The best way to approach Work!!
One of those quick blog but this can be a serious topic. There are many seminar providers out there including big names that keep saying you need to get rid of your job to be totally free to do what you want. I find this approach to be non-sensical. In fact to the point where I am seeing people who were once business people refusing to get a job to provide for basic living expenses. what’s the point if you have no money?
On the other hand, you may not be doing the right thing of approaching work blindly either. You can definitely make a good living from work once you plan your course accordingly. Remember making $300K or more a year in a job would come without the issues of managing or worry about a business. That’s one side to it.
If your goal is to stop working at some point before the typical retirement years, then maybe you would approach it in terms of how you could invest your savings or time in a way to realize that outcome. Basically, people would call this approach passive income generation. This could be done in many ways which could take several blog posts.
You only need to change what you are doing if you feel dissatisfied with the current situation. Don’t tell people they are stupid for not wanting to pursue some weird business building venture which most time is just an extension of those Gurus Ego.
The bottom line is that setting goals in life is important regardless of how you want to achieve them. Now in terms of performing at your peak, its important to find out what you really like to do and then work would not be a burden as it can be. This could mean trying different positions or changing companies etc.. Try not to get into a situation where you are only working because you have to pay the bills. This can be a lose-lose situation as you are not really into what you are doing but wanting to make sure you have an income.
You need to have some burning desires in life and that should drive what you decide to do.
Look out for an updated blog post on Peak performance coming soon..
Personal Development – Video Presentation
Here is a great presentation by Jim Rohn of development
Another bonus video on the same topic by Brian Tracy
How you enjoy this video. More coming soon
Life Coaching – A Simple Low-Cost Business Model
I was reading the other day and ran into one of those life coaching programs. It was going for less than $1000.00 and you get certified by taking an exam which makes you a certified professional Coach. Immediately you could have a business around that.
Coaching, life or business is an interesting field and can apply to any specific area of specialty. It could be an Engineer who would like to be a Manager or Someone that wants to achieve a certain level of wealth or even to lose weight. The coach is basically not necessarily the expert in the profession but that person will help an individual to set goals and actions to achieve them. The coach would also follow up on milestones and ensure that the individual stays on track or recommend recovery options.
Now, lets look at how this could work for you. Here are the points I recommend to decide on this.
1. Interest – Do you like working with people and help them to succeed at whatever? do you have an area in life that you are passionate about? Then life coaching could be good for you in that context.
2. Research – Do some research on what life coaching really is. I am sure there are both books and lots of blogs and websites about this. Try to understand whats going on in the industry for your education.
3. Certification – Once you have an idea that you really want to do this, the best option is to pick a Certification program. My personal approach is to put them into a comparative spreadsheet then make a decision based on your comfort level. As mentioned earlier, there are several for less than US$1000.00 out there that looks rather reputable. This will also help with your marketing as well.
4. Business Setup – Once you complete the course and exam or even during that process, you could form a business entity to manage this overall business. You can look at several options such as LLC, C-Corp, S-Corp or a Non-Profit Structure. I personally believe once you start to deal with the public its good to formalize a business entity for many reasons. This should cost no more than $500 in most states with the required elements.
5. Marketing – Most of the certification programs do offer help in this arena and in fact some of them have memberships so you can ask for advice along the way. The best approach is to start with friends and you can even do it for free in order to build your reputation. Make out time per week to meet potential clients and other related activities. You would also need to have a pricing structure depending on how you plan to offer the service. For example you could do one-on-one approach or use group options. With the Internet, you could offer your service anywhere and have sessions online with free tools like Skype and others.
Overall, I think life coaching is a good low cost business venture to look at for anyone at any level. You could be seen as someones personal assistant at the low end or at the high end being the expert in the profession of choice to really help others to reach the top of their potential.
The Good Side of a Business Plan
Another short and quick post. Most times you may think that a business plan is aimed at sharing things with outsiders but actually at the initial stage, its much more important for you actually. Its important to convince yourself objectively that you really have a good grasp of what you are trying to do. If you want people or banks to invest into the venture you need to convince them that it makes sense. Now, it does not mean your business plan has to be perfect upfront but the overall trust should be there to make the pitch without too much effort.
