Starting a business is fun. Planning a business is not as fun. So how do you take your fresh idea and turn it into a viable business without sacrificing your enthusiasm in the process? Here are some ways to get started now.

Plan well, but plan quickly.

You know you need a business plan. (You do know that, don’t you?) You also know that business plans are long, scary, and mind-numbingly boring. They tend to take a lot of time, time which you might not have.

The most important part of your business plan is your SWOT analysis. This is where you identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The SWOT analysis is your new best friend. Run one on your business, on yourself, on your business partners, and on your competition. Figure out what’s helping you and what’s hurting you. Do not fall into the trap of shoving your head into the sand and thinking you have no weaknesses. Think about this. Write it down.

Since this is for your own use and doesn’t have to be prettied up for a banker’s benefit, there’s no reason this should take more than a day.

Identify your Unique Selling Proposition.

Once you know your own strengths and your competitors’ weaknesses, you can figure out what makes you different from them. This is your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. It will be the driving force behind your marketing campaign.

What makes you unique does not have to be something earth-shattering. You don’t need to redesign the wheel. It could be as simple as actually listing your prices on your website, or offering 24 hour a day phone support. The only requirement is that it has to be something your customers actually care about. Pretty packaging on your plumbing parts is not a USP. Same-day delivery might be.

How are you going to market this thing?

You’ve identified your USP. Now you’re going to have to let people know about it. Sounds obvious? Apparently it isn’t. How many times have you been actively trying to spend your hard-earned money on a product or service, and all the companies looked the same? These companies are lazy marketers. They are telling you about all the fancy gizmos that every other competitor has, too.

You need to take your USP and beat your potential customers over the head with it. They should know why you’re different than The Other Guy before hiring you even crosses their minds. Do not make them think. Make your USP the most readily available piece of information to your customers. If you do that, the details of your marketing plan don’t matter as much. Since the thing that makes you better than your competition is now wildly obvious, whether you advertise in Text Link Ads or AdSense is just not a big deal.

Figure out your funding.

Unless your competition is Coca-Cola, the amount of money you have to start with is actually pretty unimportant. What is important is that you know how much you have, and that you allocate it wisely. Whether you have $500 or $5 million to start with, spend the most you can get away with on marketing. You need to get people to buy your product or service. Once they do, you can spend all the money you want on a new fax machine or 30-inch monitor or thicker stationery.

Start sooner rather than later.

There is a point, generally a lot earlier than most people think, when you have to stop thinking and start doing. It’s easy to sit back and ruminate on the absolute perfect way to launch your business. What’s hard is understanding that a not-bad business launched in a not-bad way makes a lot more money than an amazing business not launched at all because circumstances are not perfect. Make your service good, make it easy to buy from you, hang your shingle and prepare for a crazy ride.

Naomi Dunford writes for IttyBiz, a blog for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and other work-from-home types. Come by for marketing tips, small business advice, and the occasional very bad joke.

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FoundRead: We like Harvard Working Knowledge, and today we picked up another quick post by marketing guru, John Quelch. It’s billed as “How To Build a Global Brand,“ but we think his five simple rules for how to brand effectively are applicable to any startup trying to establish its name and image — globally or not. The good news here is that Prof. Quelch is cutting down your workload — in branding, it turns out that what matters most in the message are simplicity and consistency.

Professor Quelch compares the (lately) poor branding practices at Ford with the highly successful practice at Toyota to illustrate “the power of a single global brand” and how to get there.

1. The same positioning worldwide. (For F|R: this means in every market.) This provides a combination of functional product quality and innovation with emotional appeal. Think Coca-Cola.

2. A focus on a single product category. Think Nokia and Intel.

3. The company name is the brand name. All marketing dollars are concentrated on that one brand. Think GE and IBM. (F|R: Hewlett-Packard learned this the hard way!)

4. Access to the (global) village. Consuming the brand equals membership in a global club. Think IBM’s “solutions for a small planet.” (F|R says: replace “global club” with social network.)

5. Social responsibility. Consumers expect global brands to lead on corporate social responsibility, leveraging their technology to solve the world’s problems. Think Nestle and clean water. (Or F|R might say: think Google.)

5 Simple Rules of Branding [FoundRead]

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It's been 3 weeks since we launched the new GetEntrepreneurial.com Experts' Network to contribute small business advice to our community of aspiring entrepreneurs. The network has received positive responses from you, our readers, and we're very glad to have signed up 9 small business experts (as of today) to share with us their expert opinion on issues which entrepreneurs face everyday.

From the things to consider before starting a business to generating more profits from on-going small improvements to your business, our Experts are working hard to share with us more tips and advice on entrepreneurship. Let's show our appreciation for our nine experts who have come on board the GE Experts' Network:

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez
Abe WalkingBear is an international consultant on the subject of sales enhancement and business knowledge organization. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982.

Recommended article: More Profits From On-going Small Improvements: Part 1 | Part 2

Jim Donovan
Jim Donovan, is the author of several critically acclaimed self-help and business books, published in 22 countries, a highly sought after motivational speaker, and the President of Jim Donovan Associates, a peak performance consulting company that offers programs and services
to help companies grow and prosper in today's competitive marketplace.

Recommended article: A Crystal Clear Vision Ensures Success Throughout Your Organization

John Bittleston
John Bittleston blogs at TerrificMentors.com, a site that provides mentoring for those who wish a change in career or job, wanting to start a business or looking to improve their handling of people (including themselves).

Recommended articles:
Prepare For Your Career
The Way To Success

Klaus Wiedemann
Klaus Wiedemann is Founder and Managing Director of Daisho Blacksmith GmbH, a product and consulting company dedicated to support todays professional with software and methodology to sharpen their competitive edge. Klaus has more than 19 years of experience in Project Management and Business Development.

Recommended article: Things to Consider before Starting a Business

Lorraine Cohen
Dr. Lorraine Cohen, President of Powerfull Living, brings more than 25 years experience in personal and business coaching, psychological counseling, and sales to thousands of spiritually minded business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders from a wide range of industries.

Recommended article: Business Success Tip #1 - How To Declutter Your Computer

Maureen O’Crean
Maureen O’Crean, MBA, is an international business strategist and CEO of Maureen O’Crean PR. An award winning Internet consultant, her work has been featured on Good Morning America, Entrepreneur Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Grace Magazine, radio and newspapers.

Russ Lombardo
Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success.

Recommended article: Fighting the Saw-Tooth Effect

Stan Spector
Stan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income - Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book's website can be found at StanSpector.com. He presents seminars for financial planners and other organizations working with baby boomers to try to instill the entrepreneuring spirit.

Recommended article: 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees: Festival Businesses | Focus on your Writing Skills

Terri Zwierzynski
Terri Zwierzynski is a self-employed business strategist and marketing consultant to solo entrepreneurs, and a grassroots promoter of the solo entrepreneur lifestyle. She runs Solo-E.com, the resource website for the self-employed which attracts thousands of solo home business owners monthly.

* * *

Would you like to be a part of the GE Experts Network? We invite you to email us to join the network and share your small business expertise with us. We look forward to your application!

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Fighting the Saw-Tooth Effect

Months ago you thought you were such a huge success, pulling in a large deal involving huge revenue for your business. How were you to know that at the same time you were destroying the very business you were trying to build? If this, or something less dramatic yet similar, has ever happened to you, then you could be experiencing the Saw-Tooth Effect. What’s the Saw-Tooth Effect? It’s all very simple to understand. But not many businesses realize it until it is too late.....

Continued in BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 55 >>>

- Beer Brick
- Handvertising
- Metal Refreshing Lollipop
- New Life For Old Photos
- Frisper Freshkeeper
- Garden Water
- Sharkah’s Organic Jeans

Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

- Things To Consider Before Starting A Business
- How To De-clutter Your Computer
- Prepare For Your Career
- Festival Business
- Tell Them About Quality
- Be An Eagle Entrepreneur
- Positive Workplace Relationships

Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

Can't stand your demanding boss anymore? Start your own business! Before that, be sure to subscribe to our free informative newsletter. BIZNESS! is jointly published by CoolBusinessIdeas.com and GetEntrepreneurial.com What you get in BIZNESS! - the latest new business ideas, small business advice, business tips and info and entrepreneur resources. Everything you need for your brand new business!

Free 145-pages PDF report (worth $75) - "2006's Best Business Ideas" - included with your subscription. Learn more here.

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In a sales economy where up to 62% of sales people don't go for the close, how is a sales person supposed to succeed? First, they need to use a sales process that helps them manage the steps in a sales cycle in the right order. Second, they need to learn, or re-learn, basic selling skills. These skills include how to cold call, qualify prospects, ask the right questions, listen, handle objections, negotiate, close and retain customers.

The problem lies with finding the time to learn these skills, or at least get a refresher course in skills that were learned long ago and since forgotten. PEAK Sales Consulting now offers inexpensive, on-line sales training that helps new and experienced sales professionals learn basic skills such as cold calling, listening skills, qualifying, value-added selling, handling objections, negotiating, closing, and more.

