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These articles have been written for information and interest purposes only. The information contained within these articles are the opinions of the authors ONLY, and should not be construed as advice or recommendations from ReBound Telecom. Any links contained within these articles are included for information purposes only.
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Don’t Forget the Small Businesses Basics By Andrew Regan
Every year exciting business opportunities open up, from selling advice to eBay traders to providing CPD online, but don’t forget the basics. Without a solid financial backbone your small business will not prosper.
Big Business for Female Entrepreneurs By Elisha Burberry
In the UK and the United States women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men. Although typically attracting less investment, they are just as likely to succeed.
Understanding the Importance of Marketing By Scott-Martineau
From my standpoint, marketing is the most critical thing in the world. Marketing is what brings the catch in.
Marketing and Automating – Business Keys to Success By Scott-Martineau
You know how hard you’ve worked, as an entrepreneur, to deliver your service, to learn your skill, to learn your trade. It’s especially frustrating when you have really, really good products or services and you just don’t know how to get other people to give you money for them.
What Does Incorporating Online Involve By Wayne Hemrick
If you are new to starting a small business, then you have likely begun to discover that there are several steps necessary to starting a new business that has to happen before you ever provide a product or service to a customer.
Don’t Forget the Small Businesses Basics
By Andrew Regan
Running a small business allows you an impressive amount of flexibility. You can move with speed and dexterity if an opportunity arises and a trend proves popular – and profitable. Compared to the stately ocean liners of big business, small businesses are speed boats with good steering, which comes in handy if land is sighted unexpectedly.
One of the main trends of the last few years has been the rise of organic produce. The most obvious examples are the ones sitting on supermarket shelves, labeled as organic and costing more than the equivalent non-organic foodstuff. In this way, small farmers can make a virtue of quality over quantity and not lose out too much because of economies of scale. However, there have been all kinds of niche markets into which have fitted opportunist small businesses. Organic chicken farmers may not have wished to use antibiotics in their poultry farming, but there was a need to find an alternative that would help prevent disease. One such equivalent was duly retailed: Herban is an essential oil based on oregano oil that can be added to the birds’ feed or drinking water.
Although the concept of the Internet revolution is beginning to feel like old hat, the opportunities it offers are still spectacular. The current success stories, like Facebook, are splashed across the media business pages, and occasionally disappear very fast. But behind every major success are thousands of steady small businesses that are doing just fine. CPD (Continuing Professional Development) has been a mainstay of professions like healthcare and law for many years, but some small businesses are realizing that they can offer an online CPD service – the technology is there and people’s minds are open to the possibility. Profits are not currently enormous, but certainly decent.
Other opportunities have sprung up from what initially seemed to be ‘amateur’ or ‘socializing’ websites. If you think eBay is only for comic-book collecting geeks then think again. With millions of users worldwide it attracts many small businessmen and women who use it as their main sales channel. Some home-based operators have been able to turn hobbies into viable businesses, selling anything from chairs to bikes to rare Roman coins. Now, third parties are jumping onboard, offering to streamline listings or sell software to optimize listings.
But a word of caution is needed. Although it is great to realize that you have spotted a niche and have the flexibility to go for it, it is always important to look at the bottom line – your business’s finances. This is an area where experience and a steady attitude is invaluable. Small business advice is available from a number of organizations, including government bodies and banks. Banks tend to define a small business as one with a turnover of less than one million.
So if you can combine opportunism, professional advice, and a great deal of perseverance you might yet hit those business pages.
Disclaimer:This article has been written for information and interest purposes only. The information contained within this article is the opinion of the author only, and should not be construed as advice or used to make financial decisions. Expert financial advice should always be sought and any links contained within this article are included for information purposes only.
About the Author:
Andrew Regan is an online, freelance author from Scotland. He is a keen rugby player and enjoys traveling.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/dont-forget-the-small-businesses-basics-298094.html
Big Business for Female Entrepreneurs
By Elisha Burberry
Women entrepreneurs are big news. They are starting businesses at twice the rate of men and their businesses are growing in size as well as number. Revenue in female owned businesses increased more than in other businesses in the same period, according to a 2004 survey by Washington DC’s Centre for Women Business research. Although the story in the United States is the most promising, a smaller, slower but nonetheless similar trend is taking place in Britain.
