’t thought of it by now, there is still plenty of time for you to save you and your business.
If you think about it there are tons of reasons why keeping your people loyal to your company is a mandatory need. They’re the ones who keep the operation going, and they’re the ones that deliver the quality and value of your product or service to the customer. They uphold your company and will make ambition one of your tenets or solve problems before they grab your attention.
It doesn’t take passion to get you going in the direction you want to go. Sometimes it’s about just surviving. You have to learn how to work with something that’s not your cup of tea. You don’t have to be in love with the work you’re doing right now, just know that opportunities will appear in front of you once you take the first steps in getting the process going. Where you come from isn’t the same as knowing where you’ll be in a year from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now, etc. You get the idea, right?
First off, I believe that the true definition of success, which I rave about throughout this small business blog, is living in peace and harmony.
Sure, a good amount of it has to do with income. Another part of it is being free from obstacles that hold you back from achieving your dreams, spending time with your spouse, children, family, friends, hobbies, etc. It’ll depend on your own life.
I know it’s perceived as something lavish and grandiose, the entire idea of “success”. Success isn’t about what you do for work, how much you make, your net worth. It’s not about the digits on your paycheck or how big your bank account is. But everything else that’s a part of it. From striving for something with your time in this reality to designing a lifestyle that gives you a happy life, a meaningful purpose for something beyond the self.
Nine times out of ten, running and scaling your own operation is probably the hardest part of being a small business owner. And you’ll also experience days when you think getting a “real job” is so much easier. Yeah, working on yourself and your business will test the limits of your psyche, your soul. But have no fear, I is here.
Here are some tips and tricks that’ll help you get through any troubles when it comes to small business ownership:
Your people just up and leave
For most salespeople, the rule of thumb is to qualify as soon as the opportunity presents itself. The logic behind this is pretty simple. If the price of your product is outside of a prospective client’s budget, then why waste your precious time trying to sell something they can’t afford, right?
Maybe not. In this scenario, you are making two assumptions. First, the word “budget” is synonymous with how much money the prospective client has. Second, budgets are set in stone.
By asking a client about their budget early on in the sales process, you could be talking yourself right out of a sale. In essence, you are asking the prospect to make a decision about the value of your product before giving yourself the chance to show them otherwise.
In the past few years, we have seen an unprecedented number of layoffs. When the economy first started to go downhill, I remember hearing daily reports of large corporations letting go of employees by the thousands.
While big businesses are seldom hesitant to drop the axe on jobs, small business owners will usually try to find other options before letting go of a good employee.
If you think of business size and employee value in terms of Pink Floyd lyrics, big corporations would be very large walls made up of a lot of small bricks, whereas small businesses are like small walls made up of large bricks. Pull a few small bricks out of a gigantic wall, and it wouldn’t suffer any structural problems. But if you yank a large brick out of a smaller wall, then it very well may collapse.
Sales can be a pretty cutthroat business. You never know when a good pitch could go bad, or when you might pull a rabbit out of an empty hat.
Despite the uncertainty involved, there are always things you can do to improve your potential for success. Getting better at the things you are already good is important, but it may not be as beneficial as fixing any bad habits you may have.
A potential client can overlook it if you are not perfect, but major missteps can completely turn them off to the deal completely. Take an honest look at your sales style and see if you are committing any of these possible deal breakers.
Not Doing Your Bookwork