Called "Sales Snippets", which range from 10 to 20 minutes each, these on-line training modules are Internet-based sessions that allow a sales person to get quick, concise training sessions on various selling skills. All ten Sales Snippets cost only $29.95.

"Our Sales Snippets are derived and summarized from our full sales training courses. They are brief training sessions for both new sales people for getting up to speed on basic selling skills as well as veteran sales reps to review sales techniques that have long been forgotten and to learn new skills required in today’s economy," said Russ Lombardo, President/Founder of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and instructor on the Sales Snippets programs.

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BusinessKnowHow: Thousands of new home businesses start in North America every day, many of which never see their fifth anniversary.

With a 90 percent failure rate in the first five years, most hopeful entrepreneurs wind up feeling discouraged and beaten, thinking they don't have what it takes to make their dream of home business come true.

One of the biggest reasons home businesses fail is because the new entrepreneur not only lacks the required marketing and sales skills, but chooses a business with a tremendous learning curve.

The energy, time and financial commitment required is significant because everything is new and undeveloped. Overwhelm and confusion set in, mistakes accumulate, frustration grows and finances dwindle as you work your way through the steep learning process.

If you are new to or considering a home business, you can flatten the learning curve and start generating income immediately by beginning with something you are already good to great at.

How to Turn Your Start-Up into an Instant Cash Cow [BusinessKnowHow]

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AllBusiness.com: Can you outsource your life? David Davin thinks so.

Davin is COO of DoMyStuff.com, a Beverly Hills-based online community where busy people can find someone else to do their chores and errands. Need someone to fix a dripping faucet? Just post your task on DoMyStuff.com, wait for the community to bid, and pick your assistant.

"Our lives are supposedly getting simpler with the advent of technology, but most people find themselves busier than ever," Davin says. "Everything comes together to form a white noise that distracts you from what's important."

The site started as a joke between founders Darren Berkovitz and Stacy Stubblefield. "Berkovitz said he wished he could outsource finding a girlfriend," Davin says. "He and Stacy had a good chuckle but when the laughter subsided, they thought, 'Why not?'"

A DoMyStuff.com member can be an employer, an assistant, or both. Employers can choose based on price, location, expertise, satisfaction rating, or the assistant's job history. Once an assistant is chosen, the employer puts money into an escrow account so the assistant knows it's there. Then work can begin. Afterward, the employer releases the funds from escrow to the assistant's account and employer and assistant can rate each other. DoMyStuff.com takes a percentage of each transaction.

DoMyStuff.com: Let the World Be Your Assistant [AllBusiness.com]

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Continued from Part 1 of the article More Profits From On-going Small Improvements by Abe WalkingBear Sanchez.

Twenty two years ago my younger son, Andres, was seven years old and one night he was doing some school homework. He was sitting at the dinner table with a sheet of paper and in the center he drew a box. Inside the box he wrote "A boy and his dogs". Then he drew a line from each corner of the box toward the edge of the paper and at the end of each line he wrote about something that had happened or been done, and by who. He then numbered these "actions" in sequence of events or priority. He then took a second sheet of paper and "A Boy and His Dogs" became the title and the "actions" became paragraphs...he was organizing and writing a story. A couple of weeks later while working with a distribution company on their Credit and A/R Management, the CEO asked if I could help organize and improve on how things were done in the warehouse...not knowing anything about warehouse operations I said "sure".

I thought the best place to start learning about the warehouse and about areas of opportunity for improvement was to ask the experts, the warehouse guys. Not having a flip chart or white board available we broke down a box and put it up on a warehouse wall. I then drew a box in the center of the box and I drew lines from the center box toward the edges of the flattened box...and then we called in the experts.

"Every business function must have a clearly stated purpose that addresses the costs associated with the carrying out of that business function.", I said to warehouse experts. They then led me through the costs involved with the warehouse function: inventory, heating/cooling, buildings, their paychecks, taxes, equipment and shrinkage/obsolescence. "So why incur the costs?, I asked. And of course one guy answered ,"To make a profit.". "What's the best way to "earn" a profit?", I asked. We finally came down to "meeting or exceeding customer expectations" as being the best way to earn a profit and for the warehouse function that meant having "an acceptable on time fill rate". In the box at the center of the flatten box I wrote "On-time Fill Rate".

The next step in organizing the "warehouse story" was to break it into "actions" or major components. We came up with receiving, shipping, truck maintenance, and inventory control, in sequence of events. The last thing we accomplished that day was to establish a goal for each of the major components: receiving...take in right and put up right, shipping...take down right and send out right, truck maintenance ...get what suppose to be where it's suppose to be when it's suppose to be, and inventory control...know what you need, what you have and where it's at. In a follow up session we establish how the goals would be accomplished...the steps needed to be taken in order to achieve the goals, and we also established who would do the work. The management team and I were then able to establish "Performance Measures" based on the ''goals."

Over the years I found that this method for organizing and documenting the knowledge needed to do things as right as possible the first time worked with any business function.

The Five Organizational Ps

Purpose: Every business function must have a clearly stated purpose which answers the question, "Why incur the costs that go with the function?"

Policies: Goal driven guidelines for each major component within the function.

Process: The step by step method for achieving the goals established by the policies.

People Requirements: The right people for the job based on the process.

Process Monitoring and Performance Measurements: Monitoring key steps in the process to ensure quality and measuring against the goals established by the policies.

If the established goals are not achieved either the process is wrong or you have the wrong guy in the job.

Financial profit is necessary for any business to stay in business and the best way to improve on profit is to do things as right as possible the first time. We will never achieve perfection because things keep changing and that's why Policies and Procedures are never done and we need to place a cover sheet on them that says "UNDER CONSTRUCTION".

One Size Does Not Fit All

Every person on the planet sees things differently, His Holiness, The Dali Lama says that there are six and a half billion of us and six and a half billion versions of reality and if you're married
you know what the Dali Lama is talking about...it's the same with companies. Businesses are a collection of many different people, none of whom define the business but collectively they make up the business. And what works at one company may not work at another... every company and it's people are unique . The process for best business practices must be based on each company's understanding of what is... is.

In Closing

It was time to rotate the tires on the pick-up and for an oil change and lube, I knew it was time because of the sticker on the corner of the windshield. I've learned it's best to make an appointment rather than just show up at the tire place and have to wait if they're busy...guess what? ...no phone number on the sticker. This is a national tire chain and yet I had to wait and remember to look up their phone number when I got home. If I had been able to call them from the pick-up at the time I'd noticed the sticker I'd might have been able to get in sooner, and at my age they were lucky I didn't space it out altogether. I mentioned all this to the asst. manager when I was checking in and he got it at once...he pulled out a note pad and wrote it all down
saying as he did so ,"This is one for corporate, we all use the same stickers." Good for him...now lets see if Big O corporate gets it.

When people are told that on-going small improvements are desired and that they will be measured on coming up with them, they become different people. They find that they are capable of thinking outside the established box and that it gives far more meaning to their work lives, than just a paycheck.

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

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This is Part 1 of the article More Profits From On-going Small Improvements by Abe WalkingBear Sanchez.

Save a step here and a penny there and then repeat it a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times and they add up. Now use/invest the time saved and the money saved to do something productive like looking for further improvements and it really starts to add up. And along with enhanced profitability, people's lives are changed for the better.

The Japanese have a word, "Kaizen". Kai means on-going and zen means better...the Chinese word Gaisan breaks down to gai, to correct and san, to benefit. These folks have a history of struggle in order to survive and tend to be pragmatic. We Americans, in our collective memory, believe that there's always a new virgin forest to be exploited over the next hill. Our mindset about there always being "excess" makes us wasteful in our private and business lives and is a OBSTACLE to on-going improvements.

This is my 25th year of avoiding a real job by conducting seminars and training for CEOs and top business managers and I'm still taken aback to hear business executives say that the purpose of being in business is to make a profit, without any further explanation. There are many ways to make a profit, you can rip the employees off for their retirement plan or fail to fully fund the plan...sound familiar? A company can also make a profit by cheating customers and suppliers or by pulling an Enron. A better way to "earn" a profit is by "Meeting or exceeding customer expectations...at a profit".

On average 25% of the Total Cost of Doing Business is tied to inefficiencies...the waste of time, energy or materials, and I've had many CEOs tell me that 25% is on the low end ...that's a bunch. Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase , of Coase's Law , says that there is friction/costs involved with being in business. There is the original friction or cost of finding suppliers, employees and customers. There's the on-going friction or transactional costs, and then there's the greatest friction of all... the friction of failure.

Prior to entering the training field in 1982 I had a real job as the corporate credit manager for a regional company based in Denver. My duties as the credit manager included the approval of new credit customers and the management (not collection) of past due A/R. I soon found that on average 70% plus of all past due customers had not paid on time due to "something going wrong somewhere." In the process of fixing things that had gone wrong I found that I could identify areas of opportunity for improvement throughout the entire supply chain thus driving down everyone’s cost of doing business.

