|
|
|
8 Rules for Making Your Website Attractive, Interesting, Engaging & Interactive
Designing your website around your customers and their needs is the utmost of importance. A website's form and content is what will determine if a visitor will stay just a visitor or turn into your next customer or rather how 'sticky' it is.
To...
Catching in a Pitch Meeting: The Key to Listening
The tendency to start a business development meeting talking
about yourself and your firm is a natural one - but one that
should be done selectively, in very small amounts- after you
have taken the time to determine the needs of the client....
Creativity and Innovation Management- Thought Leadership
Leadership is only sustainable when leaders consistently come up with good ideas – when they are dependable thought leaders. It follows then that leaders would be more effective if they knew how to manage creativity and innovation. Some of the...
The Dirty Little Secret About Real Estate 800 Call Capture Systems
Real estate 800 call capture systems are a great tool for real
estate agents. The dirty little secret...it probably won't work
for you. The majority of real estate agents that get an 800 call
capture system don't use it correctly and then when...
Tips to maximize the sale of your business
Question: How can I maximize the amount of cash I receive when I
sell my business? Answer: Acquire every last after tax dollar
and get paid in cash. Also, follow three critical steps before
proceeding:
1. Preplan the sale of your business....
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Launching a New Business
Owning a home used to be the “American Dream.” However, this long-standing goal that so many aspired to, and ultimately reached, has been replaced with a new goal -- becoming a business owner.
At first glance it sounds perfect: Leave the corporate world behind and become an entrepreneur. No more commuting, office politics, difficult co-workers and demanding supervisors. You’ll be your own boss and reap all the financial rewards. It will be a brand-new lifestyle with incredible opportunities and much less stress.
Others have achieved the new “American Dream.” Look at the young kids who started Apple on a shoestring in the late 1970s. Don’t forget the two engineers who launched a little company called Hewlett Packard out of a small backyard garage. Mrs. Fields took a cookie recipe -- of all things -- and built it into a national model that is taught in many business schools.
Why not you? Yes, you could have the next great business idea, but that alone might not be enough. Ask yourself, do you have the right stuff to launch and run a successful business? Here are five questions to consider before making the big leap from a steady paycheck to business owner.
1. Are you a self-starter?
With no one looking over your shoulder, it’s easy to procrastinate. You must have the discipline that is needed to plan, set goals and stay focused.
Since many small businesses initially start out as home-based to keep overhead low, working from home brings additional distractions. Can you resist the temptation to eat cookies and watch reruns of “Law and Order” when you should be making marketing calls?
2. What are your expectations?
If your goal is to work fewer hours and feel less stress, then think again.
The U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that business ownership requires a tremendous commitment, with 12-hour workdays, often seven days a week. Needless to say, this can be a strain on family life. If you think it might be too much, then consider a job change or a new career with an established company rather than launching your own business.
3. What are your financial goals?
In the short-term your income will probably be lower, and it could stay this way for a long time. Additionally, no one pays for vacations, health care plan, profit sharing or stock options. You must set up your own retirement plan as well.
The U.S. Small Business Administration offers some sobering statistics. It reports that half of the small businesses started will fail within the first year. Furthermore, by the fifth year 95 percent will have ceased operations. While the reasons for failure vary, one of the most
common is a lack of adequate financing. To beat the odds, meet with an independent accountant to honestly discuss your finances and expectations. The good news is that if your business takes off you will reap the financial benefits.
4. Are you a “water-cooler person” at heart?
When you become a business owner, your days of taking a long lunch or chatting with the guys around the water cooler are over. Can you make the transition from “worker bee” to boss? It can be lonely.
On your own, you’ll be making countless decisions every day -- from the mundane to the critical. And, you alone must shoulder the daily ups and downs that come with running a business. However, it can also have tremendous rewards in that you are building something from scratch. So, if you believe you can weather the isolation and roll with the punches, you might be a good candidate for owning your own business.
5. Can you create an organized environment?
Where you work is certainly important. You’ll need an acceptable work space and the right office tools in order to be creative and successful. Even more important, however, is how you work.
For example, you can have an incredible sales presentation with the latest technology that will wow clients, but if you’re constantly late for meetings and lose important documents, you’ll probably also lose business. Ask yourself if you can flourish in an environment where creativity and operational systems are equally important? Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking the company will simply “run itself” if they just come up with great ideas and business leads. They pay scant attention to the details of building a business. Too often this is a recipe for failure.
