By Michael J Greenwood

1. Affordable office space
There are many affordable places to start a business. If you chose an up and coming place to base your business at then your overheads will be less. Many technology business for instance can work from anywhere because the majority of their services can be provided over the internet.

2. Gain expertise from experts
Business mentoring is absolutely key to the success of the entrepreneur. You don’t know everything and so need experts around you to aid you. A common mistake that young businesses make is trying to do everything. They secret is to kind other people to compliment your own weaknesses.

3. Networking events
Network events allow you to find work and other businesses to compliment your work. Valuable leads can be found at both the free business networking events and the more specialized fee based business events.

4. Cashflow is key
You’ve heard about profitable businesses going under right. This is because they ran out of cash. They had got enough leads and business but could do the job because their cashflow can dry. This is because they didn’t plan properly.

5. Planning
You’ve heard of a business plan. Well, you need one. The business plan isn’t a static document either. It changes throughout a businesses life cycle. If you fail to plan you plan to fail.

6. Pricing
Your price must reflect your experience. As your experience grows so will your earnings. At first work may be scarce but try not to deviate from the specialization. It is ok to do the odd job which is not par of your specialization but stay focused on your business plan.

7. Marketing
You must get word out that your product or service exists. But more importantly you must use your available resources informing the right people that your product or service exists. This is where market research comes into it.

8. Sales
So you’ve started to get interest in your services but you’re having difficulty closing that sale. Are you asking the right questions? Don’t push too hard. Make friends with them. Ask them about there business. Find out what they want.

9. Quality
Do a good job and deliver your product to a high standard and your customers will refer their associates to you. Do a bad job of inferior quality and your ex-customers will tell their associates not to use you.

10. Get paid
If you don’t get paid then your Cashflow will suffer (see 4), if should be part of your business plan (see 5) to maintain your cashflow. If you don’t get paid then you will fail. 

For more information visit http://www.enterprisingbarnsley.co.uk.

By Andrea R. M. Scott

Does your past experience influence the success of your current home business? Many people concentrate on past hurts or wounds so that they can’t transform their future.

They believe that because they failed in previous businesses, their current business will fail. Or they so identify with being an abuse victim that it impacts every aspect of their life.

But if you want to move forward and grow, you have to decide what you will focus on. Will you concentrate on the pain of the past or the opportunity that lies in the future?

John C. Maxwell, in his book, Failing Forward, states that “The problems of people’s pasts impact them in one of two ways: They experience either a breakdown or a breakthrough.”

People who haven’t gotten over their past difficulties manifest five key qualities. The first quality is comparison; they always complain that their wounds are worse than anyone else’s.

They rationalize and make excuses for not dealing with past challenges. This rationalization prevents them from finding solutions to their problems.

Some people isolate themselves from others to protect themselves from getting hurt. Other people will constantly regret past experiences and remain in the past. Regret saps their energy and prevents them from taking positive action. Someone who always goes over past hurts and wounds will become bitter.

However, there is another option. You don’t have to stay in breakdown mode. John Maxwell also states that “Every major difficulty you face in life is a fork in the road. You choose which track you will head down, toward breakdown or breakthrough.”

It all depends on you. What do you want? Do you want to move forward and breakthrough your pain? Or do you want to stay a hostage to past wounds? Choosing to experience a breakthrough will take work. It may be very hard work, but the results are worth it.

Is there a past hurt that you would like to process? The first step is to acknowledge the pain that you may feel. Don’t deny your feelings. You may want to write about it or express your feelings artistically. Give yourself permission to grieve the loss.

Is there anyone who you need to forgive in this situation, maybe even yourself? Choose to forgive them. It may not be easy. You may seek a professional to help you in this process.

It’s important to realize that forgiveness is a process that takes time. You may have to return to the situation several time to be really healed of it. However, revisiting a painful situation to experience healing is not the same as rehashing it in the “poor me” mode.

As you do the forgiveness work and choose to forgive the people who hurt you, you release your ties to the past wounds. You are transforming your past wounds as you breakthrough to an amazing future. You are failing forward!

Andrea Scott is a joyful internet marketing entrepreneur who shows people how to have a profitable online business. To find out how to have a successful online business and live the life of your dreams, click here.

