Archive for the ‘Entrepreneur’ Category

Business Tips To Help You Succeed As An Entrepreneur

Thursday, July 16th, 2015

Prospective entrepreneurs often wonder about how established business owners managed to achieve their success. There is no quick or short path towards becoming successful in the world of business. The key factors that determine your ability to reach your business goals include having the right attitude and taking action.

Pursue your Goals Passionately

You will enjoy a fulfilling life if you make the bold choice of pursuing your dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Anyone who gets the chance to work in an industry that he or she is passionate about will be more motivated and productive.

While financial goals are a crucial aspect of starting your own business, you should ideally start a company that has the potential to make a positive impact on people’s lives. This will enable you to not only run a profitable venture but make a worthwhile difference to the lives of other people as well.

Being committed to your business objectives requires you to be passionate about your ideas. Your level of commitment has a significant effect on whether or not you will succeed. Take pride in the work you do and the service or products that you provide.

Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

Focus and Consistency

Your desire for generating income and growing your business should never distract you from being consistently good at what you do. Maintaining focus and making an effort to be among the best in the industry will make it easier for you to achieve profitability and growth over time.

Enjoy your Work

Several successful entrepreneurs can attest to the fact that being positive has contributed to their achievements as business founders. You should be able to enjoy what you do and your business should add joy and fulfillment to your life. If your business makes you miserable, it would be a good idea to try something else that actually interests you.

Your employees also need to look forward to work each day and be actively involved in various aspects of business operations. The happiness and motivation of your employees will enable them to serve customers better and work more efficiently. Look for people who genuinely want to add value to the company and contribute to the success of your venture.

Never Give Up

Difficulties and challenges are inevitable when starting a business and you may not always get the results that you aim for from time to time. The road to entrepreneurial success is not always smooth but you should never give up.

Tenacity and resilience are essential because they make it possible for you to be firmly entrenched in the pursuit of your goals. Whenever you encounter failure, use the experience as a valuable lesson and keep on trying until you reach your goals.

Learn and Grow

Every time you get new ideas note them down in a journal that you can refer to for inspiration. List also your goals so that you can track the progress that you are making. In order for you to learn how to be a successful entrepreneur, you should be willing to listen and gain knowledge from other people.

A good entrepreneur also needs to learn how to delegate duties especially in regards to areas of the business that he or she may not have the skills for. Hire people who have the qualifications to carry out the work that you may be unable to do and allow yourself to have enough time to spend with friends and family.

Positive Working Environment

The free time you get when you delegate is also useful for helping you focus on other ways to implement in order to grow your company. The work environment should encourage people to communicate and share information that is useful for the business.

People need to be able to interact freely and be comfortable enough to express themselves. This type of work environment creates confidence and makes every member of the team feel valued by the organization.

Take a Break

With technological advancement, people are able to accomplish several tasks as long as they have computers and internet connections. Although this has made it possible to carry out tasks faster, it is still important to get out and face the real world occasionally. Take a break from your computer screen and mingle with inspirational people.

Succeeding in Entrepreneurship

Regardless of where you are located or the kind of profit you are able to make, it is important to be surrounded by positive motivated people who will give you the encouragement you need to keep your business running. Being a successful entrepreneur takes hard work and determination. Entrepreneurs who have been able to achieve success in their venture share a number of similar characteristics.

  • In order for you to be set apart from your competitors, you need to be persistent, positive and passionate about your business. Such attributes need to be cultivated because they enable you to possess the skills that are necessary for developing a business effectively.
  • Business strategies cannot thrive without passion. If you approach your business ideas with a reluctant attitude, your willingness to succeed will soon fade away. Keep on persevering until you get what you want because every effort you make will be rewarded in the long run. Taking the plunge into the business world is exciting but you need to be cautious about how quickly you move.
  • Manage your risks efficiently and try to make them as small as possible so that you will be able to recover faster in case anything goes wrong. The outcomes of business risks provide entrepreneurs with lessons that they will never forget.
  • Many entrepreneurs usually begin by working for other people. The amount of time they spend in a particular industry prepares them for the process of starting their own businesses. Find a mentor who you respect and admire because his or her mistakes and success will help you learn what you need to know about running a business.
  • Confidence and effective communication are essential traits for any entrepreneur who wants to promote a venture effectively. A business owner should have the ability to market the company and share its vision while prioritizing the needs of the customer.