Some keys I can share to help with this off the top of my head.
1. Market research – this is a critical piece to see if there will be a demand for the service or product that you have in mind. Also look at the competition in terms of whats being offered in that market. If its a physical business; which location would suit you better?
2. Value Creation – How will your business add value to customers, employees and owners/investors? This is important piece of delivering something that will take you to the next level.
3. Cashflow Projection – Even without too much details, the key to success is to generate cash as fast as possible. You could get millions in orders but how much of that is cash in the bank to at least pay the bills soonest?
4. Execution Strategy – This is a critical piece before you get into details of operations and tactics. What are the strategies you will use to succeed long term. As we speak, lots of large companies are failing as they don’t have strategy in place to guide them for the long term.
Those are a good start for now, we will look into more details as I dig more into a useful and effective business plan approach.
What exactly is your strategic vision?
This may sound like some big words and very sophisticated and the likes but we all do have a strategic vision. Whether we planned this out or not, that is the case.
To put my view on this in simple terms, whatever you are focused on, forms the core of your strategic vision. This means that if you are stuck in life and unhappy about your career, it means the strategic vision that you have now is leading you to that point.
On the flip side, when you have a specific plan to achieve some goals, then either you were wrong to set those goals in the first place and thats making you happy or you really are focused on the long term achievement and taking all the steps to doing so. Of course it will not be smooth sailing all the time but there is a difference to having setbacks and just stuck without real direction.
Take an audit of your actions and see if its getting you anywhere and that would be a good start to moving where you want to go.
What I find is that if you are really convicted about something, you will not just achieve it, you will get this done much faster depending on the energy you focus on it.
Learning from success, mistakes of big business – TheChronicleHerald.ca
IT IS possible for small business to learn from big companies. While many owners of small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, often take an “us versus them” attitude towards their larger business counterparts, there are some basic marketing principles that apply equally well to both big and small operations.
A critical part of any marketing strategy is the choice of target market that a firm takes on, with its relative offerings of product and service.
And it is possible to consider the actions of two Canadian business giants, Nortel Networks and RIM, in that discussion.
The Council of Canadian Academies released a report on innovation and business strategy in June. The report is a detailed analysis of how Canadian businesses rate in innovation and research and development internationally.
The report also features a very interesting discussion of the marketing actions of Nortel and RIM, how the two firms differed from their roots through to their strategic decisions, and how marketing strategy impacted the outcomes of their strategic decisions.
A basic part of Marketing 101 is determining how to choose a target market and how to fulfil its needs.
In many high-tech firms, companies use a more product-oriented approach than a market-oriented one, focusing first on their product and second on market needs.
It is hard to tell which came first with Nortel Networks, which had its roots in traditional markets providing telecommunications equipment.
This type of market approach in the information technology market (referred to as legacy equipment providers in the report) grew out of past markets and past market needs. To a great extent, traditional telecom needs are being met by the next generation of wireless technologies, resulting in a mix of old and new for firms such as Nortel.
The notion of old and new markets is an odd one that is based not on how long the market has existed but rather on whether or not the same market need is being served by new technologies or applications.
It is possible to use the analogy of the automobile industry, moving from horse and buggy to motorized vehicles. Both are transportation methods, but one is obsolete.
From a marketing perspective, the market for horse buggies has declined out of existence despite the fact that we have even more of a need for transportation (more people going longer distances) than we had back in horse and buggy days.
In other words, the need persists but how we fill the need as consumers or businesses evolves with changes in technology and lifestyle.
Nortel Networks, which has recently become one of Canada’s biggest corporate failures despite is premiere position in previous years in the IT industry, was heavily invested in providing equipment to corporate clients.
It carried a portfolio of products that were well regarded but slowly becoming obsolete.
Price drops as products become less popular, a process that has been forced into hyperdrive by offshore competitors whose cost structures are lower than ours.
The end result was a nasty fall from grace as Nortel struggled to reposition itself in more innovative markets.
RIM was born to be a research-oriented firm, grown with venture capital. This reality would create a fundamentally more nimble company with a much more research-oriented culture.
