The Success Formula

Every year, hundreds of thousands of businesses are started. Most will fail, some will muddle along, and a few will thrive. Which ones thrive, and why? The reason some businesses experience spectacular sales and profit growth from the start isn't because they had a lot of money at the beginning. Their fast growth can be attributed to the fact that they were put together the right way.

In every instance, the founders either had or acquired the experience and knowledge they needed to start up and run the business. They recognized what their weak points were, subsequently nurtured alliances, and acquired the skills they needed to start their company off right. They also understood how the various parts of the business fit together to form a total structure and knew that if one part was missing, the total structure would break. For example, they knew that a successful sales plan is directly dependent upon support from the marketing and promotional plans, and that the strategic business plan acts as the glue that holds all the sub plans together so that they work in concert.

DEVELOPING IDEAS
Clever product and service ideas are a dime a dozen. Everybody has one, and most of them never get implemented. The successful entrepreneur starts with a basic idea. This idea is first tested to staying power. Can it be used to grow a customer base, and will it be profitable? The pseudo-entrepreneurial itch often ends before the basic idea gets tested. Studies show that a high percentage of people who open new businesses do so because they are frustrated with their current job. They'll jump into any business venture that comes along without first checking it out. Ninety percent of this group will go out of business in their first year.

Those that make it are smart enough to recognize the symptoms of their emotional state. They are acutely aware that they may be in a vulnerable position. As a result, they may hang on to the security of their current job and start a business on the side. They'll make the move to become a full-time entrepreneur when the time is right for them and after they have thoroughly checked out their business venture ideas. There are three basic concepts to keep in mind as you develop and refine your business start-up ideas.

Be Creative
The opposite of creativity is rigidity. Entrepreneurs are not rigid in their thinking. If you cling to the old ways of doing things because "that's the way we have always done it," you'll never come up with the new solutions that are demanded by today's small businesses. To test your creative ability, practice finding ways to tie together seemingly unrelated ideas.

Resolve Problems
You must have a clear understanding of what it is you are trying to achieve and be able to identify the obstacles that stand in your way. Break each problem down so that you understand it and know what you need to do to eliminate it. For example, the problem may be that you need more space. Why do you need more space, and what are the alternatives? An alternative may pose a new set of problems, but if they reduce the magnitude of the original problem, the alternative may be a more viable option.

Brainstorming
When you come up with a solution to a problem, brainstorm the solution with as many qualified people as you can find to avoid judging your own answer. Accept modifications that make sense, and be prepared to replace the solution with a totally new and better alternative. The key to the brainstorming process is to be objective. Brainstorming is an excellent way to come up with a new set of ideas for new products, services, or improvements that could accelerate the growth of your business.

Work-At-Home Moms

The ability of at-home moms to earn an income is also being driven by technology such as high-speed Internet access, the increase in home computers and a greater willingness by cost-conscious companies to rely on free agents rather than hiring full-time staff.

The work-at-home moms might work irregular hours, after their husbands come home from work or when their children are in school. They often work as independent contractors; most don't get health benefits.

Networking services for this labor pool are also growing. Home-based working moms are organizing their own business conferences, and many glean business tips from others through Web sites devoted to making money while staying at home with children.

How Couples Run a Home Business Without Running Each Other Down

Combining marriage and business is not an endeavor to be taken lightly. It requires serious consideration and answers to some tough questions. Here are 10 tips for running a successful home-based business with your spouse:

-- Determine if you can work side by side. Ask yourself honestly if you can work patiently alongside your spouse day in and day out, and then go from business partner to life partner after work. If you can't picture yourself making this transition, then you probably should not run a business together.

-- Discuss your goals. Are your visions for the business the same as those of your spouse? Even the strongest marriage will be tested if you are working at cross-purposes.

-- Write a business plan and solicit feedback. Once you detail your vision, show it to a consultant for an objective opinion. There is tremendous value in feedback from an unbiased source.

-- Define each person's role. The roles can be flexible (and will likely have to change over time) but must at least address the basics: who will keep the books, who will do the shipping, etc.

