Archive | June, 2015

Starting a Business – Do What You Love and Love What You Do

By Lowell on June 8, 2015 in Blog

It is absolutely true that we do best at what we like to do. In your career you are very fortunate if you have a job that you completely love. This might only really be possible if you decided early in your life what you want to ‘be’ and took the action to get the education or training to do what you wanted to do. Starting a business is another chance.

Many people see a job as only a means to an end – it pays the bills. They tolerate it out of necessity only. Within reason they are willing to put in the time and follow the directions to keep that position. Some will try to exceed expectations so that they might be promoted to a better-paying job someday.

If that doesn’t happen in a reasonable period of time, and they have confidence and self-esteem, they will make a promotion happen even if they have to look outside of their present company to find a better job. Or if you are very creative and brave, you may develop your own business.

Long gone are the days when people got a job and stayed there for their entire career, slowly and sometimes painfully ‘working themselves up the corporate ladder’. In fact in some cases when it comes to ‘downsizing’ or ‘workforce reduction’ in our economic climate for the past few decades, it is often those that are the higher paid or more experienced employees that are cut.

Unfortunately loving your job and doing your very best doesn’t count for anything when a company has decided to make changes. They do not see people – they see positions. It is hard for us to understand how they can be so cold, but ‘that’s business’. It’s about the bottom line, making the most profit and not about doing what is right for the employees necessarily.

So if you are in a position to start a business of your own, you might as well do something that you love to do if possible; or another way to look at it is to do what you have to do and love it. Sometimes there has to be trade-offs – so you may be required to perform some tasks you are not crazy about. To stay on top of this, you may have to enumerate the things you do love about working at home, and there is a lot to love.

If you are starting out and have to work a day job and create ‘spare’ time to nurture a budding business, it will not be as easy to realize what is so preferable about working from your home unless you really like what you are doing; or at the very least might be doing something in an industry that you find attractive or necessary.

Think about how great doing your work at the time(s) when you feel like it is, and having the freedom to do something else whenever the opportunity arises (and do the work later of course); think about all the money you are saving on transportation to and from a job – add it up – the gas, parking, bridge tolls, etc; then realize how much you will not miss the stress of commuting in traffic and all that this can involve, for example (the freeway that is more like a parking lot during rush hour(s).

Just these alone are major things to love about having your own business at home! In addition, you can enjoy the peaceful, quiet atmosphere and just the feeling of control you will have by taking charge of your own life; …and it would even add more impetus to ‘work it’ if it is something that you are interested in – for example if you can create a business from a hobby or interest that you have. This would go a long way to encourage you to expend your energy in that direction.

There is a saying that is ‘some people work to live and others live to work’ – You have to really enjoy working to set yourself up with a day job and a part-time home business – of course the idea there is to someday quit the day job and to support yourself entirely from your own business at home!

New Home Business – Find Out What People Want and Give It to Them!

By Lowell on June 7, 2015 in Blog

In planning your new home business, are you trying to figure out what type of products or programs you would want to sell, or service you would provide? There are many things to consider in this regard of course but one theory is that you should find a market and then get what they are looking for and provide it to them.

This really makes so much more sense than what most inexperienced people might figure. They likely would pick something they themselves like or buy for various reasons – and that can make sense on several levels as well. However the crux of the matter is that we might not be atypical and something we like so much may not have much appeal to anyone else. So it may become an atmosphere where you try to convince people that they want or need what you have. This is an uphill battle when you compare it to just simply providing what people already want or know they need.

If you decide you want to sell tangible products, for example, it might seem like a no-brainer that everybody wants mobile devices today – smart phones, etc.. If you decide that is the market you want to work in, then you will have other things to consider to find out if this would be the correct decision for your business.

Thankfully with online business it is usually never necessary to have ‘inventory’ or purchase things for yourself in order to sell them. ‘Drop-shipping’ works very well for the Internet as it has for decades before with direct marketing (mail/phone ordering).

One would just need to align or affiliate themselves with the various manufacturer/distributors for which they would want to be an independent distributor, contractor, or consultant. Maybe they would have a way to cover all levels in that market – for example to include costs that are low-budget, mid-range, and super opulent.

The Internet search engines would provide the perfect medium to research the companies and find out all the particulars that are important to your decision-making process and of course for your business in the long-run. Every website that you might link to from the search results would likely have ‘contact’ or ‘support’ information so that you could ask questions directly or request further details from each company.

It might work real well to create a spreadsheet or some kind of table (grids) document so that you could visually compare all the various things about the companies and products – the product features and cost, and the company’s compensation plan/commission structure, etc.

Remember to consider the ‘multiple streams of income’ concept for your business – maybe consider having some tangible products, possibly some programs where you can make money for referrals, and also provide some service or be a conduit to a service for your clients (in the context of consulting).

Remember to find out what it is that is ‘all the rage’ in each category and than find something that you can provide to people who are already looking for what you have! They will be glad they found you!

Networking as an Online Business Strategy

By Lowell on June 6, 2015 in Blog

There are lots of different connotations of the concept of networking. They all seem to be slightly, if not directly related, while being just a bit different. Before ‘Y2K’ and ‘Web2.0′ networking was touted as an effective way to do business in the sense of finding the best jobs or clients, etc.

In particular it was thought that for the better jobs, people in the hiring chair would be more apt to respond to applicants that had been recommended to them by their peers, or who they had some association with or at least knowledge of. In other words not just a nameless face off the street or anonymous resume sent to the human resources department.

There was a real science to networking offline, for example if you were networking at a company or industry function, you might meet a number of people and give them your business card at the end of the conversation. However it was considered very gauche if you said anything at all direct on the first meeting or conversation. This means no asking ‘do you know of any jobs?’ or even ‘let’s do lunch’. It helped to always keep in mind the best definition of networking, ‘to know and be known without having any agenda’.

Following this initial introduction you might follow-up at a later time in the near future. At this juncture you might mention your goals or the fact that you are interested in learning more about the industry, or company, and invite the person to lunch or some upcoming mutually interesting business function. Like many other things networking is best taken slowly and politely – nothing blunt or rude about it. In other words nobody likes to feel they are being exploited.

For the Internet marketing industry, this same interaction, primarily online, would be referred to as ‘building a relationship’ and the theory is that people are more apt to do business with someone they know, even as an acquaintance, than just some nameless yay-hoo that waves a flyer (ad) in their face. It is actually quite natural and more comfortable to do business with someone you trust and have some level of communication with than a total stranger.

Some other connotations of ‘network’ and a close cousin of Internet marketing, is network marketing. While both niches or industries may also involve ‘multi-level marketing’, one of the differences is the communication medium. Whereas Internet marketing primarily involves ethical, permission-based eMail marketing, online forums, and web conferencing, for example, network marketing seemingly involves more phone and in-person events – more personal contact.

Then of course with Web2.0 evolved social networking and with it more mobile devices and texting (real-time) or direct digital communications. Now the field is wide-open in that you can network with personal and business friends at the same time and theoretically expose your family and friends to your business ideas and opportunities.

Social networking seems to have replaced the days of online bulletin board systems (bbs) which were just massive boards with millions of ads. If we can navigate through that and meet up with folks to have a discussion that may be conducive to business, it could be beneficial to use social networking as a means to an end.

Last but not least is networking in the technical sense, for example local area and long distance networks; and of course the biggest network of all, and conglomeration of hundreds of smaller networks, the Internet (inter-network). The information super-highway. The ‘mall’ where your online business is located somewhere in cyberspace!

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Archive | June, 2015