RIM caters to similar markets, but with new technological applications that are not yet mature.
However, RIM does have one critical flaw: it is mainly a one-product firm. The BlackBerry is what has propelled RIM into stratospheric profit levels and it continues to give RIM a strategic competitive advantage despite a growing number of competitors.
RIM is working the product life cycle in a very innovative and competitive way.
However, it will have to follow the BlackBerry with even greater innovations to keep its pre-eminent market position.
This requires continuous research and development, with more patent filings and a relentless search for the next big thing to fill the market need.
Which company was more competitive? Nortel was in its day, and RIM is today.
And that difference is part of the reason why RIM continues to succeed in the wake of Nortel’s fall from grace.
Karen Blotnicky is president of TMC The Marketing Clinic and a professor at Mount Saint Vincent University.
This is a great article to review and learn the ropes of building a world class business. More to come.
Quick Business Update – October
I have been on vacation for the last week and ending this coming week-end. Just wanted to share my latest updates on my business quest. One of the things I have been focused on, is the issue of obtaining reasonable business financing to take the next step. While I have learnt some good ideas during this process, it seems the market is really tight out there and show why the economy is still in some degree of recession.
The challenge I am still seeing is the issue of honesty with those who claim they can provide services. While I have managed to eliminate some of the obvious ones that will rip-off, there are those who instead of coming clean, tries to use these white lies to drag things out. The reason for this is that maybe their sources are not working out but instead of admitting that upfront, they give you some story to buy time, unfortunately whatever they tried next may not work out, so in the end they looked like a real scam. Now these persons could have had good intention but I think sometimes the willingness to use lies to get bye also will reduce the quality of service. In other words, its like a catch 22. Whenever, you present the truth to customers, they will make a choice, continue to work with you or move on. That is very basic and long term common sense.
Anyway, on the plus side, I should be getting feedback on the actual performance of some trading platforms this week. These will provide very good returns so to get first hand knowledge that they work will be a great breakthrough for the next step in the financial journey.
In terms of the funding, there are still some genuine long term options out there but as I said, it takes time to weed out the decoy ones. I do feel that I am making progress overall in both learning and getting this done. I should have reasonable financing in place by end of the year at minimum. When I say reasonable, it means at least $500K funding.
XO Offers ‘Ethernet Everywhere’ Guarantee – Phone Plus
XO Communications this week announced the launch of “Ethernet Everywhere,” a service availability guarantee ensuring its Carrier Services’ customers can obtain Ethernet services anywhere within XO’s coverage area. The company says this guarantee is the first of its kind by any nationwide service provider.
XO’s Ethernet access options range from 3Mbps up to 10Gbps and are used to support a variety of services such as private line, dedicated Internet access, and MPLS IP-VPN. Offered through the end of 2009, the guarantee is available to any Carrier Services customer that chooses up to 10Mbps Ethernet service within one of XO’s 42 Ethernet-enabled local access and transport areas (LATAs). Should XO be unable to deliver the service within the agreed upon timeframe to the requested location, the customer will receive a one-month credit equal to the value of the Ethernet service ordered.
Related Articles:
- Toshiba, XO Communications Certify Interop
- XO Streamlines Multilocation VoIP
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Great Service here
Small Business Communication Checklist
Since I am a network and communications person, I would like to share some of the ideas I have for a small business to communicate effectively using very reliable and sophisticated modern facilities.
Domain Name:
Its good to have a proper domain name that reflects your business name. Good source
godaddy.com
Web hosting
You will need to host your website somewhere with good storage and reliability and great customer service – Best place
hostgator.com
Website Platform
While you may need a good e-commerce platform to sell products online directly, best practices nowadays for most business is to have a blog as the front end to the business. This can be structured in different ways based on your desires. The recommendation here is:
wordpress.org
This platform is free and you could also get it through your hostgator account, so its makes the installation much easier.