The New Guy Learns From the Old Guy Who Learned From The Dead Guy:

It may not be so in some companies, but all too often employees and business managers still operate from a "They don't pay me enough to think." mindset...like automatons they repeat how they do things over and over again until it becomes engrained. And all too often CEOs and top management are complicit if not directly responsible. If you are a business manager pull out your job description, if you're a CEO pull out your managers' job descriptions and check to see if it/they say anything about "Constant Improvement". A business manager not focused on improvement becomes an administrator at best and a bureaucrat at worst.

Before improvement/change for the better can take place two thing must happen; first there must be an acceptance or acknowledgment that a business doesn't have to be sick in order to improve, there is always room for improvement. Then there must be a commitment made as to who will do what when...and the efforts must be tracked and measured.

Change always generates resistance; expect it in others and in yourself. Tell the affected employees of the changes to be made and then ask why the changes won't work...take notes for this will become a "to do" list. Keep changes small so that people can succeed, but once they mastered a change introduce the next small change...no stress no change. And of course pay people for doing what you want done...like thinking and coming up with improvements.

An old axiom says that "People respect (do) what is inspected (measured) not what is expected". Can you imagine the chaos that would result if traffic cops were pulled off the roads? In much the same way business managers need to be told that a primary function of their job is to think, to always be looking for ways to save a step, a minute or a penny...and then they must be measured.

Continued in Part 2 of the article More Profits From On-going Small Improvements.

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

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AllBusiness.com: I remember as a young college kid (yeah, I'm old enough to say that now), I worked in a ski and patio furniture store (it was the Midwest so skiing in the winter, patio furniture in the summer). What I learned quickly in selling the goods was that most people had no working knowledge of skiing or patio furniture and it came down to a price game with our competitors.

So I educated them first and foremost about patio furniture. I explained why an aluminum frame was better, how powder coating lasted longer than any other finish, and why the manufacturer felt comfortable offering a five year warranty.

So customers weren't given the hard sell, but an education. And that invariably turned into customers checking out the competition and then almost always coming back to us to buy (even if another store was selling the same thing). Here are a few ways you can better educate your customers.

Touch each customer while they're in your store - spend a little time explaining why a certain product or brand is unique or better than everything else that's out there (or teach about the entire category (biking, skiing, patio furniture, etc.)).

Host a special event - It doesn't have to be sales-oriented. Create educational events and the sales will follow.

Use your database and email - I'm a big proponent of emails that aren't about selling something, but about educating someone. What's relevant to your customer base? Speak to that and include the selling part as a mention at the end. For instance, you may want to educate your customers about sunscreen and the importance of wearing it. And then at the end just add, "here are three products we recommend."

Educate Your Customers to Increase Sales [AllBusiness.com]

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Each month, on the first Friday of the month I meet with my mastermind group. It’s a small group and we’ve been together for about 5 years. We begin each month writing down our list of promises - what we intend to take action on in the next 30 days.

Well, I just couldn’t get my arms around what I wanted to focus on this month. It’s not that I can’t think of things to do, I’ve got plenty. Nothing felt particularly inspiring - no passion, no real juice!

Then I realized that my focus has been divided by things I’ve been meaning to follow up on. My email inbox is filled with more red flag on emails that need follow up and each time I read my emails I am reminded that I still haven’t gotten to them. The flags keep multiplying and they have really piled up.

Not only that, I have tons of reports, ebooks, music audios I’ve received from free promos as well as things I’ve bought that I haven’t even looked at or listened to. I have no idea of their real value because I haven’t made the time to go through them. And I am constantly receiving invitations for more stuff!

Now, I’m pretty good at decluttering and I can see I’ve let things pile up that are affecting my ability to focus on what I really want to do for marketing and growing my business. So, I am dedicating the month of July to clean up my computer files NO EXCUSES.

If you’re feeling a lack of focus, ask yourself if you need to do some computer decluttering.

This includes:

1. Emails that require a response. I recommend staying on top of your emails by responding within 48 hours max.

2. Creating email folders with common themes and sorting through your files to organize them into new folders (great for both your email and computer files). Remember to declutter the folders regularly too. Moving them out of your inbox can invite clutter accumulating in your folders.

3. Weeding through your emails and deleting the ones you no longer need.

4. Backing up important folders and files regularly. I do this each time I add something new. Organize them into themes (Marketing, business development, client resources) so you can find them!

5. Reviewing your cache of reports, pdfs, and audios you have been meaning to read and listen to. Schedule time each day or each week in your calendar to sift through the materials.

6. Dumping whatever materials you know you won’t use for yourself or clients.

7. Staying alert to adding more stuff that you really don’t want or need. I know the tendency is to grab material especially when it’s free. Ask yourself, “Is this really info I need and will make use of?” If not, let it go. I guarantee you that opportunities will keep comin around for you to find material you need if you start having buyer’s (or keeper’s) regret.

I recommend decluttering your computer at least once per month to stay productive and focused.

Well, gotta go. Have some decluttering to do. Leave me a comment. Tell me what you think of this post!

Dr. Lorraine Cohen, President of Powerfull Living, brings more than 25 years experience in personal and business coaching, psychological counseling, and sales to thousands of spiritually minded business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders from a wide range of industries. Learn more about Lorraine’s services, success products and programs.

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I’ve analysed what is happening and begun to point the way for those who want to pre-empt the changes rather than wait until they are overtaken by them. Now is the time to decide which category you come into.

Those willing to plan will be rewarded; those not willing to do so will have to take potluck. There are six essentials for your new work life:

Be a specialist in one area but make sure you are more widely qualified and trained than just for your specialisation.

Understand yourself as thoroughly as you can.

Doing this is not a ‘one-off’ operation. We all change as we learn more and grow. Now is the moment to find out what you really want to do. Those who are ambitious to make money have a chance to get themselves equipped to take advantage of the new workplace. Those who want to help socially can prepare themselves for the new needy. They will be quite different from those we think of as ‘poor’ today and their requirements will be much more challenging. Those who seek to advance science or enjoy an academic life will have to be closer to the application of their studies and teaching.

Write a career plan.

It doesn’t have to be a major document, bound in silk. One page should be enough to tell you where you are heading and how you are going to get there. But it has to be a well-thought-out page. You should take stock of your career at least once a year, however well you are doing. You wouldn’t leave your money unattended for any longer. Why leave your career to find it’s own way.

Based on your career plan, equip yourself with the qualifications you need. You don’t have to leave work to do this. There are many courses you can take outside work hours. Select the ones that will benefit you in the portfolio of jobs you will most likely be doing to which I referred previously.

Train and re-train so that you keep your skills up to date.

Just as a building needs retrofitting quite frequently, so your skills need honing and polishing, especially when they are concerned with the new technologies. Sales personnel who don’t know their products are going to the wall. Surgeons who don’t keep up with the new developments are going to the courts.

If you are not already equipped to handle the main new technologies, remedy this failing without delay. You are going to need all the resources you can muster. I already notice people who can’t or won’t understand the new communication technologies falling well behind their rivals – and that applies at the top of the organisation as well as at the bottom.

Prepare the family to be part of the work team.

Yes, even the young children should understand that the breadwinners are working for them and they must help in their own ways. You couldn’t prepare them better for their working lives.

Establish and cultivate your network.

Networking is already important – we all know that. In The New Work World it is going to be even more so. This aspect of your preparation for dealing with The New Work Revolution is so important that I am going to devote the next article exclusively to it.

John Bittleston blogs at TerrificMentors.com, a site that provides mentoring for those who wish a change in career or job, wanting to start a business or looking to improve their handling of people (including themselves).

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Small Business Buzz: The number one rule for advertising quality in your product or service is to not use the word “quality.” Because this word is overused by the general business public, consumers ignore it. In fact, using the word “quality” can often invoke suspicion, much like when a business uses the phrase “you can trust me.”

Here are some tips for effectively conveying quality to potential customers:

Alternative Descriptions

The word “quality” in general is a limiting term, despite the negative connotations that it’s overuse has produced. It’s hard to do (I just caught myself using the term in my own advertising for my photography services), but instead you should go with alternatives like these:

premium, unparalleled, superior, impeccable, exceptional, unmatched, excellence, distinguished

Also, keep in mind that, the more expensive your product/service, the more sophisticated your “quality” word should be.

Speaking of Price. . .

Accept the fact that, if your product or service is truly of the best quality, then it won’t be the cheapest on the market. It takes money to provide a worthwhile product, which means that you will have to charge your customers a bit more. But, if you do things right, your customers will understand that they are getting what they pay for. So be careful. Saying that your product is “inexpensive” or cheap implies poor quality to the consumer. You cannot use the two concepts together. Instead, try words like “affordable” or “reasonable.”

