December 22, 2005
How To Stop Your Small Business From Failing
Business failures are predicted to rise next year based on recent study and the bulk of failures will be small businesses. Here's how to ensure the survival of your small business.
But first,
According to a study carried out by BDO Stoy Hayward, the professional services firm, released recently, the number of businesses crashing will rise before falling back again in 2007.
The study suggests that 17,303 businesses failed this year, 9 per cent more than in 2004. BDO Stoy Hayward expects the number of failures overall to rise by another 4 per cent to 18,052 next year, as the full effects of the slowdown are felt, before fallingback to low levels in 2007 as economic growth improves.
If you run a small business you must take action now to ensure that your small business will survive the crash.
You'll find some useful tips on how to ensure your business survive in the downturn by reading the following article: "Surviving A Business Downturn"
David
Small Business Resource
Posted by David at 4:56 PM
June 16, 2005
Insiprational Story To Encourage small Business Owners: "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish"
Small business owners, do you know what was the greatest come back in the history of the computer business?
That would have to be the Steve Jobs story.
*** Jobs has led an 'interesting' life
Steve Jobs founded Apple Computers in 1977 and got the personal computer industry rolling.
Then in 1983 to help deal with his company's exponential growth, he recruited a slick corporate marketing guy from Pepsi named John Sculley to run the company.
Sculley immediately got to work...devising a plan to stab Jobs in the back and cut him out of Apple's management.
It worked.
Within two years, Sculley succeeded in having Jobs fired from his own company!
Sculley then proceeded to run Apple into the ground through a series of mind-bogglingly stupid marketing blunders.
A few years later, Apple's board sent Sculley packing, but the damage had been done.
It took over a decade, but Jobs regained control of Apple in the late 1990s and put Apple back on the right track much to the relief of its long suffering shareholders.
*** Triple threat
Besides his pioneering role in personal computing, Jobs has had a huge impact on two other major industries: movie making and the music business.
His Pixar studies is the most successful animation studio of the last 30 year, scoring one blockbuster hit after another.
His iPod has totally revolutionized the way music is sold and consumed.
Jobs also played an important role in the development of the web.
It's a little known fact, but Tim Berners-Lee used one of Job's NeXT computers to create the protocols for the web.
From being booted from your own company to taking it back, making a few billion dollars, and becoming a major player in the entertainment industry... Not a bad comeback, eh?
*** 'How'd he do that?'
How do you develop the kind of business resilience Steve Jobs has exhibited over the last 28 years?
How do you recover from incredible set backs, including from treachery and betrayal people you brought into your own business?
How do you manage - in a world of copycats and quick-buck scam artists - to be perpetually creative and on the cutting edge by bringing valuable, new things to market?
It's a darn good set of questions... and you can get the answer straight from the horse's mouth right here... Enjoy!
Steve just gave this talk four days ago at Stanford University. It is well worth reading: Read steve Jobs Story here
Posted by David at 5:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005
Small Business Advise From A successful Small Business Entrepreneur
This month my small business is 12 years old, after seven years full time on the Internet I have gained some perspective here is some advice I want to share with you.
Don't Start a business Like I Started
When I suffered a serious back injury in 1995 I wasn't able to continue working in my trade of 30+ years. I exhausted my disability benefits and was re-injured 2 days after I attempted to return to work.
I started my small Internet business in 1996 in desperation, when no one was selling anything on the Internet. I had no clue how difficult it would be. I worked day and night for months before I made single a sale. Sound familiar?
I had everything to lose and in the process, I lost almost everything.
It's SO much easier starting a small business today, at least from my point of view. There is a lot of great information that just wasn't available when I started. More importantly, now people are actually buying products and services on the Internet.
Keep Your Day Job
The nature of a job is to pay you less than you earn for the company. That's because they spent the time and effort to develop the job for you. A job provides cash flow, training, and security but most of us will never get rich working for someone else.
Having a regular job is a HUGE blessing when you want to start your own small business. Earning a living income will most likely require more time than you expect so keep your regular job until you replace most of the income it provides.
Desperately NEEDING quick income actually works against you. Quitting your job doesn't speed up the learning curve; in fact it gives you tunnel vision often distracting you from discovering real purpose of business.
"Satisfy an identified desire in a market you can reach."
Immigrant Mentality
Often when someone arrives in the US the first thing they do is obtain a job, any job just to get the money flow started.
Immigrants are often willing to work harder and longer than we are because they come here with faith in a vision the passion
to pursue it.
I once worked with a young man from Cambodia. Whenever anyone wanted to go home after eight hours he would offer to do whatever work needed to be done in order to help out. Most days he worked at least 16 hours and we all thought he was crazy.
Later I learned that after his family was killed in Cambodia he built a kiln to make charcoal at 12 years of age. He got up before dawn every day to gather enough wood to fire the kiln then he would walk over 6 miles to fish for ten hours or more. The fishing earned him enough to eat and selling the charcoal helped him earn enough to get to the US. It took him over 7 years just to get here.
A 16-hour day seemed like a short day from his point of view. This is working for a purpose, and this is often what's required when building a small business.
Now it's fifteen years later, he owns his own small business, a house that's paid for, provides high paying jobs for others and gives back to his community on a regular basis purely out of gratitude.
The Old Fashion Way
Real success rarely comes easily, We EARN success in the process of following our passion. No one is born knowing how to build a business.