-- Keep the lines of communication open. Don't be critical of one another -- and don't be dismissive or contemptuous of your partner. Confront the challenges of the business, not one another.

-- Be circumspect when talking with clients. Your customers don't need to know that your partner in business is also your partner in life. Confiding in a client about your relationship with your partner can poison your relationship with your customer as well as your marriage.

-- Form a united front. Do not allow employees or customers to pit one of you against the other. Never put a sale or a customer ahead of your spouse.

-- Set firm boundaries and honor them. Set up your office in a space that doesn't disrupt the entire family.

-- Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Draw up legal agreements detailing how the business will be divided if you split up or if one of you decides to opt out of the business. Also, have a contingency plan in place in the event that your spouse falls short of his or her business obligations.

-- Don't deal with family matters during business hours. Running a small business and being a good partner and parent are each difficult on their own. To do both concurrently will almost ensure that you fail at both. Set specific times outside of business hours for discussing family business.

Article By Allbusiness

Strategies: Faith, doubt, effort go a long way

Article By Rhonda Abrams, USA TODAY

1. Great Faith: To build a business — or start anything new — you have to believe in yourself and your ideas. You can envision something that others cannot. You think up a new business, process, design or technology that hasn't existed before.
It is not only the quality of your ideas, but the strength of your faith in your ideas that will help you succeed. Moreover, it is your faith in yourself that attracts others to work with you, invest in your vision and support you as you pursue your dreams.
Great faith is exhilarating. But it is also exhausting. It's impossible to stay on an emotional high, even if things continually go well. And the reality is they will not always go well. When your business encounters the inevitable pitfalls, detours and slowdowns, you will be the one others will look to for reassurance.

The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach

Article By David Bach;
What makes you happy at work?
What makes you happy at home?
What makes you happy with your friends and family?
What makes you happy when you're by yourself?
What do you love to do?
What would you do with your life today if you weren't afraid of failure?
What's not working in your life?
What are you currently doing that prevents you from experiencing joy?
What's working in your life?
Who's not working in your life?
Who in your life is subtracting value from and adding misery to it?
Can you fix any of these relationships, or should you let them go from your life?
What relationships are working in your life?
If we were getting together one year from today, what would have to happen for you to be able to tell me that you now have more joy in your life?
What's the single most important thing you've learned about yourself as a result of answering these questions?

Marketing Planning

Provided By Know This Marketing

For marketers planning is an essential task that must be continually undertaken. As we will see, shifting market conditions, including changing customer needs and competitive threats, almost always insure that what worked in the past will not work in the future, thus requiring revisions in how a product is marketed. Marketing planning is also important since it is often a prerequisite for obtaining funding whether one is a marketer in a large corporation seeking additional money for his or her department or is part of a small start up company looking for initial funding.

Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur?

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? While there's no such thing as the perfect entrepreneur -- even Bill Gates has made mistakes -- a number of personal qualities can help you to build a successful business. If you pass muster on most of these traits, you're off and running.

• You Can Delegate. No matter how smart and energetic you are, it's a mistake to try to attend to every detail yourself. Unless you're a solo act, you're going to have to trust employees to do their jobs so that you can run the business.

• You Are A Teacher. In order to delegate successfully, you will need people with appropriate skills -- and they may have to learn some of those skills from you.

• You Are Self-Motivated. As a small business owner, you won't have a boss to tell you when to get to work. If that's a problem, keep your day job.

• You Can Work With Numbers. You will spend a fair amount of time keeping track of money -- expenses, revenues, taxes and the like. A math phobia won't help.

• You Learn From Mistakes. You will make them; the trick is to learn from them and move on. Not everyone finds that easy to do.

• You Like To Work. Contrary to myth, you don't need to be a workaholic to start a successful business. Many entrepreneurs find that it makes more sense to establish a reasonable working pace -- one that lets them strike a balance between work and their personal lives. That said, don't start a business unless you enjoy work. There's going to be plenty of it.

• You Don't Mind Selling. You'll have to sell products to customers, of course. You may also need to sell lenders or other financial backers on the prospects of your company. And you'll need to convince potential employees to accept jobs with your firm rather than go to work for the competition.