Advertising Quality in Your Product [Small Business Buzz]

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During the summer months, every large city in America is filled with hundreds of festivals. If you are an entrepreneur looking to get into a retail business, these festivals can be an inexpensive way to test out your products to see if it will really attract a large enough customer base to warrant a year around business. But remember when you are writing your business plan; you have avoided a lot of the costs of a permanent location by having a festival business.

You pay a small fee to the festival and have not encountered rent and utilities, which are some of the high expenses for a fixed location. You have also not had to do much in the way of advertising. The festival had done advertising and has a client base that will show up. You only need to have an attractive booth to entice the customers over to your location. Make sure your signage looks professional and is viewable from major traffic centers for the festival.

But many people get into festival sales as their business instead of a trial for their business. With a number of calls you will find a listing of the festivals in a newspaper calendar or an on-line calendar of the festivals for the year. You will see that you can find festivals going 30 weeks in some of the northern climates up to every week of the year in some of the moderate climates. You can work as much or as little as you want or whatever season you want to work by starting a festival business.

There is a lot of work in these businesses that everyone should consider. With a store, you just open the door each morning. But with a festival business, you will have to unload and set up your merchandise every morning and put it away every night. Make sure all of your display methods are bought with this in mind. Items on wheel that you can move along a rough terrain are great. Make sure you have an adequate vehicle to carry all of you set up and merchandise and that you have an easy way of loading and unloading it.

Unsure if you want to get into this business? Go to a festival in your area. During some of the slack time, ask some of the booth owners a lot of questions about their business. Also you may fine one that is willing to hire your for a nominal fee or as a volunteer to help them with the next weekend’s festival. Work a few festivals unloading and setting up each morning with the owner to make sure your really want to do that many weekends during the year.

This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for GetEntrepreneurial.com readers by Stan Spector. View all articles in this column by Stan Spector.

Stan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income - Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book's website can be found at StanSpector.com.

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Quite often, when I talk to potential founders, I hear them say: "I have an idea. I guess, now I need a business plan." Yes, right.

But before jumping straight into such an exercise (which most people by far underestimate in terms of time and effort required), there are a couple of completely non-business questions to be answered. Whenever you have trouble answer them, make sure to get them resolved before continuing, as they have a huge impact on any business plan:

Why do I want to do this at all?

A lot of aspiring founders are stumbling on that one already. To make a living? To get rich? To improve the world? To become famous? Just out of curiosity to see whether it would work? To earn some money on the side?

This question alone has some implications for your business plan: the aggressiveness of the plan, or the underlying business model (it's not that difficult to make a living out of a one-person consulting business, but probably it will not make you extremely rich).

What price I am willing to pay?

Everything in life comes attached with a price tag, although not necessarily a monetary one. The price one has to pay while founding a business can be high. Reduced spare time, long working hours even on weekends, reduced time available for friends and family, financial uncertainty. The higher the price you are willing to pay, the better your chances are for succeeding.

What do my family and friends think about it?

This question has two aspects:

- What do they think about the business idea?

This gives you a first feedback from the market, at least on a high level (at least if you plan to have some kind of consumer business in mind). If all your friends and family tell you "Founding a travel agency selling trips to Mars is stupid" - you should at least evaluate their feedback. If they just don't understand your business because it is some highly advanced biotech concept, you should seek feedback from people more familiar with the particular area you plan to start your business.

- What do they think about the fact that I want to start a business?

This is an important fact as you will need at least their understanding or - even better- their support in the upcoming months or years. It can be quite annoying when you hear every time you meet friends things like "Did I tell you already the story of the guy who went bankrupt when trying to start a business?"

Honest feedback is important, but it is much better to receive it with a "You can do it" rather with a "You are doomed" attitude.

How much risk can I bear?

This highly depends on your current circumstances and your financial resources. If you are single, just out of university and little monthly running cost, you probably can take a higher risk than somebody who has to earn money to support a family of five. But if the later has already made a fortune, the situation might be just the other way around...

Can I do it alone or not?

In general, I highly recommend to not start a business alone (unless you plan just a one-person consulting business). But whenever your idea gets more complex and goes beyond freelancing, sharing the burden with enhances the chances for a successfully start. If - you partner with the right person:

Do I partner with the right people?

I always say that starting a business with one (or more) partners is like marriage without a separation of property: You stick together for a major part of your time, a "divorce" is not easy and is usually painful. So, make sure you team with the right people.

Some criterias are:

- Although tempting at the beginning, partnering with friends is not always the best idea. Friendship can make you blind for some important aspects to consider.

- Diversity of skills: Does your team has all the necessary skills you require? Business, marketing, technical skill, whatever is required. Chances are that your friends have similar skills if you know them from studying or former work.

- Same level of risk tolerance and same motivation: Make sure the people you partner with share both your willingness and ability to share risk( e.g. live of from savings for some time) and the same motivation. If one of you wants to build the next Google, while the other juts wants to do something next to his regular job, a major clash is just a question of time.

What are my No-Go criteria?

My last (and probably most important) advice is to clearly define No-Go criteria even before you start, and make sure that everybody on the team subscribes to them. This could be a deadline for a agreed business plan, for getting funding, for a technical proof of concept. Not every idea is as bright as it seems at the beginning. More often than not, founders find out during business planning that their concept does not support a company, has too little room for growth or faces high technical risks. Have the courage to pull the plug early on. When you willing to do that, based on clear criteria, you can be sure you continue building your business on a good foundation.

Klaus Wiedemann is Founder and Managing Director of Daisho Blacksmith GmbH, a product and consulting company dedicated to support todays professional with software and methodology to sharpen their competitive edge. He blogs regularly at Not For Slaves, focusing on the working environment of the 21st century and its implications and opportunities for the individual.

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YoungEntrepreneur: She never wanted to run her own business; she just wanted to be the best mom she knew how to be. But today, what began as a single children’s educational video that she filmed in her basement with a friend’s camera and her cat as a prop, has morphed into a billion dollar company that continues to be an industry leader.

According to Aigner-Clark:

“About a year into my daughter’s life, I started thinking about the whole idea of making a video for babies. Something stimulating and positive. I wondered, ‘Why isn’t there a way to expose her to the arts and sciences?’ I found the marketplace completely lacked what I was looking for.

I started this company because my children are at the age when you start to worry that they know about stranger safety, especially when they are on the Internet. I wanted a video that would be fun for them to watch as well as teach them. I am passionate about this and I am optimistic in its success.

I knew my baby. I knew what she liked to look at. I assumed that what my baby liked to look at, most other babies would, too.

The first Baby Einstein video took off because it was a completely new concept. It was an entirely new idea. No one else had videos for babies.

There was nothing on the market that I felt was any good, so I decided to make something myself.”

To be successful as an entrepreneur you need to sell a unique product or service. If you are selling the same product as everyone else you are unlikely to break through and create a successful company.

Is your product or service really something that is unique and valuable?

Find Something Nobody Else Is Selling [YoungEntrepreneur]

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Entrepreneur: "Why can't we all just get along?"

Rodney King's 1991 plea has become part of our nation's vernacular. While the dialogue on diversity has led to passionate conversations about what it means to be civil, we still struggle with the essence of the question: Why can't we all just get along?

At the core of "getting along" are rules, obligations and norms that, when shared, provide the foundation for strong, stable relationships and flourishing communities. Through such conventions of civility, we learn about what polite behavior and manners mean to the community. Some might say these rules provide a sense of order; others would suggest that civility fosters feelings of well-being and positive relationships.

So, what can we do to foster workplaces that are more civil and respectful? First, we can have conversations about what being civil means for different people. This would provide some sense of shared norms, with the ultimate goal of creating respectful, valued relationships, strengthening communication, and fostering interpersonal and team collaboration. Some simple actions that we can all take include:

- noticing your point of view, particularly when you're holding tight to it, and making a point to seek out and truly listen to perspectives different than yours;

- speaking up when others are excluded.

Being civil means being constantly aware of others and weaving restraint, respect and consideration into this awareness. Civility is attending to the community at large in our everyday interactions. The goal is moving beyond politeness, tiptoeing around conversations so as not to offend, or saying what you think you're supposed to say, to more authentic sharing.

The Unwritten Rules of Civility [Entrepreneur]

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Entrepreneur: They say that wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making mistakes. How true. This article intends to help you gain wisdom from the experience of others rather than having to pay the cost of learning from your own mistakes. These mistakes can represent real dollars--and avoiding them can make a big difference in the total investment you need for your new business and ultimately how profitable the business becomes.

Franchise companies will almost certainly have manuals, training programs and other support documents and services designed to help you avoid making costly mistakes. The challenge is that most new franchisees are trying to learn and execute many new things at once and sometimes make what they feel are logical decisions without remembering or consulting all the advice provided by the franchisor.

It's always a great idea, during your due diligence conversations with existing franchisees in the system, to ask them if they made any expensive mistakes when they were first building or operating their new business. A good form for this question is, "Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you got to start all over again in building your business?"

