First Step Marketing

How will you know if your business is growing not only at a pace you can handle but at a reasonable pace that will let you reach the goals you’ve set for yourself? Read the rest of this entry »

Entrepreneurs know to employ a variety of marketing techniques because it’s impossible to predict how effective any one method will be until time and money has been spent. A marketing plan will help you to keep track of the various marketing methods and should be considered to be as essential to the success of your business as developing the business plan. Read the rest of this entry »

In the course of running your business, you will have to deal with not one but two budgets: one for your business and one for yourself.

A business budget is also referred to as an operating budget, and it differs from the budget you developed for your start-up costs for several reasons: After operating your business for even a short time, you will have a much better idea of where the money goes, as well as what comes in. You’ll also have some sense of when the money tends to arrive in your bank account, so you’ll also know when you can expect to be able to pay your own bills. Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you hated math in high school, keeping a good financial record of every one of your business transactions—whether it’s checks received or cash receipts for highway tolls paid while traveling on business—is a basic necessity. After all, every entrepreneur wants to know how much money her business is generating both before and after expenses, to see what all of her hard work is worth. Read the rest of this entry »

Do the people in your life think you have gone absolutely bonkers because you want to start your own business?

Good! Not only does it mean they’re probably a little bit jealous of you, but it will also add some fuel to your fire and keep you plugging away at your business. Here’s a little secret: Many of history’s most famous entrepreneurs have kept their businesses going because their number one concern was to prove some naysayer wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest risks in running a business is that you will simply run out of time: time to complete a particular project, a time frame in which you have projected that your business would begin to show a profit, time to keep up with the often insurmountable paperwork. In the jam-packed days that most Americans put up with today, time is the most precious natural resource you have. Read the rest of this entry »

When you — or I — walk out of a negotiation, we take a risk. That risk is that the other side won’t come after us, that they won’t call or fax us when things have cooled off, that we lose a chance to reach an agreement with them. For that reason, walking - when you do it - must be a deliberate and considered act. If you walk on impulse or in the heat of the moment, it’ll be something that you regret. But if you walk when, after due consideration, you’ve decided that this negotiation isn’t going to get anywhere, then that, as we’ll shortly see, is quite a different matter. Read the rest of this entry »

After passing muster, all successful applicants were subjected to the most exacting physical and psychological tests. Tests of physical endurance—how long can you support a column of mercury with one lungful of breath? Tests of mental stability—how long can you endure being locked up in a pitch-black, soundproof “sensory deprivation chamber” with no idea when you will be released? Tests of pain suppression—if we drive a long needle into the big muscle at the base of your thumb and pass an electric current through it, what will you do? Read the rest of this entry »

Workplace listening skills can be important in many different ways. For example, listening and understanding your initial instructions about how to do your job is critical. Good listeners work actively at the listening process. Their eyes and ears are attending and receiving information and their minds are working at understanding what is being communicated. Questions such as, Is this important? If so, how? should be continually considered during important meetings and conferences. Workplace messages could be straightforward instructions, or they could be more complicated types of communication, such as an obtuse interaction between several people. No matter what the content, if you want to communicate well, you must master the listening process. Here are a few pointers about how to listen better. Read the rest of this entry »

Every living being has a purpose, and it is the knowledge of that purpose that allows us to manifest the opportunities in the right place at the right time. Conversely, without knowledge of our specific purpose many of these opportunities will go unnoticed.

In our modern world fortunes are regularly spent on changing and improving methodologies, yet the majority of businesses continue to last less than one generation, and the majority of working people retire disillusioned and unfulfilled. Usually their enormous energy and potential is misdirected. Having an external objective is not the same as living a purpose that is internally driven. Read the rest of this entry »