By Lee Lister

You are setting up your business and know that you need a business plan but you have no idea what should be in it. Well here are a few ideas for you:

Vision:
Most of all any investor and you yourself, will need to know what you are intending to do with your business. How you see it growing and how passionate you are about it. So paint a vision of where you are now, what kind of business you want and how you are going to get to where you want to be.

Strategies:
You need to detail your business, financial, marketing and advertising strategy that will support your visions.

Products and Services:
What you are selling, to whom and at what prices. You should detail how the products are manufactured and delivered as well how protected they are from being copied. You should also detail how your products are different from your competitors.

Market:
You should detail who your potential customers are and where you can find them. You should also itemise how difficult it is for a competitor to enter the market.

Team:
Detail who your principle staff are that are going to help your business start.

Financials:
What all this is going to cost you and what might be left as your profit.

Funding:
How much extra money you want and where you are going to get your money from.

Exit Strategy:
When it is all over or you or your investors want to leave, how the investors can get their money back and you leave happily with a profit.

Last but not least, remember that a business plan is not just for the beginning. Get it out of the drawer regularly and refer to it to remember where you wanted to be. Update it regularly as your company grows and when you get a little lost.

Good luck with your new business.

© Copyright 2009 Biz Guru Ltd

Lee Lister writes as The Biz Guru, for a number of web sites where she provides advice and assistance for the business entrepreneur. She is a published author – her books Entrepreneur’s Apprentice and How Much Does It Cost To Start A Business? as well as detailed information on how to start many low cost businesses, can be found on http://www.StartMyNewBusiness.com

With over 20 year’s management and business consultancy experience with businesses large and small as well as being a serial entrepreneur, she now helps others set up, develop and market their businesses. If you would like more help and assistance in setting up your new marketing strategy as well as some great marketing services then visit: http://www.MarketingGuerrillas.com

Movers and Shakers are people who get things done. They are the entrepreneurs who literally create value out of thin air while having access to very limited resources. They are the unstoppable achievers. Eternally on the move starting new projects or resuscitating defunct ones. They are the wonderful alphas without which the economy would soon plunge to a screeching halt.

Most of these super-achievers were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths or a limitless bank account in their names. However they all have a few things in common; passion and a burning desire to succeed and to achieve. They also have a dim view of the word “impossible” and they, and they alone, get to define what their personal limits are.

Thinking outside the box and shifts in paradigms is part of their daily routine. They have no desire to join anyone’s parade. They want to be upfront leading the band and creating the sweet smells and sounds of success.

They were not born mover/shakers. They created themselves the same way that professional athletes do it. Starting in the minor leagues, they pushed forward relentlessly until their names became part of everyday conversation and subjects of admiration.

One of the greatest lessons that those brave men and women have learned is that resourcefulness is more important than resources. It’s not what they have that really counts; it’s how imaginative and creative they are that will make the real difference.

Anyone with sufficient cash can start a business but only a truly imaginative entrepreneur can do the same without a penny to his name. Recently the local newspaper told the story of a young man who wanted to launch his singing career. He needed a big splash to create the momentum to get it started.

To make his dream come through he personally sold copies of his first CD on street corners and amassed over fifty thousand dollars. With that money he rented a large theater in Chicago where he gave his first concert. He then told the story to the medias who just ate it up. It made headlines and was broadcasted in the news. He is now a budding star and well on his way to becoming a huge success. He did not have the resources but he had resourcefulness. That’s what really counts.

Anyone with enough passion, determination and enthusiasm can turn mud into gold. What we tend to forget is that those “overnight success” started with next to nothing and turned pure energy into physical reality. They turned the invisible into the visible and the dream to reality through work and determination.

People who succeed are so busy looking for opportunities that they have no time to even thinks of possible failure. They know that opportunities abound and that they are all around us. The problem is that they are invisible with the commonly used paradigms.

Where one person will see a swamp, another will see it transformed as an inviting and very lucrative campsite. Where most people see used tires as a threat to the environment, someone else will see them recycled into various other rubber products such as mats for gyms etc.

There is a mover/shaker and an entrepreneur in every one of us. It simply lies there waiting to be discovered and exploited. We have everything needed to excel and to succeed. All that is needed is a wake up call, a call to action. Some will heed the call, wake up and succeed. Others will wait for opportunities to break down the front door, jump on their laps and beg to be used. It’s going to be a long wait.