Expensive Mistakes to Avoid as a New Franchisee [Entrepreneur]

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“Caller tune Advertisement” is all about publishing advertisements as caller tunes on user’s mobile phones, so that the callers will listen to the advertisement until the user picks up the phone. In a nutshell, this idea is all about the mobile users trading their ringtone airtime for monetary benefits, which can be used to publish advertisement.

This concept is all about publishing advertisement as a replacement for caller tunes or in-conjunction with caller tunes in user’s mobile phones. In return, users will get monetary benefits like free recharge coupons, discounts in bills, partial reimbursement of bills, free talk minutes, free value adds like free SMS, etc. These kinds of freebies will attract users to allow users to give up their ring tone airtime to place advertisement. Gaining publisher base will be a challenge. A good publisher base means a huge market potential. The success of this advertisement medium will be determined by the publisher base.

This new business idea is patent-pending and its owner, TarryOnline is looking for interested investors.

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Is this a familiar scenario? You’re this close to landing the biggest deal you ever encountered. The solution you are pitching is nearly one hundred thousand dollars and will keep you busy the better part of the long Winter months ahead and possibly into the Spring. You planned about 4 months worth of consulting and are eager to begin. Now, at the final meeting with your client, you are about to get the sweet answer you’ve been working hard to get for months. There’s not much else that compares to the excitement of getting a signature on a huge deal you’ve been working on for what seems like forever. But here you are, actually watching the client sign your order.

You’re set. You go out and celebrate that night with your spouse and talk about how much you deserved this and what it meant to your income and, of course, your business. The long hours. The pressure. The sacrifices. But now that’s all over and you got what you deserved. A huge contract that will yield a lot of consulting dollars for your relatively small operation.

The next day you order the products or materials from your vendor. It arrives in a couple days and having already set up the first meeting with your client, you set out with everything you need to begin work. The first few weeks would include discussions and interviews for the discovery analysis. Then the planning phase. And finally the customizations, implementation, training, and roll out. The plan is perfect and you are the right man, or woman, for the job.

Reality Hits

Did you ever wake up out of a dream and have no idea where you are or how you got there? Well, that’s how you feel months later when you realize that your project is coming to a close. It is a great success. Your client loves you. The users are getting on board with the project and are very enthusiastic. The program works like a charm. Everything is coming together. Except for one thing -- Your Business! You suddenly realize as you finalize this long-term project that your business is totally stagnating, and you have no idea how you got to that point.

As if you were a prisoner being paroled after a 20 year sentence and seeing how society has totally changed in your absence, you emerge to find that you have absolutely no opportunities lined up to pursue. Worse than that, your vendors thought you went out of business. You lost all your status as a premier reseller or buyer, which means you lost all the privileges from your vendor’s reseller program; such as leads, special promotions, co-op dollars, attention from their local field representatives, and most important, a higher discount rate that is based on volume sales. You also shot yourself in the foot by not generating any leads yourself through marketing activities you could have been doing over the past several months. So your pipeline is dry, no one in the area knows of your business any more, and you are back to ground zero.

Has this ever happened to you? If it hasn’t it could. In this example, months ago you thought you were such a huge success, pulling in a large deal involving huge revenue for your business. How were you to know that at the same time you were destroying the very business you were trying to build?

What To Do?

If this, or something less dramatic yet similar, has ever happened to you, then you could be experiencing the Saw-Tooth Effect. What’s the Saw-Tooth Effect? It’s all very simple to understand. But not many businesses realize it until it is too late. Here’s how it works. Draw a horizontal line. Above the line are marketing and sales related activities. Below the line are technical and implementation related activities. In the beginning of your sales cycle you spend all your time above the line marketing your business, generating leads, and closing a sale. Then you “disappear” for a finite amount of time below the line implementing the solution you just sold. When that job is completed, you go back to the above-the-line activities and start all over again. This up-and-down process repeats itself until something breaks – usually your business.

While below the line, you do nothing above the line. And, when above the line, you do nothing below the line. Pretty simple and quite binary – you do one or the other. But the problem is, when you’re below the line, no one is above the line generating business and finding your next opportunity for when you rise above the line again, or re-emerge from your project implementation.

Recommendation

This scenario is a classic example of what happens to smaller businesses who haven’t staffed up properly. To resolve this self-defeating situation you, as the business owner, may need to do a lot of soul searching to decide what it is you are really good at versus what you really like to do. You may realize that you really enjoy selling solutions and would benefit most by concentrating all your energies on the sales and marketing activities (above the line) that your company will need to do to succeed.

Let’s say that is the case and you decide to focus on sales and marketing. You’ll then need to hire staff to do all the technical work. Now, you shouldn’t go overboard and hire more people than you could initially put to work. Let’s say you remember how important it was to do the up-front planning and discovery analysis, not to mention the on-going project management. So you first hire a project manager who is experienced with doing the planning phase. Next, you hire a technician who would concentrate on implementations. Your project manager, or even you, would do the training initially until you have enough business to sustain a full-time trainer. But first things first.

Your plan will be to spend your time marketing, selling, and running your business, all above-the-line activities, while your technical people spend all their time below the line. While they are doing the implementations, you’ll be generating new business for them to implement. You will build and feed your “Pipeline”.

You have to go out and catch the lion. Then you bring it back and throw it into the tent where someone else skins the lion while you go back out and catch the next one. The question is – Do you want to “catch” the lion or “skin” the lion?” This will, and should, have a dramatic effect on your business; specifically its growth and success. In time, as your business continues to grow you can start hiring sales people, which will allow you to focus more on running your business, or even taking some well-deserved time off.

Summary

You have undoubtedly looked at a saw and noticed how the teeth go up and down and up and down and so forth. But, have you ever noticed a similarity in how your business might be following the same pattern? Sales go up for a while, then down, then up again and down again, repeatedly. If you haven’t noticed, you might want to take a closer look.

One telltale sign that you suffer from the Saw Tooth Effect is your purchasing patterns. Do you purchase a lot of products or material every other quarter, for instance? Or, is there some sort of pattern that has you purchasing something now, then nothing for a while, then something again, then nothing for a while, and so on? These are signs that you might be going through a specific mode of operation of buying product, implementing it, then buying more, and implementing it, over and over again, instead of having a consistent and perpetual flow of selling and implementing on a continual, parallel, and steady basis. You cannot do both selling and implementing. You never see a NASCAR driver get out and change his own tires, do you? If he did, he’d lose the race every time. You need a team of specialists who focus on their own aspect of the business.

The Saw Tooth Effect is not a healthy business model for your company since it doesn’t allow you to sustain a consistent revenue flow. The scenario discussed earlier was perhaps an exaggeration of what is happening in your business, although I have seen this happen to various sizes of business. Even if it reflects only partial reality, it is something to be concerned about. It’s all a matter of balancing resources. Some resources should be dedicated to marketing and selling, while others should focus on installing and implementing. Using the same resources to do both can cause the Saw Tooth Effect and result in inconsistent revenue and growth for your business, which can lead to a variety of negative effects including poor customer retention and harmful relationships with your vendors, not to mention your accountant.

As you plan your business’ future, be sure to take into account the Saw Tooth Effect and how you can avoid it. It will truly liberate you from the prison of inconsistent business growth.

Good luck and good selling!

Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success. Russ is author of the books, "CyberSelling", "CRM For The Common Man" and "Smart Marketing". He can be reached at 702-655-5652 and emailed at russ@peaksalesconsulting.com.

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Bplans Blog: Think of it as the heart of the business, like the heart of the artichoke: it's a group of three core concepts that can't be separated. Market, identity, and focus. Don't pull them apart. It's the interrelationship between them that drives your business.

I've been working on this in the context of business planning, particularly the "just enough" planning I've been writing about lately, which I've also called the "not so big" business plan. Somebody I know and respect suggested that the heart of a business plan is the marketing plan, and that led me to thinking about the heart of the artichoke.

Like the leaves of the artichoke, the rest of the plan is vital and it surrounds the heart. The rest of the plan is a matter of metrics, milestones, assumptions, responsibility and accountability, dates, deadlines, budgets, and of course financial projections to support cash flow. The heart of it, however, is that trio.

And I realize that it goes beyond business planning. The heart of the planning is the heart of the business itself. The trio at the core is what drives the business.

Heart of a Plan: Market, Identity, Focus [Bplans Blog]

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BusinessKnowHow: If you're a savvy marketer, you've got all kinds of clever ways to get the word out about your business. You might have a blog or a customer newsletter, take out paid ads in newspapers and magazines, or submit press releases when you have news. You might donate products or services to charity, use free directories, have a page on MySpace, or offer free consultations.

There are myriad free and low-cost ways to promote your business. Have you considered public speaking? Public speaking includes not just giving speeches, but also attending mixers, networking events and referrals groups.

Public speaking is a free and easy way to promote your business. Here are some ways to make it work for you.

1) Make friends and build relationships through networking - How you present yourself at these events (and any time you talk about your business) is how people will remember you and your business. Make an effort to get to know people and find out how you can be a resource to them in ways that might or might not include your business.