General E-mail
To communicate outside and inside your organization you will need some basic e-mail platform. Normally, the first thing that comes to mind is outlook e-mail platform, which means you need a server etc.. A very cool solution and I am sure there are many others is:
Google Apps – http://www.google.com/apps/
This allows you to setup e-mails on your domain name for both internal and external use. Its just as simple as using gmail but its coming from your own domain and would look much better to the outside world for corporate presence. I am sure there are others and in fact google is coming out with Google wave soon that would even help your internal communication much better.
Fax Communication
There are numerous services out there that will allow you to reliably send and receive faxes directly from your PC without moving. In some cases, you may need to have a scanner available to capture documents that needs signature etc. In any case in mostly you can send a document in PDF format through e-mail but its still good to have the fax option for traditional purposes. This is one I have tested and looks good so far.
http://www.maxemail.com/
There are many others out there.
Telephone
This is an area that has changed quite a bit with the advent of voip, now with a small business, you don’t need to have a major PBX installed. One option you have is to buy a small box that connects to your DSL connection but even that you may not need nowadays.
One cheap option to look at is Skype.com especially if your employees are not in the same location. You can buy accessories that will let skype behave just like a regular office phone and even wireless if you so desire. Skype also allows you to buy a payment plan and get a phone number for incoming calls. You could tie into your mobile phone such as Iphone or Android.
Otherwise, if you want a standard looking phone system, look into hosted PBX options. I am not in a position to recommend one over the other but I will list a few that looks interesting to pursue.
Here is a good place to look – http://www.voipreview.org/Business_Telephone_Systems/compare_business_voip_providers.aspx
Look at Google voice too, very interesting little tool especially when you are mobile.
Internet Access
To get all of these services to work well, at least not all of them since the webservice is running from a different server, you need a physical connection to your home or office. If your employees work from home then you need for each employee, at least to re-imburse for them using their personal connections.
Typical DSL is the preferred choice for this type of setup. Othewise maybe cable could be a good second.
Can’t recommend a provider as its dependent on where you are located. In the US, ATT would be the most common in most locations and in Canada, it would be bell.ca.
Coming very soon is the world of wireless 4G networks that will give you DSL speed pretty much anywhere but it will take about another 5 years to get full coverage at these speeds.
Social Communications
The next important step outside of using e-mail is how do you communicate with your audience effectively. The first step and almost an absolute requirement is a blog. The next tool to add into that would be twitter.com regardless of the audience type.
Now in terms of your client base, you may have to look into what medium is suited in terms of other tools. If your business is consumer based, then facebook.com is recommended, otherwise if its business/corporate oriented you could look at linkedin.com.
Other tools that could help your business are facilities such as google groups or yahoo groups. There are a lot of free social forum platforms that you could tie into your website especially for customer interaction as well. a good one to look at is ning.com
To close off, you may want to have a mailing tool to manage paying customer as well. The popular platform for this is aweber.com.
These tools used in the correct way can create the image of a powerful organization since you are pretty much on par with larger companies at very minimal cost.
Juniper Research: Femtocell subscribers to exceed 15 million … – IntoMobile
Juniper Research: Femtocell subscribers to exceed 15 million during 2012 due to demand for improved 3G reception
By Dusan Belic on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 2:51 PM PST In Research
Demand for improved 3G reception will be a principal driving force behind the growth of femtocells in the next few years, with subscribers exceeding 15 million globally during 2012. According to Juniper Research, femtocells began as standalone units but will become integrated into the home wireless routers in future, to form a “multi function mix and match” home network services gateway.
Juniper’s report author, Howard Wilcox, said: “Surprisingly for some people, surveys such as that by Orange in March show that most mobile usage actually takes place from our homes. Poor indoor signal strength and slow web access are quite common problems faced by users. Femtocells offer an attractive solution – both for users and network operators who themselves can achieve economies through data traffic offload.”
The research company identified Western Europe, North America and the Far East & China to be the top three regions for femtocell subscribers in 2014. Moreover, they said that revenues from new, advanced femtocell services will gain traction as soon as 2011…
More information about the study titled “3G Femtocells and Beyond: Opportunities & Service Scenarios in the Home 2009-2014″ is available from Juniper’s website.
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Femto Cell has really good prospects especially to provide seamless connectivity in the home, enterprise and pretty much anywhere. It does help to offload the load on the carrier’s network as well.
