Business Blog

Wikipedia For Small Businesses – A Springboard Or A Barrier?

2012-02-24T06:56:00.001-08:00

Wikipedia- the world’s provider of free knowledge, the largest community-editing encyclopedia scores the highest results on the web – 99% of search results are of Wikipedia ranking 1 to 5 positions in Google. While some believe that the website is not a reliable source as anyone is able to add and modify the information on the site, one thing is obvious: for a business (may it be small or not) to be recognized worldwide, at least a small mention on Wikipedia can do significantly a lot.

However, it is not as easy as it may seem before you actually try to let the world know about your business. Wikipedia is more time and effort consuming than other means of promotion, requiring a list of cited sources at the end of the page, objective contributors with no single connection to an article about the topic and many more. Let’s highlight only some points out of the numerous constrains Wikipedia sets for article creators.

Notability for Wikipedia consists of several components, and is what does really matter for your article to be accepted. Once you’re a small business owner, with no international awareness, how can you qualify an article if you have not received at least a small measure of notoriety? Why would an independent individual, let it be your customer, decide to contribute and waste his/her efforts to create your company article, moreover, when doubting if it will ever go through the validity requirements? Does this mean that unless your small business can afford a paid PR company to take care of your Wikipedia article, you have no chance to fairly provide facts about your company, services/ products, customers and possibilities? Please note hereby, that we do feel the difference between a fact and an ad, distinguish objective opinion from a subjective one and also do feel the merit for inclusion in Wikipedia the small businesses encounter. It is a fact that small businesses are not even able to provide some basic facts about their activities, company profile and products unless someone (in this case paid PR specialists) are editing Wikipedia on behalf of them. This is how Wikipedia collaborates with communications professionals, and the term “community” loses sense.

Even if you do add credible information, facts with no self-promotion flavor, provide meaningful and presumed material, you may still not be eligible for being listed on Wikipedia and this IS unfair. This may not be the most timely problem for the masses, but there do are numbers of entrepreneurs suffering from “suspected” articles, such as online accounting software company Clear Books and Zip's Drive-in, an American fast food restaurant chain, having their articles with an alert on top , Burger Ranch –another small fast food chain having an already deleted article due to not meeting general notability guideline and many more…

As a conclusion, I’d like to recall the recent past trouble of Wikipedia due to possible SOPA and PIPA restrictions – the website landing page said: “Imagine a world without free knowledge – For over a decade, we’ve spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the US Congress is considering legislation that could finally damage the free and open internet…” – and asked each and every single person to contribute to raise awareness. So unless in trouble, why would Wikipedia never think of the effort and time spent by others building their businesses, and why wouldn’t it consider changing terms to help them raise awareness too?

Coaching Fortune 500 Executives

2012-02-19T23:16:00.000-08:00

Executive coaching is a focused and individualized development process that is meant for people who hold high positions of authority in their organization. Executive coaching helps in enhancing executive’s leadership, emotional and managerial skills.

To understand how executive coaching works, we interviewed our guest senior executive coach and business author Patrick Alain.

Patrick Alain is the founder of the business communication warehouse LeaderPhrase.com, which is one of the top business, communication, and leadership strategy source worldwide. Patrick Alain is internationally known for his contribution on some of the best-selling video games around the world.

Patrick Alain, what inspired you to become an executive coach?

After my first book, “The Leader Phrase Book” was released; both my publicist and agent got a lot of enquiries from Fortune 500 companies. Some wanted me to speak to their teams and some others were asking me to work for them as a dedicated executive coach.

On top of that, since the release of the book, I frequently speak on many radio stations and am the guest of TV shows - that opens a lot of doors in the business world.

How can executives benefit from coaching?

While executive coaching is especially recommended to CEO’s and senior officers, all managers can highly benefit from it. First and most important, coaching helps them become a better leader. By building up their interpersonal skills with team members, it helps them to discover hidden capabilities in their resources and resolve issues with a lot more ease. When one can motivate their team to perform better, workers become more productive and flexible to change.

What are the components of your coaching sessions?

For each coaching session, the ultimate goal is the overall development of the corporations that hire me. I believe that, for any coaching program to be successful, there should a strong bond and a trust relationship between the coach and its clients. Once this is established, the sessions become fruitful to each individual. My programs all have the following components in common:

• Preliminary work: For this first step, I get in touch with my client. We establish the scope of the coaching and its results over the phone. Then, I email short online questionnaires to the staff that employees fill anonymously. Once I collect this data, I analyze it and come up with a coaching plan based on my client’s strength and weakness.