2) Offer your services as a speaker - Contact businesses, nonprofits, and associations in your community by e-mail, or call to get information about their needs. Provide them with professional marketing materials if they ask; at minimum, have a website they can refer to for more information. Tell them about your expertise and most significantly, how you can help them.

3) Promote your business by not promoting it - Be a resource to people. Teach them something new. Leave them wanting more. And make sure to bring your marketing materials and business cards so they can find you later.

Three Tips for Promoting Your Business Through Public Speaking [BusinessKnowHow]

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A Crystal Clear Vision Ensures Success Throughout Your Organization

With increasing global competition, it is more important than ever that each employee in your organization have a clear understanding of the company’s overall vision, be in alignment with the organizational goals, and have identified how their day to day activities contribute....

Continued in BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 54 >>>

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Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

- Building A Gamers' Brand
- Emotion-Stirring Marketing
- Main Customer Focus
- Being Your Own Boss
- How To Make Your Website Work For You
- Focus On Your Writing Skills
- Home Business Basics

Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

Can't stand your demanding boss anymore? Start your own business! Before that, be sure to subscribe to our free informative newsletter. BIZNESS! is jointly published by CoolBusinessIdeas.com and GetEntrepreneurial.com What you get in BIZNESS! - the latest new business ideas, small business advice, business tips and info and entrepreneur resources. Everything you need for your brand new business!

Free 145-pages PDF report (worth $75) - "2006's Best Business Ideas" - included with your subscription. Learn more here.

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If you have good writing skills why don’t you capitalize on this skill for your retirement business? But there is a catch to these types of businesses. Don’t think your main business will be doing the writing. You main business will be selling. You’ll see as I go along what this means.

You could write a book and try to find a publisher to publish your book. It’s a low probability situation that a well known publisher will pick up your first book. You could take your book and have a “self-publishing” company put it together and make it available at all of the on-line book stores and any book store can order it for a customer. But you are the “Chief Marketing Officer” and the hardest part of the job is generating the sales.

If you have an expertise in some industry along with your writing skills, you could produce a newsletter for that industry. Most industries have national and statewide magazines. Focus on a citywide newsletter for that industry. Let companies buy advertisement to sell their spare capacity-time, spare raw material inventory, job openings or their unique expertise. You will have to add a number of industry interest articles each month, much of which you can get from the Internet, with proper approval from the author. You can also write articles about local industry leaders. Much of the work will be maintaining the mailing or e-mailing lists to send the newsletter to and getting it out. You will see that much of your time will be in the advertisement sales and newsletter distribution tasks.

You can also select a small “interest” or “geographic” area and develop a newspaper for that area. College campuses, ethnic groups, noted neighborhoods and hobbyists are some areas you can consider. The hard part of setting up a successful newspaper is finding a sector that businesses will be willing to buy advertisement to reach that audience. Once you have a large enough critical mass of advertisers, it is easy to tailor the articles and reports to be of interest to these groups.

Writers get your quills out and try one of these ideas. It is a low initial investment to get these businesses going. You will put in a lot of your time to get them started but it won’t take too much up front money. Small publications frequently do not provide enough profit for a full time job, but we are looking for businesses that will only supplement your income. More details of each of these ideas can be found in my book.

This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for GetEntrepreneurial.com readers by Stan Spector. View all articles in this column by Stan Spector.

Stan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income - Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book's website can be found at StanSpector.com.

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With steadily increasing global competition, it is more important than ever that each employee in your organization have a clear understanding of the company’s overall vision, be in alignment with the organizational goals, and have identified how their day to day activities contribute to the accomplishment of these objectives.

No longer do people have the luxury of arriving at work, completing their assigned tasks, and going home, thinking, magically, that everything will continue to work out as before. We are experiencing a rapidly changing business climate, which demands shifts in attitudes and creative thinking in order to meet the challenges of the future.

How can your company accomplish this throughout your organization?

Beginning, as author Steven Covey, reminds us, “with the end in mind.” As an executive, you must ask yourself and your team what the “ideal” looks like in each key area. In sales, for example, what would be the ideal situation? How would it appear? What about manufacturing, administration, and distribution? If everything were operating perfectly, how would you describe it?

Bringing key management together for this type of strategic planing session will result in your having identified a crystal clear vision for the entire organization, with each and every segment of the business functioning at it’s optimal level.

This visioning exercise can then be adapted and used by each department to create a “mini” version for their own area of responsibility and, further, to the individual, enabling she or he to relate their job to the bigger picture as well as their personal goals.

Once you have a clear vision of what the ideal would be in each area of your organization, the next step is to identify several goals by which you can measure your progress. For the sake of this exercise, we’ll use a one year time frame, since this is a reasonable period to institute change, while allowing you to experience success early on.

Looking at each segment of your business, what would have to happen to accomplish your ideal vision? If, for example, in distribution, the ideal was to achieve 100% on time delivery and no more than a 72 hour turnaround, what are the measurable goals that would support it’s accomplishment?

When setting goals, it is important to use the S.M.A.R.T. method , whereby each goals is Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timed. Specifically, what will you accomplish by when? Then, from your list of goals, you can develop 30–90 day milestones and further reduce those to identify the daily actions that must be taken in order to succeed.

For example, part of the vision for your sales department might be, “To be the best in our industry. To be the ‘gold standard’ by which our competition measures itself against.” This will likely translate to an increase in sales, improved customer retention, better referrals and so on.

From this, the sales woman in your New Jersey territory may, looking at her personal vision and goals, decide she wants to earn 50% more in commissions and calculates that this would require XX dollars in sales each quarter. From this, she has determined, based on past performance, how many sales per month she needs and, further, how many presentations she needs to make each week. This breaks down further into how many calls she needs to make each day in order to accomplish this, what additional systems she might implement to achieve better customer retention, and which networking functions would best support her vision.

With each and every individual, in each and every department, holding the same, clear vision and knowing their role in it’s accomplishment, you will experience a level of success beyond your wildest expectations.

Jim Donovan, is the author of several critically acclaimed self-help and business books, published in 22 countries, a highly sought after motivational speaker, and the President of Jim Donovan Associates, a peak performance consulting company that offers programs and services to help companies grow and prosper in today's competitive marketplace. To learn more visit JimDonovanAssociates.com.

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Entrepreneur Daily: Sports fans of all ages have plenty of team memorabilia to help them root on their favorite players. But what about the increasing number of grown-up gamers? How can they show off their gaming pride? Before G8 Brand, there weren't too many options. But now, this lifestyle brand hopes to change the public's perception of gamers and their sense of style. "I always wondered why nobody had ever done an apparel brand for gamers," said Tony Crisp, owner of G8 Brand. "What Quiksilver has given to surfers and what Volcom has given to skaters is what I want G8 Brand to give to gamers … a brand to call their own."

The first collection of t-shirts consists of high-fashion prints inspired by gaming designs and classic video game imagery. As for the future, the brand plans to launch a special artist series of tees, in addition to a signature series with some of the world's top pro gamers.

New Brand Targets Gamers [Entrepreneur Daily]

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In this article, I shall describe the most important attributes and activities to ensure success. I define success as being popular, powerful, rich, free and happy. A series of disciplines can show you the path but only you can tread it.

“I can provide the recipes but you must do the cooking.”

We all want to be popular. Every human being longs to be loved. Some deny that they feel this way. They really need help because they are denying a basic requirement of life. There is nothing wrong with seeking popularity but it must be sought in moderation. The desire becomes dangerous when it becomes more important than everything else. Most people go through short phases of desperately needing to be popular. That's all right as long as the need doesn't last. A normal wish to be liked by our friends and family is healthy. Indeed, if families devoted more effort to being nice to each other much pain and suffering would be spared.

Think about the people you like. Do they talk about themselves all the time? Of course not. If they did you wouldn't like them. So to be popular you must think of the other person. Most of us are wrapped up in ourselves a lot of the time. At its worst it is called selfishness and it is a serious problem. If you think it is someone else’s problem, you are probably wrong; it is more likely a problem for you.

Interesting people are nearly always popular. An interesting person is one who asks you a lot of questions about yourself, your life, your work, your play, your ambitions, your fears. They show a genuine interest in your views. They want your opinions. They may themselves have many excellent stories to tell; they may be wise beyond their years. If they are clever they will work their stories and wisdom into the way they generate your interest – through the questions they ask you. Success or failure for them is the response you give. It is rare indeed for someone not to respond when the subject being discussed is the most interesting in the world – the person themselves.

Interesting people are generally popular, but not always. They need to be nice as well. That means dealing decently with people, showing concern and care, helping when a hand is needed. That help must consist of two quite distinct elements.

One is demeanour - how you appear to others. In a nutshell, smile. People who smile genuinely generate warmth and a special, non-threatening intimacy. There’s another aspect to being nice, being polite. The encyclopaedia says that the purpose of politeness is to make all of the parties to an exchange relaxed and comfortable with one another. Think of politeness as giving face to the other person. We do it to those we meet socially and don’t know very well. Do we do it to our loved ones, within the family, to our colleagues at work? We should. The rude person, however loved, is never popular.

