Archive for the ‘starting your own business’ Category
Some Tips On Goal Setting
There are times when goal-setting can appear like trying to find your way to a destination you have never been to without a map. Accomplishing your goals for your online business is a matter of getting from ‘here’ to ‘there’. In order to achieve any goal, you have to first know exactly what you’re trying to achieve.
Most large and long-term goals are made up of smaller, short-term goals or objectives. After you have written down your long-term goals and broken them into smaller components, it’s time to identify the action steps that will move you toward accomplishing them.
Identify Clear Action Steps for Each Goal
Start with one long-term goal and its corresponding short-term goals. Try to think of which key activities would create the results you want and begin listing these steps below each goal. Action steps generally fall into two categories. The first involves planning and preparation, such as discovering the “how to” do something by researching and educating yourself. The second category involves taking action to implement a step.
As you begin to execute your action plans, don’t let yourself become consumed by your planning and preparation steps. To be able to achieve anything in life you need to take action. Reading a book, studying a course, and searching the Internet for information – these quests for education and knowledge by themselves will do nothing to help you achieve anything. In order to get results you must put that knowledge into action.
Obviously, as you move forward and begin to gain more knowledge you may discover that you have to add additional steps to your plan in order to accomplish a goal. What is important to focus and push forward on are productive action steps; the actions taken that will yield the greatest results.
You will want to identify action steps to be taken daily, weekly, and monthly.
Your Daily actions will be those actions you will do every day. Some examples would be posting to your blog; commenting on other people’s blogs and in forums; doing keyword/niche/market research; working on the article you publish each week, etc.
Weekly actions are usually a bit larger in scope and take a little longer to complete. You may also have to take daily action to complete each of your weekly steps.
Monthly actions are those steps you will do to keep yourself on track. You might take a day and review all of your actions from the previous month in detail. How well did what you do lead toward accomplishing your goal? Did you find yourself doing things that should be added to your steps, or, eliminated as wasteful time?
Did you accomplish your daily, weekly and monthly goals for this month? Are there any steps or goals the need to be changed or updated?
After you have done this, review the steps for each goal and place them into the order in which they need to be accomplished. Some steps will need to be done before others. Add steps if you realize you need to, eliminate or combine steps if you can. Ask yourself if your steps appear to flow naturally.
When you feel comfortable with you plans as they are laid out, set a general timeline for completing each of your steps. At this point you need to be very, very careful and realistic about what you can achieve and what you want to achieve versus what you have time and resources to achieve.
Not accomplishing the results we wanted by a certain date, even if due to circumstances beyond our control, might cause us to lose hope. Do the timelines you set for each step, when added together, allow you to accomplish your goal by the date you originally thought? If not, revise those dates until they make sense.
Remember, working toward the achievement of your online business goals is a process. To accomplish most goals is going to require consistent and persistent effort. Achievement will also involve specific action steps taken day after day, week after week, and month after month!
A Review – Newbie’s Guide To Online Fortunes
This e-book also carries the subtitle: ‘The Simple & Easy Guide To Starting Your Very Own Online Business ASAP!’
Within these pages, I will provide you with what I found to be valuable step-by-step information, lead you to resources I think provide real value to you, and, every now and then let you know what I think about some of the information I have discovered that I believe you can just as easily live without.
These comments represent my personal opinion only.
This ‘Guide’ is a resource that you can live without. The hard drive storage space I used for this download has since been freed up. I did print it and took the time to read it, so now I have to find another way to use the back side of the 180 pages it took. Oh well, not the first, nor the last time this will happen. So, try to avoid making the same mistake as I did.
It appears this ‘guide’ was written in 2004. At best, the information in it is outdated. The author is unknown, which was definitely a smart move on their part.
Like a vast majority of other ‘how to’ guides, there is no ‘how to’. As an example, you are told that once you have decided on a domain name to check that no one else is using it – but given no instructions on how to do that.
The document contains countless spelling and grammatical errors which will drive you nuts after a while. There are several instances where the text will read “like the following:”, or, “some of them are:” with nothing to follow, no list, no examples, nada.
