February 10, 2012

How to start a new business, become successful, and make money

If businesses were easy any one will have a business. The true is that start a new business is a hard process where only few survive.

If you look around you many businesses are open every day but many also closed all day. According Money CNN in 5 years there is a 50% chance that a small business to survive.

The secret that you are not among those who fail is based on 3 aspects:

1. Education. You should be educated permanently in business. Attend conferences or seminars in your country, read, learn.

2. Planning. The famous business plan that we have stressed several times.

3. Careful cash flow. This is a vital issue, many businesses fail because had not adequate cash flow even though the business was very good.

Where to start?  As I said in another article, the passion is not everything, investigate, educate yourself, plan and watch your cash flow. Never forget that you are a winner and the success is inside you.

Photo via Sxc. You can read the article cited at Money CNN by clicking here on this link

Look and learn how you can start a life only with U.S.$25 dollars

Money and money, many people think that only if you have a good position with a lot of contacts you can grow as person. If you read our blog frequently you might think that many business ideas that come here are impossible to achieve.

Well the Christian Science Monitor give us an experiment that show us that your are wrong.

Adam Shepard, did an experiment. He left home and went to live in a homeless shelter in a community of people with no money, only $ 25 in his pocket.

Without using any of your contacts and friends, after 10 months, came to have an apartment, a car and a U.S. $ 5000.00 savings.  

Find inspiration in the story of Adam Shepard to move forward with your business ideas, save money for capital that will serve to develop your business tomorrow.

“Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor’s degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charles ton, S.C.

But Shepard’s descent into poverty in the summer of 2006 was no accident. Shortly after graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., he intentionally left his parents’ home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.

To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.

During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.”

Read the interview to Adam Shepard by clicking here on this link

What is the best product to sell and make money?

The title of this post is a usual question when you explore the business world, well the answer is very easy, the best product to make money is yourself. You should start selling to yourself before trying to make money with anything.

When you go to a store what products you chose? … the products that you need and among them the products that look better or maybe has more gadgets.

If you think that you are a product … will you buy to yourself?

You are always “selling” you, as a husband or wife, as a father or mother, as employee or boss. As any product of a store, you should look the best way that you can, you have to project an image of success.

Projecting an image of success is a powerful tool that gives you authority. If you see someone with a BMW or Mercedes and another who did not even have a car and both give you a tip for making money, which of them would believe more?

Then the first business idea you have to develop and sell is yourself, apply all rules of marketing to yourself.

How to teach your children the value of money and become millionaire

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Saving only U.S.$100 per month beginning at age 4 and ending at age 18 you could become millionaire if you invest that money and remains untouched until age 62 as the above chart show.

The picture has been taken from Yahoo Finance. The secret to being a millionaire is to start as soon as possible. Instead of buying toys for your children you should start saving in your child’s name and teach them the value of money. About it at Yahoo Finance website you can find interesting guides about How To Teach Your Children The Value of Money. You can read there: 

“5. Make Saving Interesting

You hear it every time you walk by a toy store: “I want…Buy me this… !” Again, pause and take a moment before responding. This situation presents a great opportunity to teach another important lesson about personal finance: savings and interest. Explain that people often save their money for items they want to buy.

A simple savings lesson involves using a piggy bank, shoe box, or empty peanut butter jar. Make the lesson fun by having your children decorate the “bank,” while explaining to them how you also use a real bank to save your money. Encourage your children to save a portion of their allowance for a special goal. As they save money, you might reward them with a small additional amount, just like a bank pays interest. At the end of each month, calculate how much they have saved and then chip in a certain percentage as interest.

Last, to further encourage the learning process, you might consider plotting a visual chart of their savings (include the goal) so they can easily see their savings grow. Remember to keep it as simple as possible, geared toward each child’s level of understanding.”

You can read these guides on Yahoo Finance by clicking here on this link

3 factors or keys that you should know to be successful in business

Any business is a risk and you will be suspicious of anyone that tell you that have a secret and magic formula for make money to become in millionaire on few days.

Some times the business fail for a lack of preparation and not because the business idea was bad.

There are many factors and keys for business success, here three of them:

1.  A good idea.

2. A good business plan.

3. The will to bring it forward and be a winner.

The 3 factors are necessary for success, but the third is that often fails, you must be passionate in your project business and believe in it. You should never think it will fail, as I said above always there are risks but you should foreseen them in your business plan.

Do not be intimidated by the fact that you maybe you do not have an MBA, an MA or a PhD, most people who have been successful in business have not had these studies. What if you have to do is work hard and be consistent, to have faith in yourself.

Often one’s family is the fiercest criticism of an entrepreneur, wife or husband or parents begin to say “why waste your time doing that”, “please to study it,” “seeks a job,” “you to lose all the money from our savings. “

What you should do is stick to a plan for success, being a winner in business is difficult but not impossible.

Cooltronics, a real case about how make money fast with your business idea

The main founder of Cooltronic is Tyler Dikman, he has 24 years old and now sells millions of dollars by Internet.

He starts selling lemonades at the door of his house as many American children, but since these early stages he was different due to the use of marketing strategies.

His company was founded when he has 17 years old and his success was immediately.

Cooltronics primarily provides advice on the use of technology, as you can read from its website:

“For the past seven years, CoolTronics® has been helping individuals and small businesses with making the most of the what computer technology offers. While we are expertly informed computer people by training, we are first and foremost customer service providers. The most important feature in getting technology to perform is the requisite know how and support to realize its full potential. CoolTronics® has built a reputation on the notion of exceptional customer care.”