The other way to help I call ‘sleeves’ – roll them up and get on with it. Some people are better at one, some at the other. If you can do both you will be truly popular.

Will being popular make you successful? By itself, no, but it is a prerequisite to the other four forms of success. Without it, don’t bother going any further.

John Bittleston blogs at TerrificMentors.com, a site that provides mentoring for those who wish a change in career or job, wanting to start a business or looking to improve their handling of people (including themselves).

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MindPetals.com: Newsletters, brochures, websites, and even blogs are mediums of communication that reach out to your target market. Without effective ad copy, your market may be oblivious to your message, and it’s one reason why many campaigns simply fail. Knowing who your prospects are is just the first step in reaching out to your new customers, but learning about how to stir their desire and motivation to find you appealing is the necessary element to marketing success. Whether it’s in sales collateral, a newsletter, or a blog post, marketing with emotion needs to be part of your plan.

The first step in choosing your message involves identifying what they really want. Is it status? Vanity? Relief from fear? Increased security? Understanding the basic desires of your customers may require a brainstorming session or two, but the more you can fine-tune your message to appeal to the basic human emotions, the easier it will be to capture their attention. Fear and greed are the most common emotion-stirrers, and are also the themes we see time and time again in mass marketing today. Take a look around and see for yourself which ads stick out from the crowd—in almost all cases, they are presenting a message that is designed to appeal to our most basic desires.

Marketing With Emotion: How to Create a Stir [MindPetals.com]

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Entrepreneur: What do Sir Richard Branson and Michael Dell have in common? Aside from their obvious success and wealth today, they were both recognized by Entrepreneur magazine as "Young Millionaires" in the late '80s. When we first interviewed Dell, he was 23 years old and fresh out of college. He spoke about the struggles of running a $6 million business while attending school, but said the rewards were more than worth it. And you can bet that today, as the world's second-largest PC maker, he'd say the exact same thing.

Our past Young Millionaires have plenty in common; for instance, many of their ideas were initially greeted with skepticism. That's what happened to California Pizza Kitchen founders Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield, who told us in 1986 that people thought they were crazy for going into the restaurant business. Yet today, CPK is an industry leader with more than 210 locations in 29 states and eight countries.

When we first highlighted the businesses below, they were relatively unknown. But now, they're household names virtually synonymous with the products they sell. Find out just how far they've come.

Young Millionaires Who Made It Bigger [Entrepreneur]

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Entrepreneur Daily: They may not be the most affluent demographic, but marketers are flocking to them. They're college students, and they're being touted as the next generation of leaders and consumers. Despite being outnumbered by baby boomers, college students carry more influence than their older counterparts. "They have huge impact on what their parents buy, and then they have their own money, more than any other generation before them, and of course they are the consumers of tomorrow," said Tom Anderson, managing partner of Anderson Analytics, the researchers who conducted the survey.

The brand survey found that Facebook is the social network of choice amongst college co-eds, and social networking is twice as popular with young women as young men. They love all things Apple, including the iPod and iPhone, and Target ranks as one of their favorite places to shop. Other top picks include Taco Bell as their hot fast food spot and Linkin Park as their top band.

College Crowd Ranks Top Brands [Entrepreneur Daily]

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Have an expert opinion on issues entrepreneurs and small business owners face everyday? Join the GetEntrepreneurial.com Experts Network and share your expertise with the community!

The new GE Experts Network is inviting seasoned entrepreneurs and small business owners to come on board and contribute small business advice to our community of aspiring entrepreneurs. If you have an effective way of generating sales or you know how to use social networking to connect with your customers, join us in providing wider entrepreneurial content that would benefit small business owners worldwide.

What's in it for you? As an GE Network Expert, the many aspiring entrepreneurs here will look up to you for small business advice and tips. You'll be able to establish your credibility as an expert in your industry. Your articles and your Expert Profile will be extensively featured across the GetEntrepreneurial.com network, including the free biweekly BIZNESS! Newsletter which 13,000 subscribers receive every two weeks. You'll stand to gain from a traffic boost to your business websites/products and a corresponding rise in sales.

Would you like to be a part of the GE Experts Network? We invite you to email us to join the network and share your small business expertise with us. We look forward to your application!

The GE Network Experts' profile page can be found here. Find out more about our Network Experts and the articles they've written.

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SmallHomeBusinessBlog.com: There are many things to consider when you start a home business. How much time is involved? How do I promote this business? How much money will I have to invest? Lots of things to think about.

Many people believe you can work for thirty minutes per day and make a lot of money. In most cases, this is just not true. Having a truly successful home business requires at least 3-4 hours per day. It is a good idea to make a list of everything you would like to accomplish each day.

As you start your day, I think it is a good idea to ignore your e-mail until all of your work is done for your business that day. Reading e-mail can sometimes get you side tracked for hours at a time.

There are endless ways to promote your business. Online, you can participate in forums and advertise your service and products there. You can start your own blog and invite others to join and comment (also putting your ads there, of course), submit your ads to online newsletters and ezines, and of course, classified ads.

Essentials for Success - Your Home Business [SmallHomeBusinessBlog.com]

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Learn Good Customer Service: One of the most important things that you can have as a business owner are good relationships. Good relationships can be very instrumental in the success of a business. There are several different types of relationships that a business owner should be trying to obtain. This article will take a look at three of them that I feel are a must have! These three are: relationships with your existing customers, relationships with potential customers and lastly relationships with other people in your field.

It doesn't matter if your regular customers are individual people or a business; developing a relationship with them could be the difference between keeping that customer and losing that customer to a competitor offering the same type of products or services that you do. Let them know that you really do appreciate them as a customer on a regular basis. You don't always have to try to sell them something either, every once in a while send them a postcard or email thanking them for choosing you to do business with on a consistent basis. It might not seem like much;but your customers will appreciate the jester, increasing the chances of them staying one of your loyal customers. Let these individuals be the first ones to hear of your upcoming sale or new product or service that you will be offering soon. Reward them with special discount prices and deals just for them being one of your regulars, it'll be a well spent investment.

Building Relationships In Business - Why It’s So Important [Learn Good Customer Service]

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Startup Students: When pricing your product or service, you should put some thought into the strategy you utilize. Are you going to undercut your competitors? Would you rather target the upper echelon? Maybe you just want to price with the market. It really depends on what you are offering, but here are some different strategies you could employ.

Penetration Pricing

This is when you want to quickly get some traction in your market by offering a lower (and sometime insanely lower) price. Benefits would obviously be the quick market penetration. But be careful, you dont want to undercut yourself out of business!

Skimming Strategy

This is somewhat opposite of penetration pricing. Do you have a relatively new technology that nobody else is offering? Why not “skim” off the customers who are willing to pay more in the beginning. Once demand from the early adopters falls, you can then lower your prices.

Follow The Leader

Sometimes it makes since to just follow the crowd and price your product competitively. Obvious products here would include commodities.

A Pricing Strategy for Everyone [Startup Students]

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New retirees are looking for a different type of small business than the general public. If they are on Social Security, they may be penalized if they make over $12,600. Some private retirement policies will also penalize you if you earn money in your retirement years.

Many retirees dream of taking extended vacations or wintering in Florida. They want their new business to work around their life. Many insist that they do not want to have employees since having employees complicates the business and necessitates payroll services, accountants, and workman’s compensation insurance that quickly eat into their profits. They want a business that they can run, possibly with the aid of their spouse, and any outside labor would be hired through an independent contractor. Some of the retirees are looking for a hobby business, making some money while enjoying their hobby and traveling around to locations and conventions for their hobby.

Business brokers try to sell mid-sized businesses costing $100,000 to $1 Million. If the business would fail, this would put a big dent into anyone’s retirement savings. Brokers wouldn’t make much money if they got a 10% commission selling a $3,000 business so they push the larger sized businesses. Likewise, franchises require large up front franchise fees and most of them are centered on businesses that have high start up costs. But retirees should look for businesses that cost under $5,000 to start and try to fund these businesses out of their own pocket. Most of the low investment businesses would fall into the service sector where you are really selling your specialized skilled labor time.

And all of these goals are really possible. The following criteria will be used for businesses in this column.

• They are mini-businesses run by the owner and the spouse with no one on the payroll.
• They should be able to start up the business for $3,000 to $5,000. Many of the people who start these businesses may decide to grow the business with more investment after they have proven their business can produce good cash flow to them.
• No long term lease commitments (space or equipment)
• They are seasonal or part-time businesses. They will not require the 60 to 80 hours a week to start them that most start-up businesses require.
• The cash flow may be small but on an hourly basis it should be worth the owner’s time. Some may provide a real benefit in tax savings by utilizing portions of you house or apartment, allow you to travel to hobby conventions as a business expense or renting property you own to the business.

I will try in future columns to provide you with some new ideas for your business start-up that meet these criteria.

This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for GetEntrepreneurial.com readers by Stan Spector.