• Initial meeting: I gather information through many different ways, some of these include: interviews with managers and team members, 360 degree feedback and KRA data. With all this information in hand, I determine my course of action, the goals and outcome of the training and the timeline of the program.

• Coaching: When the coaching begins, I use many different methods to impart training. These include: brainstorming sessions, group discussions, real life scenarios (I enjoy seeing how people act), presentations, guided practices and well-designed learning material. Interactivity is what makes the class memorable.

• Review: Regular reviews are done to assess the success of the program as well as establishing what needs to be done next. I make sure that there is open communication between me and my clients to ensure feedback.

• Action plan: At the end of the session, I set up an action plan to ensure that the client continues to develop while on the job.

• Continuous development: Once the session is complete, the client and I stay in touch to analyze the outcome of the training.

What message would you like to convey to the corporate executives?

You hold a very special position in your company and I truly hope you are you up to it. If not, you absolutely need coaching. Not only are you responsible for the success of your company but for the people in it.

Coaching WILL DEFINITELY help you if :

• you can’t expand your company fast enough

• you can’t reach your financial goals

• you can’t be productive enough

• you can’t handle your responsibilities

• you can’t help being affected by the competition

• you can’t control your stress level

• you can’t differentiate operations and vision

• you can’t always treat people nicely

• you can’t keep people motivated

• you can’t deal with negative feedback

• you can’t separate your private life from work

All these scenarios have very harmful effects on your company’s performance. Business coaching programs are inspired from real life situations. What you’re dealing with, somebody has already has resolved it and the coach is here to show you.

What are the challenges of coaching people with high levels of authority?

Great question. Many people in higher positions have achieved a lot in their lives, so they are very confident about what they do.

While many senior executives are profoundly resilient to change, I see many others that have good intentions but are blocked by their corporation’s rigidity. Also, it is common to see people leaving their peers behind to reach the top. Therefore, there is some level of resentment among the team.

In all the above scenarios, coaching helps them break the ice. Through this mental and emotional development, people become better leaders.

How do you hold these trainings? Are these classroom sessions, online classes, or some other method?

Depending on the needs of the company, trainings can be done in groups or at an individual level. I either visit the client premises or hold video conferencing sessions. Thanks to coaching, I've visited a lot of interesting places I would never have seen otherwise. Some of these include Frankfurt, Dubai, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Taipei and Hong Kong.

There have been times where I saw different companies gathering their staff in the same session. Many strong connections were built from those sessions.

Best 2011 Christmas Posters- Part II

2011-12-28T00:34:00.000-08:00

As promised, we continue sharing the best 2011 Christmas posters offer by the companies this holiday season. For those who have just joined, see part I - Best Christmas Posters 2011 first. We stopped on food and beverage industry right? Let's move on from here.

Every dog deserves leading nutrition, from the wet nose to wiggly butt! And if Santa does care, he should definitely remember the entire family this year! This poster says the same, do not forget to give a gift to your most loyal friend too! With this said, let's finish discussing food and beverages and move on to Laundry detergents...

At the very first glance you may think it's a poster from Parker Pens, as the photo perfectly matches company's slogan: "It won't leak in your pocket", but you're wrong! This holiday poster is from Tide, a popular laundry detergent manufactured by Procter & Gamble, wishing us a white Christmas this year!

While Tide emphasized the importance of white Christmas, Omino Bianco, the long-time market leader for laundry additives in Italy focuses on the importance of holiday colors, showing sad Santa who seems to have had unsuccessful laundry experience right before Christmas!

Now enjoy the Christmas posters of the companies from the random industries.

Here is a Christmas tree from Fed-Ex, offering shipping, logistics management and supply chain management services. In harmony with company's profile and activity, the poster shows a Christmas tree made from parcel boxes. Nothing special, but still, the holiday spirit can be felt!

This poster, capturing fairly awkward moment of Santa is from PRO BTP, french group of social protection in construction. The poster warmly wishes Merry Christmas to all construction workers, offering their insurance service at the same time.

The Metropolitan Police Service in London appeared to present one of the most creative Christmas Posters this season, suggesting the similarities and differences between Santa and a Burglar! The poster clarifies that not everyone who visits at Christmas is welcome and warns citizens to take steps to make their homes safer place for the holidays, the time when Santa and Burglar are equally busy.

This romantic, creative, lighthearted and truly holiday poster is from British Airways, offering low airfares and hotels in holiday destinations around the world.

And finally, the Christmas poster from Greenpeace, independent global campaigning organisation that acts to change attitudes and behavior, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace. Advising to make an eco-friendly choice for Christmas, Greenpeace poster reads: Winter. You'll miss it when it's gone.