Although much is made of women’s desire for a ‘work life’ balance, comparatively few women leave the corporate world so they can spend more time with their families. Rather, they want to take risks, work in a more flexible and possibly ethical way, and follow their passions. Emotional attachment to something is not always an asset in big business, but it is helpful if you want to start a small business as you will likely need a grand passion to carry you through the difficulties. It is hard to sacrifice your holiday because your city boss needs you to broker a big deal; it is much easier if you need to keep your own business going and you actually enjoy your work.
Adrian Guglielmo started a marketing company and hired deaf people – the first for-profit corporation for people with disabilities in America. She had found out that there was an 80 percent unemployment rate in the deaf community. Although paying serious attention to all the usual suspects, including turning a handsome profit, she is passionately interested in ‘capitalism with a cause’. The traditional macho business model may be an impediment for women employed in the corporate world – do they really want to be a ‘ball breaker’ – but once outside they can choose a business model that plays to their strengths.
Sian Lewis is managing director of Diamond, which offers car insurance for women. The prevailing wisdom is to have your call centre stocked with low-paid employees, that is, if it hasn’t already been relocated to the East. Needing to contact a call centre is probably on most people’s list of ‘things I really dislike doing’. The bottom line is keeping costs as low as possible. Of course this is supremely important, but not at the expense of offering a good service. Diamond has chosen to employ articulate and genuinely motivated staff – and their quotes are still extremely competitive.
Although women are less likely to receive venture capital than men, they mange to find funding by recourse to banks, credit cards and perhaps families. This will hopefully change, as the proven track records of small businesses run by women speak for themselves. Already, women are recognized as a ‘safe pair of hands’ whilst driving, hence Diamond’s success. But setting up a small business also requires specific experience, as well as passion and drive. Thankfully, women develop useful relationships with a greater ease than men.
Women have what it takes to succeed – and will continue to prove it.
Disclaimer: This article has been written for information and interest purposes only. The information contained within this article is the opinion of the author only, and should not be construed as advice or used to make financial decisions. Expert financial advice should always be sought and any links contained within this article are included for information purposes only.
About the Author:
Elisha Burberry is an online, freelance journalist and keen traveler and water sports enthusiast. Originally from Scotland, she now resides in London.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/big-business-for-female-entrepreneurs-296416.html
Understanding the Importance of Marketing
By Scott-Martineau
There’s something that Dan Sullivan taught me, which is his way of looking at tools that you use every day. Think of it as three drawers. Since we’re not visually able to draw a picture, picture a three-drawer, little cabinet. The top drawer is labeled “tool belt,” and the middle drawer is labeled “tool box,” and the third drawer, the bottom drawer, is labeled “tool shed.”
So, every day, people are using tools in their business. It could be cell phones. A carpet cleaner could be using equipment. A doctor could be using scalpels and things like that. Dentists could be using a drill. Poodle groomers could be using whatever you groom poodles with. I’ve never done that. I’ve cleaned carpets, but I’ve never groomed a poodle.
Nonetheless, whatever the deal is, whatever somebody’s glop is, they use tools. The point is if you’re going to use a tool every day, like a computer, you should probably have the best tool you can get your hands on. If you’re going to use a cell phone every day and you have a cell phone that keeps dropping calls or the battery wears out after 10 minutes, go get another cell phone.
What amazes me in business is things that people focus on, that they actually think are important. So, your software, your database, your follow-up system, that doesn’t need to be in your tool shed. It’s not something you use every six months. You use it every day. So tool belt are tools you use every day, day-in and day-out. Toolboxes are things that you use frequently, and the tool shed are things that are special need.
There are not just actual physical tools; there are psychological tools. I create marketing tools for people. I have sales letters, I have social proof, and merging it together with what you guys know creates a perfect system. You need to really think about that even if you’re going to do the best job in your business, no matter what you sell, whether it is products, services or whatever, and you’re going to use marketing, if you don’t have any clients, it doesn’t matter how good of a manager you are. You’ve got nothing to manage.
From my standpoint, marketing is the most critical thing in the world. Marketing is what brings the catch in.
About the Author:
Joe Polish’s Tempe, Arizona office, headquarters for Piranha Marketing, is often referred to by marketing insiders as “action central” for much of the entrepreneurial world. Though he made his fortune in an almost invisible niche by telling carpet cleaners how to crush the competition and turn their small local businesses into money-churning machines, he is now among the most well-known, respected, “complete marketing geniuses” in the world. http://www.thegeniusnetwork.com
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/understanding-the-importance-of-marketing-292601.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: Information on Marketing can be Found on the RESOURCE page.