In fact, most of us start out with a job mentality, expecting a day's pay right after a day's work. In order to develop a business most of the work and much of the money is required up front before we ever receive a dime. This requires a long view and a passion for the process itself.
Like launching a rocket into space, the idea is to develop success before running out of fuel. The higher you go the less fuel it takes but most people quit before getting off the ground.
Success in business isn't really about the money. The fastest path to success is rarely the most direct path. Often it's what's you have to give that gets you what you want.
Adapt A Franchise Mentality
Franchise businesses are expensive because someone else did much of the groundwork for you. If you can't afford a franchise you will need to do most of that groundwork yourself.
Invest in your success, if you don't put much into it you'll have little to lose if you quit. Because of the amount of investment required, franchise owners are more likely to put in the effort required to succeed.
Learn your business, invest in your success, if you don't quit you WILL be successful - eventually.
Tom Hua
Posted by David at 9:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
UK small business forum is great for small business advice here’s why
Why join a UK small business forum? The answer is simple. There is a lot of gold to be mined when you visit a well-run UK small business forum.
A business forum is an Internet-based "community" where members share advice and provide a shoulder to cry on. For some small business owners, especially those who operate out of their homes, a UK small business forum may actually be the only contact they have with their business peers.
What is free small business advice worth?
There's a saying that "free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it", but there’s ample evidence which proves that this just isn't always true. Sure, there are crackpots everywhere and many of them try and come across as small business experts. The thing about any well-run small business forum is that they come with built-in "crackpot detectors". Let me explain...
The purpose of a UK small business forum is to bring together small business owners from around the UK. Many business types are represented in these forums and every member has a different level of expertise. Forum members post questions and receive answers from other members. As time goes by, the forum community builds up a sort of self-regulating membership where the "crackpots" are either forced out of the forum or, at the very least, become quite easy to detect. With a little bit of common sense you can easily filter the good advice from the bad.
It's not all questions and answers.
Many times other small business forum members will not be seeking advice, per se. They may have an interesting experience that they want to share with other members, or they may have breaking news, such as a credit card scam, that they want to warn other members about. Some of the bigger forums even organize business and social events that are held in the local communities. Events like these can be your lifeline to sanity if you're normally "all work and no play".
You are judged by your posts in a UK small business forum.
Treat your membership in a small business forum just like you would treat a host if you were a guest in their home. Don't start off by making posts that are self-appreciating. You don't want to come across as a braggart or a windbag. Introduce yourself by name; mention the name of your business and what you do. Then make a brief statement about what you hope to get from the business forum as well as what you hope to contribute to it. Watch the messages and if you have something intelligent to add, fire away. Just remember – you don’t want to be excluded from the forum because of bad forum etiquette!
David
small Business Resource
Posted by David at 3:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2005
Motivational Thought For The Day
I arrived six hours late for work today due to delays caused by low fog over London City Airport. It was a miserable start to the week. What's more, I felt like going back home to do something more productive like finishing off my book on small business marketing.
Reading and taking notes was how I passed the time.
The minute the plane took off all around was a 'sea of white soup'. I prayed that the pane's navigation system would not fail because if the pilot had to fly the plane on manual how on earth was he going to see in this sea of whiteness. I continued to read my book and it was then I came across a page that sparked off the reason for the brief article.
At 14 thousand feet I had a brain wave!
This article relate to the small business entrepreneurs who arrive at 2-small-business.com in search of small business grant and government grant. Before you click away to another web site here's the exact text taken from the book by Eric Hoffer, Author of "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. He wrote:
"There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement, for an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything, we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book and not painting a picture and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement."
Hoffer's observation is one of the finest, most accurate, and profound I have ever encountered.
So what can small business entrepreneurs hope to gain from Eric Hoffer's observation? I believe it's this:
If you have a passion to be in business for yourself don't let the lack of start up grants for small business or government grant dampen and ultimately rob you of achieving your dreams. It's better to achieve your goals than to be forever fixated by a "lack of grant alibi." Rise to the achievement challenge rather than succumbing to the alibi excuse.
Taken from Dan Kennedy's book: No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs - Ep Entrepreneur Press
www.entrepreneurpress.com
Posted by David at 7:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 6, 2005
Not All About Small Business and Profit
very so often I’m reminded how lucky I am to be alive and blessed. Caught up in the hustle and bustle of managing a small business and being a father to three very special young and lively spirits it’s easy to think that ‘tomorrow will be another day’. But will it?
Turning the pages of “The Times” newspaper an article caught my attention. The article is titled, “Noble Fight Against Cancer Ends With Last Entry On Internet Diary.” The article is about the death of Ivan Noble from a brain tumour. He was only 37 years young. Ivan wrote for BBC News and started his Internet Diary in September 2002 when he was diagnosed with cancer. His diary attracted many visitors who responded by sharing their experiences and drawing strength from Ivan’s courageous chronicle
Why am I writing about this?
Well it has to do with the waste of precious time that you and I devote to building a business and getting hang up on things that have little consequence. Sure, we have to work. Being your own boss gives is hard work and the freedom to spend your time how you want. While you are building to gain financial freedom, think about the “Pareto Principle”: 80% of your income will come from 20% of your customers.
Work the 20% to extract maximum value for your small business so you can spend valuable time with those who matter the most. The key is to ‘work smart’… tomorrow is hoped and is never guaranteed.
David
Small Business Resource
Posted by David at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