Best 2011 Christmas Posters

2011-12-27T01:58:00.000-08:00

The Holiday season has finally come and companies have now perfect moment to show off how creative, smart, original and innovative they are! Here is a collection of best Christmas posters presented for 2011, some are more ingenious than others, and some are less, but each and every poster guarantees holiday mood and smile on your face!

Let's start our poster journey with automotive industry, as it's been most active and assertive this season, presenting numbers of Christmas greeting posters. We picked up several of them, that we found to be most creative and smart.

Original, fun and definitely creative poster from Volkswagen, promoting all-new 2012 Jetta, built to look fast even standing still! A well-balanced, fun-to-drive, German-engineered performance vehicle at an accessible price is what even Santa would love to drive!

This modest but creative poster speaks for itself - Mercedes Benz wishes us to get through winter safely with the permanent four-wheel drive, wishing us a peaceful Christmas! With clever, lighthearted and sweet Holiday Greeting, Mercedes Benz certainly knows how to get a clever message of automotive safety across, while staying in the spirit of Christmas.

Providing "Zoom-Zoom" cars that are fun to drive, Mazda presented simple and pleasant Christmas ad, completely fitting the company's vision -ongoing devotion to harmonize driving performance with safety and the environment! Mazda promises to create new value, excite and delight customers through the best automotive products and services for the upcoming year!

Let's look in food and beverages, companies from this industry do have a lot to say!

Burger King seems to have even Christmas it's own way, perceiving its products to be perfect presents you can give to yourself! Despite the holiday spirit, Burger King offers ‘Buy One Get One Free’ Whopper Sandwich to the whole America this holiday season!

From the start, McDonald's has been committed to doing the right thing. For this holiday season McDonald's has commissioned a Christmas greeting using much-loved Fries arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree - simple, but fun! And a special offer this Christmas - 100% beef patty topped with honey BBQ glaze, bacon and layered with cheese - a new Festive Deluxe burger to treat yourself this holiday season!

Can't imagine a good burger without a delicious mayonnaise? We neither. Here is a Christmas poster of Hellmann's - claiming it to be the one and only mayonnaise for Christmas in quite an unusual way - look at the spoon attentively and you'll discernment Santa on it! So with Hellmann's® products, you can be confident you're bringing wholesome, real food to your special Christmas table.

Coke is what no meal tastes without! And Coca-Cola ads is what many can't imagine Christmas without! Always distinguished with strong holiday spirit and cheerful mood, Coca-Cola poster suggests to live on the Coke side of life for this Christmas! With no special hidden message to read through, the poster from Coca-Cola does bring Christmas atmosphere to everyone, regardless the age, location and gender!

In difference with Coca-Cola, Pepsi has appeared to be more creative, with the Christmas poster proving that everyone wants it to make Pepsi their own! Maybe shaking up the present before you open it is not always a great idea!

Don't drink and drive, otherwise kids will stay without their so-much awaited Christmas presents! This is what Heineken offered this year, a poster showing how a drunk Santa may end up!

The Christmas poster from Kit-Kat perfectly fits it's slogan- have a break! Sometimes Santa too wants to have a break, and that's the exact moment captured on Kit-Kat's holiday poster.

It's a perfect moment for us to take a break too. Happy Holiday Season to you all, and stay tuned, we'll come back with more Christmas posters soon! Before that, do not hesitate to have your say about these posters below in the comments.

Benefits Of Cloud-Based Video Conferencing

2011-12-20T03:39:00.000-08:00

A cloud-based video conferencing is a service for companies that wish to hold high-definition video conferencing, but do not want or are not able to pay for expensive equipment. Cloud really means nothing more than that a certain service is available via Internet from IT companies and hence the cost of the material for the company ceases to use a service. Why is cloud-based video conferencing getting more and more popular, with increasing amount of companies opting for this kind of video conferencing? Because there is relatively little support for HD video conferencing on mobile phones (smartphones) or on iPads, and only certain mobile platforms are supported to allow this conference call on a mobile basis.

Cloud-based video conferencing is different from traditional video conferencing, since a connection can be made much more reliable and faster. This may for example bring significant cost savings for a company, and is therefore more preferable. Often, companies have to consider the security of their data if they use cloud-based video conferencing. To avoid any risks, the built-in firewalls can be used while video conferencing. The feature enables companies to communicate with customers and suppliers, without any lost or stolen secret data.