An Entrepreneurs Guide to Planning a Business Effectively

Tuesday, July 7th, 2015

Planning to be successful in a business venture does not have to be a monumental and time consuming task. As an entrepreneur, if you know the right ingredients to be able to plan every step and facet of your business, you will have a good guide to manage any business effectively enough to prosper and grow. Your main focus should initially be; to know what to plan, get the right key people to help you come up with a good strategy and create some time to focus on getting the ideas in black and white.
Below is a step by step guide to help you come up with a good strategic plan that will make your new business venture prosper.

Entrepreneur

1. Be clear about your competitive edge
The main purpose of developing a strategic plan is to ensure that you are clear about what goods or services you can provide to customers better than anyone else. This is called finding your competitive edge. Once you find out what your competitive edge is, you will be able to know where you need to focus your resources to make sure that you get the best utility from your efforts. By making your competitive edge an integral part of your organizations mindset, you will be able to attract customers by providing better service and/or product(s).

2. Create a mission statement or a purpose for your business
A mission statement is usually a short statement that captures the purpose of the business. It also serves as a guide or mantra that everyone in the organization can look to for inspiration in their day to day activities. Once you already know what your competitive edge is, it will be easy to come up with a mission statement that can bolster the purpose of your existence as a business.

3. Have a vision for your business
One of the important parts of creating a strategic plan is to have a vision which will serve as a guide for everyone in the organization and offer inspiration on a day to day basis. Your business’ vision is what you hope your business will become in the future. When coming up with a vision for your business, you need to consider the following;

• What is the direction of your business?
• Which clients should you focus on in the market?
• What position in the market do you intend to occupy?
• What activities to do you want to pursue in order to achieve your vision?
• What capabilities, proficiencies and competencies does your business plan to develop?

4. Take inventory

Once you know your competitive edge, have a mission and a vision, your next step should naturally be to take stock of your current position and determine what you need in order to achieve what you have set out to through your business. This is done mainly through the use of a tool called SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis stands for; strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This tool helps you to critically and analytically look at the current status of your business and then plan how you can improve and strengthen what you are good at.

5. Know your customers well
Your next step should be to create a profile on your target market. If you can understand your customer better, you will be able to provide better goods and services that will meet their needs. You will also be able to utilize your resources better in order to reach your customer and inform them that you have what they need.

6. Have SMART goals and objectives
As you create your strategic plan, you need to come up with clear goals and objectives that you can pursue to help you achieve your vision. One tool that is very helpful towards this is SMART, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. If you manage to develop your goals and objectives around this principle, you will be able to achieve your goals with greater efficiency and success because you will always be able to monitor what you are doing. Your goals should be able to support your objectives and therefore, you need to develop your objectives before your goals.

7. Create a to do list with priorities
After you have come up with your goals, it is important to make sure that you are doing something every day to ensure that you achieve your set out goals. The simplest way to do this is to create a to-do list for each goal. As you create your to-do list, make sure that you assign the tasks to specific people, giving proper timelines and resources for them to successfully perform the tasks.

8. What are your resources?
Next, you need to take stock of the resources you currently have. This will help you prioritize and, more efficiently, utilize the resources that you have based on your most urgent goals and objectives.

9. Keep a scorecard of your achievements and failures
By keeping a score card, you can easily and effectively monitor what you have achieved in certain strategic periods, thus adjust or course correct when you are not going in the direction you intended.

10. Communicate your plan with the relevant people
Finally, communicate your strategic plan to the rest of your staff regularly to ensure that everyone is aligned with the organizations direction.

Conclusion
When it comes down to it, you have to realize that a plan should just be a guide to help you keep your goals in focus and actionable on a day to day basis. You may find that while putting into action some of your plans, you will get better ways of doing things by cutting costs or doing things more efficiently. An initial plan will be helpful because you will be able to observe your growth and replicate it. A rough plan is much better than not having a plan at all.