Stan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income - Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book's website can be found at StanSpector.com.

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YoungEntrepreneur.com: It’s virtually impossible to own a business today and not have a website - but what makes a great website? For today’s Entrepreneur University we connected with Tim Knox. Tim is the founder and president of four successful technology companies and serves as an investor, mentor and advisor to many companies in his home town of Huntsville, Alabama. Here are Tim’s suggestions for how to build a great website:

Building an effective business website is a simple matter of definition.

Before the first graphic is drawn or the first line of code is written, you must define the website’s budget, purpose, target audience, design, navigation, and content. And when that’s all said and done you must define the marketing that will bring visitors to your site.

The 8 Things You Must Know To Build A Great Website [YoungEntrepreneur.com]

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I advised preparing to be able to work from home. This is not because I think you are going to be thrown out of a job immediately. But one day you may be. Or you may decide that your future will be better secured and more under your control if you take the plunge and go solo. If your home routine has already been modified to allow you to have time and space to work, that will be one shock less for the family to have to cope with. It will also have given you some experience of doing so and of what the problems are.

But there's another reason why being prepared to undertake work at home is valuable. Full-time regular jobs will continue, of course, but there will be many more 'portfolio' workers, people who have several jobs at the same time. Every consultant has been doing it for years. Many more of us are 'consultants' now; even more will be in the future.

A portfolio of jobs may seem strange to those used to working for a large company that demands more than full-time attention. In fact, until the arrival of the MNC and the big international conglomerate, it was quite common. In parts of the world over 90% of the workforce have portfolios of jobs even if they don't always describe them that way.

Will portfolios consist of a number of identical jobs? Probably not. There will be common characteristics, of course, especially the required qualifications and training, but too much similarity can lead to a conflict of interests. So there will be experts who span several aspects of the subject on which they advise. For example, builders will do more of their own design and, for simpler and smaller jobs, rely less on architects. Financial Advisers will become more 'hands on' managers of their clients’ portfolios. General Practitioners are already conducting minor operations in their clinics. Chemists will, in addition to having a Pharmacist on duty, employ a part-time GP for 'instant' consultations. Trainers will be prepared to train in a number of areas, not just the one for which they are well known.

The portfolio life will consist of much more project work – you will take on the job of getting something up and running, after which you will go on to another project. Many will combine academic work with actual operations, achieving a better balance between the theoretical and the practical.

To get a flavour of how dramatic the changes may be, think of the old grocery shop fifty years ago; only a limited range of products, counter service, delivery, specialist butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers. That today is the supermarket, selling everything from carrots to cars.

It is very important that you prepare yourself to take on portfolio work. To do so you should undertake a thorough personal SWOT analysis. I prefer the PASDAQ analysis*. It seeks to establish your interests as well as your abilities and when planning a career change or job move is much more successful at getting the right fit.

Equipped with a clear idea of not only what you can do but what you want to do – and what you need to do financially – you are already half way to a happier, more varied and more financially rewarding life.

John Bittleston blogs at TerrificMentors.com, a site that provides mentoring for those who wish a change in career or job, wanting to start a business or looking to improve their handling of people (including themselves).

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Entrepreneur: It's both a problem and a blessing: You have one or two very large accounts that make up the bulk of your business. According to what you may have been told, such a concentration is very risky; you should never put all your eggs in one basket.

Or should you?

Most experts would advise you to get more accounts, reducing your concentration of business. But your major accounts will likely grow at a faster pace than your new ones. The concentration will remain--and thus you will remain vulnerable.

There's nothing wrong with trying to grow other business. But I'd like to suggest a different approach. Instead of reducing your business concentration, consider providing services outside your core business or activity. In doing so, you'll add value to your account.

With that in mind, ask yourself: Do I know all the key players involved in my main account? If not, get to know all the departments and personnel involved in the account.

Why Your Customer Count May Not Matter [Entrepreneur]

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Business Advice Pro: Entrepreneurs spend days, weeks, months in order to come up with new products which, very often, might not even sell. But what if you could see its selling power before you create the product?

This would mean you don’t spend the time nor money to create products or services that won’t sell. In a very broad view, it might look like I’m suggesting you to become a scam artist, but just think about it. You are not selling air. You are actually selling a product which you don’t have yet. But if you see the product would actually sell, you make it happen, you create the product.

When selling something that does not exist, you test the waters. You see if people have any interest towards it. If you get a lot of people to sign up for free, you already have a knowledge that this product actually has the power to sell. And if that’s so, you will start working on it, if needed 24/7 for two weeks in a row. You now know it is going to sell like crazy (if you won’t make any fatal mistakes during the actual selling process that is). You already have a certain number of people who are interested in buying your product. You know it because they have subscribed via your free subscription form. Just to be notified when the product gets ready.

Selling something that doesn’t exist (yet) [Business Advice Pro]

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Small Business Trends: The HitTail widget shows the keywords that searchers are using to arrive at this site, updated in real time. It demonstrates part of what the HitTail service does.

Using the HitTail service, you can (1) track the keywords that people are using to come to your site or blog, (2) extract the keywords that matter most into a handy list, and (3) use those keywords in future articles or blog posts that you write.

The idea behind HitTail is to increase the organic (non-paid) search traffic to your site, by revealing the keywords that visitors are using to find your site so that you can build on those to attract even more traffic.

HitTail Helps You Build Web Traffic Without Advertising [Small Business Trends]

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Mind Petals: Entrepreneurship offers countless benefits for the business-minded, goal-oriented, and independent thinkers among us, and today’s increases in entrepreneurial endeavors are only further propagated with the internet.

Still, many business savvy troopers insist on realizing their dreams solo. Here are just five benefits of being a solopreneur:

1)You’re the boss of all! - Every ‘department’ of your business is fueled by your own plans, strategies, and objectives.

2)You don’t need permission to change direction. - Effective decision making is a necessary skill for the business to succeed in the long run, and the solopreneur makes every effort to fine-tune their skills and use them to their advantage.

3)You can accelerate your learning at your own pace. - You have the freedom to take classes, learn about all aspects of business management, and pick up new skills along the way.

4)You get to wear multiple hats.- This often means tackling the learning curve at a higher-than-average rate, but the rewards include the freedom to explore every single aspect of your business—and take full control of its direction.

5)Your success lies solely in your hands. - Whether your business turns out to be a smashing success or a morbid failure, its destiny is truly in your hands.

5 Key Benefits of Being a Solopreneur [Mind Petals]

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The clash between Global Village and Balanced Life Style will create many changes for, and require unprecedented adaptability by, those now working or soon to enter the work force. My earlier articles on the subject defined the problem and began to show some of the impact it would have.

Home life will be affected. Keeping your information and fears bottled up is counter-productive. You need support. Your family must know that they have to be prudent with money. Don't frighten your spouse unnecessarily but do discuss, calmly and rationally, the implications of what is happening. Start with the global picture and gradually show how this might affect your industry, your company, you and them. You need rational, supportive contributions, not hysteria.

Think together about the longer-term effects of Global Village. Your spouse may be bent on a more Balanced Life Style, especially if it involves helping with the children. Point out that Balanced Life Style comes at a price, which you are not, or may soon not be, in a position to pay.

We devote much training time to Managing Change in Business. We devote none at all to Managing Change in the Home. Yet this is the base from which we go out to work. Without a solid home base we cannot do our jobs. If you are the de facto head of the family you now have to manage change at home. Do it as seriously as you would manage reorganisation in your own company. It will pay you handsomely when the occasion arises.

Make sure that there is a place and time where and when you can work undisturbed at home. This may not be easy but insist on it. You may have to share space with your spouse or the children. If you do, see that it is available exclusively to you for some of the time. Quite apart from the need for this space now, you may need it as your office in the near future.

Even if you are still in a full-time job you will need a minimum resource from which to study the changes taking place and where you can devote yourself to getting a new job or alternative work. A breadwinner, man or woman, who has no private space at home may seek it elsewhere with potentially disastrous consequences.

Equip yourself with the sources of information you need to gauge how quickly the changes are taking place. This may require newspapers and magazines; access to the Internet is a vital component of it. Stockbrokers’ reports can be very helpful if they relate to your industry. Your industry or trade association is a mine of information. If they have a library, get to know the librarian. Librarians are wonderful people, full of information and nearly always willing to help those seeking it.

Talk to your friends in the business, they will be better informed than you think. They have the same worries as you. Most importantly, talk to your boss. Remember, he has anxieties for the same reason that you do. If he values your observations and comments on the industry you may keep your job when others lose theirs. Don’t be shy about doing this. Any reasonable boss likes to see his subordinates taking an interest in the progress of the company and the business.

Keep a small computer file on the things you learn about the business – nothing lengthy, just short notes every few days. You will find them invaluable later on.

It’s the information age. Make use of it.

John Bittleston blogs at TerrificMentors.com, a site that provides mentoring for those who wish a change in career or job, wanting to start a business or looking to improve their handling of people (including themselves).

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