Marketing and Automating – Business Keys to Success
By Scott-Martineau
How many business people out there have gone home to their husbands or wives, screaming in frustration about, “These darned customers! They’re not doing things the way we like!”
You know how hard you’ve worked, as an entrepreneur, to deliver your service, to learn your skill, to learn your trade. It’s especially frustrating when you have really, really good products or services and you just don’t know how to get other people to give you money for them.
I’m glad that people are lousy at it, because it allows me to make a good living helping people with it. That’s how I got into marketing. I was in the same boat.
You guys know my story. I started out as a dead-broke carpet cleaner, living off credit cards. I thought, “Well, if I was just a better carpet cleaner, then people would beat a path to my door.” Of course, that’s all a myth.
Then, I learned marketing. Even haphazardly having good marketing, I built a very substantial business doing it. Just through the process of better automating what it is I do, made it all the better.
I want to mention an analogy that I like, and I’d like you guys to speak to it because I think it’s so critical that people don’t just hear you say, “Follow up,” and think, “Okay, we follow up.”
I think the biggest value that you guys bring to the table, and I know this from private conversations and from using your software, is that there are so many things that people don’t know, but they don’t know that they don’t know these things.
I can guarantee that if the three of us went to any one of our reader’s businesses right now, no matter what size they are, and we have them who are single-person businesses and we have people who run multi-hundred- million-dollar companies with thousands of employees, who read these interviews. I want to be able to speak to all of them.
About the Author:
Joe Polish’s Tempe, Arizona office, headquarters for Piranha Marketing, is often referred to by marketing insiders as “action central” for much of the entrepreneurial world. Though he made his fortune in an almost invisible niche by telling carpet cleaners how to crush the competition and turn their small local businesses into money-churning machines, he is now among the most well-known, respected, “complete marketing geniuses” in the world. http://www.thegeniusnetwork.com
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/marketing-and-automating-business-keys-to-success-289297.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: Information on Marketing can be Found on the RESOURCE page.
What Does Incorporating Online Involve
By Wayne Hemrick
If you are new to starting a small business, then you have likely begun to discover that there are several steps necessary to starting a new business that has to happen before you ever provide a product or service to a customer. You might be at the point where you have written a business plan that outlines the objectives of your business, and perhaps you have obtained start-up funds through your own savings or loans to help begin to get the new business off the ground.
At these beginning stages of forming a new business, you will want to consider what it takes to incorporate business . While many new small businesses begin as sole proprietorships, the problem with this form of business is that if sued, your personal assets become at risk to pay off your business debts. This is a big reason why incorporation becomes attractive to the business owner, because it protects your personal assets should your business get sued. To ease this process there are several services on the Internet that can help you incorporate online or to form an LLC . Although you can get assistance from a lawyer or accountant to help you set up your corporation, those options are sometimes out of a new business owner's price range. The cost-effective and easy solution is incorporating online.
An online incorporation service can help you decide which type of business format is right for your particular business and needs. Some require more people to be involved in your business than others, and some must be maintained with a greater amount of recordkeeping. These are a couple of items that you will want to consider before selecting a type of incorporation that will best meet your needs.
There are four basic types of incorporation: the LLC, or limited liability company, the S-Corporation, the C-Corporation, and the non-profit corporation. The LLC requires the least amount of paperwork as compared to the others, but it is limited in certain benefits that the others are not. You will want to hire a service that will complete and file your articles of formation for your company.
If you are doing business under a name other than your own, then you will also need to register with your secretary of state your DBA, or Doing Business As name. If you will conduct business in states other than the one in which you reside, then you will want to think about finding a Registered Agent, who will represent you in these other states if legal documents are sent to you.
You may need to obtain a trademark for your business, which must be patented. If your business will hire employees, then you will also need to get a Federal Employer Identification Number, and obtain a business license and pay the fees for each state in which you wish to conduct business.
With this myriad of details to keep track of when you want to incorporate, business owners often turn to online incorporation services for the ease of incorporating online.
About the Author:
Wayne Hemrick provides advice on incorporating online. His extensive experience in online incorporation has helped many small businesses succeed. If you you have questions on how to incorporate business, Wayne's advice on what the process of incorporating online involves will prove valuable.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/what-does-incorporating-online-involve-281051.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: Information on Incorporation and Non-profit Status can be Found on the RESOURCE page.
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