 

CNBC interview to Tyler Dikman and he gives us 5 tips, simple but worth gold coming from a winner in business:

  • 1. Always fulfill your promises, never promise something that you can not fulfill.
  • 2. Achieved a mentor. A mentor is a person with more experience in business and can guide about business. Should not necessarily be one, may be several.
  • 3. If at any time the work exceeds your capacity avoid it, ie does not grow more than you can or you could break your promises and thereby breaching the tip number one.
  • 4. Starts doing business with your friends. He points out that started contacting doctors and professionals as a hobby by understanding their technological needs.
  • 5. You never will have success or money with ideas you must to run them. Only if you run your idea you will succeed.

The video on YouTube where Tyler gives these tips can be found at the following link

YouTube Preview Image

10 tips to make the best business card works for make new business opportunities

One of the most important tool to make new businesses is a business card. It is inexpensive and usually it is the first approach on marketing business.

When you give a business card it is perhaps one of the first steps for build a new business relationship in order to increase your networking. If you are in business you should always have in your pocket your business card.

The website Business Know How give us 10 tips about how you should make a business card.The tips are writing as usually mistakes that we should avoid in our business cards. In summary these tips are:

  • 1. Minuscule print. 
  • 2. No physical address.
  • 3. Slick texture. 
  • 4. Blank back.
  • 5. No photo. 
  • 6. Incongruence.
  • 7. No benefits. 
  • 8. Not unique. 
  • 9. Challenging sizes.
  • 10. Home jobs. 

For example about the 6th tip they said:

“6. Incongruence. If you offer a web design service and don’t have a web site of your own listed, your card will raise red flags in people’s minds. I recall meeting a gentleman who introduced himself as a web designer and gave me his card.

When I asked him why he didn’t have his web site listed, he said he didn’t have one.

If you want to sell a Ford, drive a Ford. If you want to sell cell phones, have one and make your number available. If you want to sell toll-free service, make sure you have your toll-free number on your card.

You have to walk your talk and demonstrate that you live, eat, breathe and firmly believe that what you offer is of tremendous value to others, starting with yourself.”

Photo via SXC

I invite you to read the full article from Business Know How website by clicking here on this link

Small Business Ideas that really worth

When you are seeking business ideas you should think “what I enjoy to do?”. Tomorrow you will be dedicated 100% in that business idea so if you want to be successful you should like your business.

The wonderful thing about business is that you can do anything that you like if you put enough effort, passion and knowledge to develop a business model. Everyone has an expertise to sell or to share with others.

Maybe, you like to watch TV all day and you have the expertise about showbusiness or about what Tv Program works or not, perhaps if you make a blog you make money writing about it.

The issue really is how I approach my expertise toward a busines model that really worth. For that a clue that could help to find the right way is to know what are the people preferences when they buy over the internet. The magazine Pandecta give us to the following information:

  • - 29% Software
  • - Books 17%
  • - Music 16%
  • - 16% Computers
  • - Travel 10%
  • - Other 12%

If you’re considering a small business or home based business you should research the trends on the market and maybe the above numbers could help you.

You can read the Pandecta article by clicking here on this link

How to make a Budget if you are a freelancer with variable income

It is usual to read that you should make a budget to control your personal finances.

That sounds great but what happen if I have an irregular income, how will project my expenses and inversions?

Well Get Rich Slowly, one of my best blogs about personal finances, give us some advices.

His author summarize two methods for making a budget when revenues are variable.

1. The average method. This method consists of making an average of our income for the last 12 or 6 months. That average number will be my estimate income in order to make my budget and find the balance with my expenses.

The problem with this method, as the author said, is that if one month I have zero income this method could be a nightmare. If I do not have enough savings will not balance my expenses.

2. The method of the lowest income. In this case is not an average but it takes the lowest income I’ve had the past 6 or 12 months.

This method is much more conservative and more secure.

You can read the full article with graphics and more on GetRichSlowly by clicking here in this link

8 tips about how to become millonaire with a t-shirts business

Do you believe that someone could be millionaire selling t-shirts?

Well this is the story of Johnny Earle, 27 years old and founder of the company Cupcakes.

Cupcakes began 2001 with just $ $ 6,700 and in 2008 had sales of U.S. $ 3.8 million.

Cupcakes has as main product t-shirts with original designs that are selling in an original way.

In an interesting article on NPR, Jhonny Earle gives us some tips on how to start a success business:

1. Don’t rush. First impressions are everything. Don’t release any product unless you know for sure it’s as good as you can get it to be.

2. Don’t get bummed out if you go broke. You have to spend money to make money.

3. Travel, travel, travel.

4. Get a catchy domain name. Do something different, original, and memorable. Take your time coming up with a name.

5. Try to limit/not mass produce anything. Everyone wants what nobody has.

6. Be prepared to toss out any relationships or hobbies, if need be. You have to put 110 percent into building any company. You need to get your own act together before taking on a relationship.

7. Focus, focus! Living a drug-free, alcohol-free lifestyle my whole life has enabled me to save money, think straight, live healthy, focus more, and use my time wisely. I’m not saying do what I did, I’m just pointing out that you’re going to have to make your company your first priority.

8. Personalize your online orders. Johnny Cupcakes shirts are wrapped in special cupcake tissue paper, and usually come with a Ninja Turtles or Garbage Pail Kids card. Taking a couple of extra minutes to do that puts a gigantic smile on someone’s face!”

I hope that you find this advices usefull. You can read the full interview to Johnny Earle at NPR website by clicking here on this link