• You Don't Quit. You'll encounter obstacles that might stymie some individuals. You'll have more success if you are the type of person who relishes such challenges. A dash of optimism helps; it will help you handle the uncertainty that is part of every venture.

Provided by Allbusiness

The 5 Qualities Needed For Business Success

What is it that sets a successful businessperson apart from an average businessperson? Is it down to pure and simple luck, or is it all about having an amazing idea and a successful and strategic business plan in place?

Well, these factors do indeed go a long way to turning a good business idea into a successful business operation, but they have nothing to do with what makes the ‘person’ succeed at business.

Every great entrepreneur naturally has 5 key attributes that sets them aside from their competition and that ensure they will succeed where others may fail. These 5 personal qualities will all reflect upon the entrepreneur’s business and they will mean the entrepreneur grows and develops every area of their own personal expertise to become not only the strategic thinker behind the business, but the strategic manager poised to lead the company forward to achieve even greater success.

The 5 qualities that every entrepreneur shares and that are the keys to their business success are:

1) Desire – To succeed you have to have a massive desire to break out of the average 9 – 5 grind, to step off the employee-job-salary treadmill and to put your ideas, ideals and beliefs into action. An entrepreneur’s desire for personal fulfilment and professional success is his number one key strength and that which will force him to start out in business in the first place. This desire to achieve will become a desire for success and this desire for success will be reflected throughout the business.

2) Positivity – Entrepreneurs have a positive mental attitude towards their life, their business and themselves; they are not restricted by disappointments and regrets and they look forward not backwards. A naturally positive person sees opportunities where others see obstacles, a naturally positive person frees their mind from negativity and disappointment so that it is free to dream, imagine, develop and expand.

3) Commitment – To succeed you have to be committed to putting in the hard work necessary to build a business from the ground up. You have to commit to your beliefs and desires, you have to commit to your business idea and you have to commit to the employees within your company. With commitment comes effort, with effort comes results, with results comes success!

4) Patience – Patience and commitment go hand in hand, and the patient entrepreneurs who dedicate themselves to working away at their business day after day will reap the rewards of their patience when the steady and focused hard work pays off in the form of positive and successful results.

5) Persistence – Nothing is ever straightforward or without contradiction or change and the future is unknown. These factors mean that the final key entrepreneurial attribute is simply critical to success. When obstacles appear, when goal posts are moved and when ‘these things are sent to try us’ you have to persist with your ideas, persist with your hard work and keep focused on success. With patient and committed persistence the desired results will come.

Your Own Company Is Your Road to Riches

Trump Blog

When you think of starting a company, you probably think about all the hard work it will take. Hopefully you also envision all the benefits, such as wealth, freedom, and a sense of personal accomplishment and significance.

But have you also thought about how efficient owning a business really is? If not, think about these benefits. Read More

Making the Secret Work For You

The law of attraction has been all over the media lately from Oprah, Ellen to Larry King. And everyone is talking about it... Just the other day, at my favorite health food store, I overheard two people speaking about The Secret on Oprah. I love to being part of it. If you haven't heard of Michael Losier, yet....you will. His book "The Law of Attraction" is the #6 best-selling book on Amazon.com. He's going to be speaking at the next Liberty Conference coming up in Cancun, Mexico in March of 2007. If you haven't had a chance to experience Michael, enjoy the video below of him speaking at one of his workshops. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne as shown on Oprah and Local News

Marketing Your Home-Based Business on the Internet

The Internet has opened up a whole new world of advertising and marketing for home-based businesses. Instead of having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive print campaigns or mailings, you can now reach a global audience on a shoestring budget. Here are some of the popular and cost-effective ways that you can advertise your home-based business on the Internet.
Internet advertising can be broken down into three main categories:

1. Cost-per-click, where you only pay for actual clicks or leads for your advertising.

2. Cost-per-impression, often referred to as cost-per-thousand impressions or CPM, where you purchase a set amount of views for your ad.