There is one topic the document addresses that might be of benefit to some people who are positively stuck for an idea for starting their online business. If you, and no one else in the world, have any suggestions, then you might consider looking at this section.
You have better ways to spend your time than with this guide. Don’t waste time downloading, printing, or reading it. And for goodness sake – do not suggest to anyone else that they do.
Just my opinion.
Business Ideas for the Entrepreneur
Many people today have a sincere desire to start and run their own business. For a variety of reasons they would prefer to be their own boss rather than continue to work eight, or more, hours each day in someone else’s office or factory. There are any numbers of business opportunities available from an online marketing business; to providing a service of some type; to owning your own franchise.
If you are thinking about starting your own business, there are some obvious important factors that you want to take into consideration.
One of those factors is the type of business that you would like to eventually own. As an example, would you like to have a pet grooming business, your own payroll or bookkeeping service, or develop a retail store selling a certain product? If you are serious about starting your own business, it’s a good idea to choose to involve yourself in something that you know and love. For instance, if you have a love for small boats, you may want to start your own marine, a boat detailing service, or a repair or supplies location, etc.
In addition to type, consider the scope of how that business would be operated. Most small businesses are considered locally owned and operated, while others operate online reaching a much larger market. A number of business owners decide to have both a physical location as well as an online presence.
The way you plan to run your business is an important consideration which may determine whether or not you should open one to begin with. For instance, if your business will have an online component, but you don’t know how to make that happen, you may need to take additional training classes or hire outside sources to make that happen. Maybe you’ve decided to open a retail business but there are no suitable, or affordable, locations available. Now what?
How large of an enterprise do you want to be running? For instance, if you want to open up a retail store selling hobby supplies, how many employees you will need to hire to staff your store? Will you need to hire any at all, or will you run it yourself? If you plan on operating the business by yourself, what happens if you get sick, or want to take a vacation? At some time in the future you may want or need to hire help. At that time you may be faced with additional payroll costs, including taxes. You may be required to pay for additional, such as workman’s compensation.
Another thing you should do before starting your own business is examine your current financial situation. All business ventures require some startup cash, some will require more than others. If you don’t currently have the financial resources needed to start a business, you will have to look elsewhere for financing. Do you have family members, friends or other financial resources you could turn to? Some financial institutions such as banks and credit unions may be willing to lend you the financial backing you need. Although, in today’s credit environment, these sources may be extremely reluctant to finance any business venture, especially a brand-new effort.
These factors are some of the many issues that you definitely want to think about as part of determining whether or not to start your own business. Once you have examined and determined the answers to these questions you can begin to do some serious research.
Today, opportunities can be researched and explored easily using resources found on the internet. Conducting online searches, a person can uncover a multitude of business ideas that may, or may not interest them. A fledging entrepreneur will benefit a great deal from the information they will find online.
Because of the sheer number and variety of business ideas and opportunities you’ll discover, you may become overwhelmed with ideas and find it hard to choose the one you like most. To help with this decision, and to narrow down your choices, don’t leave out using and trusting your instincts. For instance, if one business idea seems to appeal to you and just “feels right”, add it to your “possibly” list, but, if you have second thoughts about it, disregard the idea.
Once you have narrowed down your choices to a reasonable number, investigate each opportunity further by gathering as much information as possible about what it really would be like to do that for a living.
One of the best methods to do this is to actually talk with individuals who are already doing what you are considering. Meet with them in person for coffee, call them, e-mail them… find some way to have a heart-to-heart with them to get the insider’s knowledge of what it really takes to own and run that business. Spend as much time as possible discussing the challenges and negatives. You would rather find out about these things upfront rather than after you’re heavily involved in your own business.
Every year, many individuals arrive at the decision to start their own businesses. Many end up with businesses that prove to be profitable for years into the future. The decision to startup a business is yours, but it’s a decision that should never be made on a whim, a fancy or the spur of the moment.
You should definitely discuss your business venture with family members that will be affected. You might even decide to discuss it with a small business planner (the local chamber of commerce may have this resource) and possibly even with your financial planner, lawyer and accountant. Owning a business may be a lifelong dream, but if you don’t take the time to thoroughly think it through and plan it out, your dream can quickly turn into a nightmare.