To be a success, you must combine your fantastic ideas and business tools with solid planning and organization.
Success for any new business is never guaranteed. There are too many variables, and many factors will be totally out of your control. But you can avoid making a costly mistake by asking yourself, honestly -- before you take the plunge: Do I have what it takes to run a business? The answer should tell you if the new “American Dream” is the right fit for you.
About the Author
Nancy Wurtzel is the founder and owner of All About Baby, an ecommerce site located at http://www.allbaby.com. All About Baby specializes in personalized and memorable gifts for children as well as interesting and helpful child-related site content. Ms. Wurtzel has over 20 years of marketing and communications experience. She consults with small businesses seeking to enter the marketplace or grow their existing ecommerce business
|
|
|
|
|
| Oral Presentation Advice |
| Your presentation should not replace your paper, but rather whet the ... Below I consider goals for academic interview talks and class presentations. ... |
| www.cs.wisc.edu |
|
| Presentation Skills |
| This site contains annotated links to resources concerned with presentation and communication skills. |
| lorien.ncl.ac.uk |
|
| Presentation Helper - Free PowerPoint templates, help, advice and ... |
| Resources on how to make effective presentations. Includes tips on PowerPoint and topic ideas. |
| www.presentationhelper.co.uk |
|
| Neurobehavioral Systems, Inc. |
| Neuroscience stimulus delivery software can be used for cognitive psychology, fMRI, erp and single unit research (Windows). |
| nbs.neuro-bs.com |
|
| Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered |
| Why tables for layout is stupid:. problems defined, solutions offered. Tables existed in HTML for one reason: To display tabular data. ... |
| www.hotdesign.com |
|
| The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation |
| This presentation prepared with the help of Microsoft Powerpoint Autocontent Wizard. ... Permission is granted to use this presentation in any course or ... |
| norvig.com |
|
| Presentation Zen |
| I love the clear presentation of the ideas in the book and the fact that the ... In the context of presentations, moving info away can help you and the ... |
| www.presentationzen.com |
|
| Presentation Tips for Public Speaking |
| Better Public Speaking & Presentation - Ensure Your Words Are Always ... On the Job: Public Speaking Tips - Twelve Steps to Great Presentations by Elise ... |
| www.aresearchguide.com |
|
| Presentation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Presentation is the process of presenting the content of a topic to an ... You should plan to rehearse your presentation out loud at least four times. ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0 |
| “A barn-burner of a presentation. I loved this.” - Cory Doctorow. “I watched it twice, and greatly enjoyed it both times.” - Jon Udell ... |
| www.identity20.com |
|
| Presentations - Effective Communication - Public Speaking |
| Tips and tools for creating and delivering presentations: text, techniques and technology. |
| www.presentations.com |
|
| Presentation Information Resources - Presentation Technology News ... |
| Presentation Information Resources - Comprehensive presenter's resource providing instant access to up-to-date information on technology and techniques for ... |
| 199.249.170.231 |
|
| Effective Presentations homepage |
| In addition, the skills needed to prepare an oral presentation can be used ... A spiffy presentation discussing Effective Teaching with Powerpoint from the ... |
| www.kumc.edu |
|
| Impress |
| Your presentations will stand out with 2D and 3D clip art, special effects, animation, ... Slide show Animation and Effects bring your presentation to life. ... |
| www.openoffice.org |
|
| PRESENTATIONPRO - experts for Microsoft PowerPoint |
| A series of products and services to help enhance PowerPoint presentations with templates and backgrounds. |
| www.presentationpro.com |
|
| Leadership - Presentation Skills |
| Presentation, PowerPoint, and Leadership. ... Presentations and reports are ways of communicating ideas and information to a group. But unlike a report, ... |
| www.skagit.com |
|
| Presentation: See what people are saying right now on Technorati |
| See all blog posts tagged with presentation on Technorati. |
| www.technorati.com |
|
| Secretary of State Addresses the U.N. Security Council |
| My friends, this has been a long and a detailed presentation. And I thank you for your patience. But there is one more subject that I would like to touch on ... |
| www.whitehouse.gov |
|
| Rubric |
| Organization, Audience cannot understand presentation because there is no sequence of information. Audience has difficulty following presentation because ... |
| www.ncsu.edu |
|
| Presentation Skills |
| Presentations are one of the first managerial skills which a junior engineer ... This article looks at the basics of Presentation Skills as they might apply ... |
| www.see.ed.ac.uk |
|
|