3. Set-price advertising, where you can purchase a specific amount of advertising for a given length of time.

Cost-per-click advertising offers small business owners great value for their advertising dollar. There are several sites that offer the ability to pay only when customers click on your ads.
Google AdWords is one of the most popular advertising venues for small businesses. With the AdWords program, you bid on keywords related to your business, and your text ad is displayed when Google users search for that term. You pay only when a user clicks on your ad, and the cost per click varies according to the popularity of the keywords you select. Google AdWords does not require a minimum purchase, and you can easily spend less than $25 for a successful advertising campaign by using AdWords properly.

5 Marketing Tools for Home-Based Businesses

Because a home-based business doesn’t have a storefront for passers-by to notice and no opportunity to generate walk-in business, home-based businesses need marketing other types of businesses, not less.
Not marketing your home-based business will almost certainly doom it to failure.


1. Direct mail. still a cost-effective way to advertise in many industries.

2. Voice mail. Even the outgoing message on your answering machine or voice mail system can help promote your business when utilized correctly.

3. Press releases. The only thing better than cheap publicity is free publicity, and well-timed, professional press releases can result in just that.

4. Referrals. Referrals are probably the single best way to find new customers. If you do something well, chances are people are going to talk about it.

5. Radio interviews. If you can speak knowledgeably about your product or service and tie it in well with current events, radio interviews are a great way to reach a wide audience and improve your customer base.

Direct Selling ­ An Option for Mini-Preneurs

According to the Direct Selling Association (www.dsa.org), more than 13.6 million people participated in direct selling in 2004 with an overwhelming 73 percent of them being women. Buying and selling in the comfort of a home still seems to be the heart of the direct selling industry, with 62 percent of all direct sales being made that way in 2003. About 16 percent of total sales that year were made by phone, followed by about 10 percent via the Internet. While the Internet doesn’t allow for face-to-face selling, it does give direct sellers a worldwide customer base.

Top Five Tax Breaks For At-Home Entrepreneurs

Forbes.com:

By the Census Bureau's last count in 2002, half of all businesses in the U.S. are home-based. The U.S. government encourages this kind of entrepreneurship. Dig deep and at-home entrepreneurs will find a few precious tax deductions, say Mark Birge and Steve Mentzer, accountants with Aldrich, Kilbride and Tatone, an Oregon-based accountancy firm.

Alterations to the tax code in 1999 made it easier to qualify for home-office tax deductions. For instance, engineering and construction types who spend lots of time in the field, but do most of their administrative work at home, can still qualify for certain deductions.

1. Infrastructure (utilities, phone service, housekeeping services, landscaping) Run-of-the-mill homeowners and renters can’t deduct these expenses, but at-home entrepreneurs can.

2. Home mortgage interest and property taxes. U.S. taxpayers can deduct these anyway, but as a small business owner, you can save even more by applying a percentage of mortgage interest and property taxes to the home-office section of your tax form.

3. Travel expenses. You can’t deduct fuel expenses if you commute to work each day, but if you work from home, you can deduct the costs of traveling away from your home for any business-related activity.

4. One-time office equipment purchases. Section 179 of the tax code says you can take a one-time deduction–up to $105,000–for the purchase of office equipment, as long as you don’t purchase more than $400,000 of equipment in a calendar year.

5. Family affair. Sole proprietors with children under 18 who work for them can deduct their children’s “wages.”

Bill gives workers time off for kids

Businesses, schools leery of mandate

Rep. Rodney Hubbard, D-St. Louis, is sponsoring a bill that would require employers to give employees four hours of paid leave every month - six days a year - to spend in their child’s class. For the rest of the article click here.

I work from home so the idea of not seeing my child is foreign. I left my job 2.5 years ago and never looked back. My main purpose for doing so was to spend more time with my son. Now I participate in his school activities and volunteer all the time. I pick my son up from school every day and spend quality time together. My home business is portable and convenient -- from anywhere at any time.