Author Bio
Christopher Huff has been an entrepreneur for the last 25 years of his life. He has had 3 unsuccessful and 4 successful businesses in his career. He recommends the services offered by nationaldebtrelief.com. Visit his website for more information.

Nigeria Needs An Entrepreneur Not A Magician

Monday, May 25th, 2015

Nigeria is in need of a Leader, who is a seasoned entrepreneur, not a Magician that many are craving for. I read a lot of comments and write-ups which shows that many Nigerian are expecting the President Elect General Muhammadu Buhari to perform magic and transform Nigeria into a developed nation overnight.

It is time we wake up from the land of slumber. It is time we discard fantasies and embrace reality. Unless we do that, we will continue to suffer in the hands of opportunist and con-artists who promise us that we will suddenly be transported from our present state of economic woes to the land of promise!

It is time Nigerian request that our nation be run like a business where the stakeholders holds the leader accountable. The citizens are to be blamed for all the years of looting we have experienced in the past. Since we want fairy tales of the magicians and expect result from a simple wave of the magic-wand, we shouldn’t complain that we get screen-saver results instead of the result we desire!

Entrepreneur vs Magician

Magician

What differentiate a magician from an entrepreneur? The answer is simple. An entrepreneur promises all stake holders, shareholders, customers, suppliers, workers a better future. He doesn’t do that by just making promises based on his fantasy, rather he makes propositions based on available resources and then promises all the stakeholder realistic result based on their commitment to the vision! A magician on the other hand make promises base on his slight of hand. He generate results that gives momentary pleasure or excitement, but cannot be held accountable for whatever happened thereafter. Nobody holds a magician accountable!

Hand pointing at a Entrepreneur word illustration on blue background.

The Entrepreneur

It is unfortunate to note that many Nigerians are expecting someone somewhere to perform magic while we all go to sleep. That is never going to happen. No matter how good the incoming government is, our collective effort is required to move Nigeria forward.

Just as no business can survive without the stakeholders contributing their quota, so it is that Nigeria cannot grow while the citizens are neglecting to contribute their own quota to the success of our beloved nation.

  • It is our responsibility to be interested in the goals of the incoming government. We must be interested in the details, not just sweet talks. We must desire to know if the goals are S.M.A.R.T or just fairy tales. For example: What is the goal for power generation and distribution?
  • It is our responsibility to be interested in the plan of the incoming government. For example: How is the present power problem going to be solved. How long will it take? What will be achieved in the last quarter of 2015?
  • It is our responsibility to listen and ask question on how the incoming government intend to achieve its set goals. We should be willing to hear the truth and nothing but the truth no matter how bitter it tastes!
  • It is our responsibility to give the government time to carry out the actions and then judge the result with the promises made. For example: The actual goal achieved should be judged against the promised goal. We should ask the government to account for the variance and judge the result as being acceptable or not acceptable.
  • It is our responsibility to hold every arm of government accountable! We should no longer allow leaders to make empty promises which cannot be measured. We should no longer allow leaders to lie to us without bearing the punishment for lying in public. We should stop celebrating liars, thieves and con-artists.

All these won’t happen overnight. So it is our responsibility to wait patiently as needed repairs and changes are implemented irrespective of how painful that may be. Shouting, criticizing, protesting and throwing tantrums based on sentiments have never done us any good. Employing the same methods that never worked in time past will only portray us as fools. If truly we desire change, let it start from you and I. Let’s change our attitude and stop expecting a magician to solve our problems. Long live Nigeria.

Online Payments – The Digital Purse for Shopping

Thursday, February 26th, 2015

There are several options of transferring cash in Online Shopping. It could be through payment gateways, net banking, debit and credit cards. Each has its own advantages and levels of approval by merchants. The most common of them are:

  • Debit/Credit cards
  • Digital cash through Payment gateways
  • Direct Cash Transfer
Online Shopping

Online Shopping In Nigeria

Through Cards: 

A large portion of internet transactions are conducted through debit and credit cards.  When you choose this option, you will be transferred to a gateway, over where you will be asked to select your bank or financial institution. Then you can enter your card’s number followed by your unique password. Note the amount you wish to spend, and your transaction is over; that’s right, within seconds!

 

Advantages

The transactions are quick and requires no mediators. For the seller, the investment is minimal, yet it reaches the maximum population. Any buyer, anywhere in the world and at any time, can make purchases, with currencies of his or her choice. Hence businesses have larger sales and huge popularity.

All that a business firm needs to do is to become an authorized credit card merchant. This is done by sending an application to a merchant account provider. The necessary hardware and hardware required for this process, will be provided by them.

Advantages for the buyer include no standing in long questions, no unnecessary hassle by salesmen, as well as many options to choose from. The goods are delivered to the address he or she is comfortable with; there is no need to even go to the store!

 

Disadvantages

Most online merchants have been verified to have secure gateways. However, there still may be fraudulent merchants, who take the payment from you, but do not deliver the goods. There is no fool-proof guarantee for such transactions.

 

Direct Bank Transfer: 

Another simple option, in which you can transfer money directly from your bank account to the seller’s account.  In the same manner as the previous option, you will be redirected to a gateway, where you will have to share your account number and other details. You can add the specific details of the merchant, you wish to purchase from. An online receipt will be created, as a note of verification.

Physical goods will be transferred to the address mentioned, while products in digital format can be downloaded. On the part of the seller, the sharing of the customer’s bank details, furnish several details to keep in touch with him or her.

For example, the customer’s phone number, residential address, date of birth and even more. The seller procures an advantage of keeping in constant touch with the customer, in order to achieve further sales from the same source.

All online transactions share the same issues of security and privacy. However, several precautionary measures are available, and most of the online merchants’ authenticity verified. Though, customers are still advised to choose wisely.

 

Digital cash through Payment gateways

Having been introduced in the last couple of years, this trend is rapidly conquering the field of online shopping in Nigeria. A payment gateway is nothing but a digital intermediary. It serves as a nexus between the bank accounts of the buyer and seller.

The main advantage of a payment gateway over direct bank transfer is that the former does not reveal your personal as well as banking details. Neither your name nor your contact details nor your account details are passed to a third person.

 

To summarize:

Online shopping is not a ‘try-and-throw- process and has many takers with business houses and customers alike, all across the world. Several merchants have devised innovative methods, to make shopping a pleasurable, as well as an entertaining experience for customers.

 

Author Bio:

Mathew Edwards is a free style article writer who prefers to write articles or blogs and websites.

The Shark Tank Formula For Startup Success

Monday, November 24th, 2014

Have you ever wondered what it takes to launch a successful startup? ABC’s reality TV show, Shark Tank, demonstrates what it’s like for entrepreneurs to go through the process of pitching their business ideas to investors (otherwise known as sharks).

Over the course of five seasons, there have been 337 pitches and only 186 deals. Out of these deals, only one-third them actually closed! You’re probably wondering, why is this such a low rate?

The reality is, it’s tough to keep your startup afloat after launching. Since 2012, only one in 17 business ventures have actually experienced a profit. Unfortunately, not every entrepreneur has the opportunity to become the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Despite the challenges of launching a startup, there are a few things entrepreneurs can do to increase their chances of success. First, it’s absolutely necessary to know your product inside and out. Regardless of how cool you think your idea is, it won’t be valuable to investors unless it serves a real purpose for your target audience.

When preparing to launch, it’s also important to perfect your pitch. Entrepreneurs need to approach investors with a goal, a business plan, and also know their numbers very well. Investors only care about how profitable your business will be in the future. Make sure you understand your numbers and can identify the information about your business that will important to investors.

Finally, it’s important to build a strong network of investors. Remember, you want these people to take interest in your business and provide you with the funding you need. Spend time building relationships with investors and learn about what they’re looking for in potential startups.

These are just a few of the takeaways you should know from ABC’s Shark Tank. To learn more about launching a startup and what it takes to be a startup success, check out the infographic below:

Shark Tank Formula

Shark Tank Formula

Your feedback will be appreciated. Cheers.

Author Bio – Ivan Serrano is a business and social media journalist living in the Bay Area of California.