Quality vs. Quantity

Anyone in business knows, the quality of leads is the key to making it or breaking it. You can call thousands of leads, but if the leads aren't responding to the right advertising, you'll be wasting valuable time. Yes, you may make a sale or two, but your conversion rate will go up significantly in correlation to the quality of your leads. In my business, I teach people how to market effectively with a simple proven system so that their leads are of quality. One lead can equal one sale when it's the right lead. Whether it's a home based business, a work at home opportunity, direct sales, network marketing or traditional business, having the leads that convert to customers means dollars in the bank and a successful venture as an entrepreneur.

Think Like an Entrepreneur

Sixty percent of all Americans are dreaming about starting their own businesses. Why? What's their motivation? I recently heard some fascinating answers to that question while I was listening to recorded transcripts from The Entrepreneur's Success Codes, a Trump University course that's taught by Jeff Burrows. In those transcripts, a group of Trump University students - all successful entrepreneurs - answered Jeff's question, "Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?" Let's take a closer look at the reasons they gave:

Motivation #1: An unstoppable passion for the work itself. It could be making real estate investments, restoring old cars or designing computer systems for businesses. As one student in The Entrepreneur's Success Codes class said, "I loved my work so much, I couldn't not do it."

Motivation #2: A drive to help others. It might be a desire to help other people be healthier, or more successful, or richer, or more beautiful. One student said that her longing to help people started after she recovered from a serious accident.

Motivation #3: The need for freedom. One class member said that after working in rigid corporations for years, the desire to control his own work took over his life.

Motivation #4: A hunger for challenge. For some entrepreneurs, the greatest motivator is the challenge of starting a business itself. Other concerns are secondary.

Motivation #5: Security. One entrepreneur said he started his own company because he hated working for companies where he could get laid off at any time. Of course, starting a company is risky. New companies fail. But despite those risks, running his own company put him in control of his own destiny."
**This article taken from Trump University.

Six Reasons Why Most Home Based Businesses Fail

1 - Most new opportunities do not help you make money. They will give you some ideas for making money, but then leave you out in the cold by having you do everything on your own.
2 - Unfortunately, some home business opportunity owners will take your money and run. There are too many fly-by-night operations out there that will not hesitate to scam you.
3 - Some home based business opportunities will have you working long hours for little pay. This is a good way to get burned out, tired, frustrated, and eventually quit.
4 - Many home business opportunities offer products nobody really wants. You should never try to market any product that people couldn’t care less about.
5 - Many home based business opportunities force you to become a salesperson. There should already be an established market for the product or service and a system in place to eliminate as much of the “selling” as possible.
6 - Some home based business opportunities pay small sums of money and no residual income. Stay far away from these! If you market products or services that don’t sell for very much money and don’t offer any residual income, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to make any real money or obtain financial freedom.

What Do You Deserve?

There's never a right answer to a wrong question. So, what question should YOU be asking in 2007?
In my opinion, these are all WRONG questions:

• how can I get promoted at my job?
• how can I figure out how to save money on childcare?
• how can I get an extra weekend off?
• will I get a vacation this year?
• how can I get more overtime?

Those are unproductive questions, in fact.

Here are the correct questions:

• how can I quit my job and make more than my boss?
• how can I raise my own children instead of paying a 7-dollar=an=hour stranger to do it?
• how can I have all the free time I want?
• how many vacations do I want to take this year?(We took six this past year)
• how can I never work more than 25 hours a week?

That's what you should be asking. You are a powerful, beautiful, wonderful human being who has the ability to create whatever results you want in your life.And don't let anyone tell you any differently.

Need a plan?

• Unplug your TV for a month.
• Get your head into some good personal development.
• Watch the movie The Secret at least twice a month.
• Start a business.
• Get rich.
• Rescue a pet from the Humane Society.
• Forgive somebody.
• Heck, forgive EVERYBODY. Most of all yourself.

What Is Guerrilla Marketing Anyway?

If you know working smarter not harder than Jay Conrad Levinson is your man. I've adapted the theory of working smarter so I can spend more time with my family. There's plenty of opportunities in the "work smarter" industry. Guerrilla Marketing is designed for small businesses based on human psychology and the way people think and react vs. judgment and guesswork. For more on this Click Here.