Traditional video conferencing products cost more than cloud-based products. The investments made to use traditional video conferencing, are relatively high, while these systems can also be much more complicated to operate. Moreover, these systems are not compatible with smartphones, and hence the mobility is not guaranteed.

Some providers allow users to make use of complete administrative control of managing tasks, solutions on how to perform the adjustment of the bandwidth, create new user accounts, or re-assign employees some specific accounts. One of the greatest advantages is a special feature, which allows the user to establish a connection with someone who still has an account. Thus using the cloud systems, many processes are simplified, costs are reduced and video conferences are reliable.

Black Black Friday

2011-12-01T05:40:00.001-08:00

Black Friday is the day following the Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Though the day is celebrated in the US and Canada only, the rest of the world enjoys great deals and huge sales as much as Americans do, thanks to nowadays so popular online shopping. Although it is somewhat ironic that Americans do spend the most money on shopping just few days after they say they’re thankful for what they already have, Black Friday appears to be the day of the largest expenditures, one of the most profitable sources to increase the US economy.

The day is associated to joy and bargaining, but for many online operators Black Friday appeared to be actually black… US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Department of Justice have seized over 150 domain names, and surprisingly, none of them are related to online gambling. Most of the websites that were closed specialized in peddling counterfeit apparel, handbags and shoes associated with American sports teams, luxury designers and famous brands.

The seizures continued on Cyber Monday (Monday immediately following Black Friday) as well. The websites detained were on domains regulated by U.S. domain-name registrars, including .com and .net. You can see the whole list of scam websites here.

The two US Departments have apprehended the domain names of 350 websites since June 2010 till now with the aim to crack down on online piracy and fake sales. The dream of every advertiser came true for ICE as the seizure banner has received more than 77 million individual views!

"Through this operation we are aggressively targeting those who are selling counterfeit goods for their own personal gain while costing our economy much-needed revenue and jobs," commented Attorney General Eric Holder. This operation is the eighth phase of the long battle against counterfeit online stores based outside the US, and the amount of detained websites is the highest compared to seven previous attempts.

And here is the question- if it is ok that the rest of the world increases US economy on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, why is it such a big problem to allow US gamblers enjoy foreign online casinos? Far from the original topic, I know, but it’s a fact that the two departments mentioned above are those directly in charge of online gambling regulation issues in the country.

And as a conclusion, there’s a warning for all the foreign online operators in the US - FBI is watching you…

Slogans and Mottos - Part II

2011-11-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

Recently, I was analyzing the traffic for this blog and it turns out that the post about Slogans and Mottos is leading by a huge margin over the other posts. Moreover, this single post generates 80% of all search results to this blog. Not bad. Not that I am dissatisfied with the traffic, but who would not like to increase it? Therefore, here comes the second post about real-world examples of slogans and mottos of some well known and not so well known companies (yet having cool slogans. okay, cool slogans from my point of you - you are free to disagree).

When your major customer is such a big name as the U.S. Department of Defense you are simply obliged to emphasize this fact in your slogan. That is precisely what Lockheed Martin have selected for theirs: We never forget who we're working for. For those who are sitting in a tank, Lockheed Martin is a global security company with 120K+ employees and is engaged in research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

To be honest, I am not a big fan of Panasonic. Sure, it's a great company with great products, but their slogan is what I like the most about Panasonic: ideas for life. The slogan sounds nice, is not long and looks really good.

Hello. Moto is probably one of the widely known slogans. I have even seen people saluting each other with this slogan. As you are probably aware, Motorola has separated into two companies and the mobility division (yeap that one that produces your favorite mobile devices) is now owned by Google (which produces probably your favorite mobile operating system Android). Not sure if the slogan will be changed but... anyway this is one of my favorite slogans. Hopefully this will not become Bye Bye Moto... joking of course.

Our next company is willing to sell a car to you so much that they have even changed their slogan. Yeah, the times are not the best for the leader of the automobile industry. Simply, Drive one, that's what Ford is telling you. I am not really impressed with this slogan (and even less impressed with Ford's cars and certainly prefer the Sheer Driving Pleasure).

When a slogan does not give an idea what a company might be engaged in, I do not think to be a good slogan. I might be terribly subjective here but this is my point. The power to do more could have easily been a slogan for Viagra, but no. This time, it belongs to Dell. Dell's dull slogan I would say.

There are many banks out there in the world. Probably somebody has counted them but I don't really know. Probably thousands but who cares? From all banks there is only one that is The world's local bank and it is HSBC.

On this I finish the second post in the series of business slogans and mottos. If you have not read the first part, it's the best time to do so. Just click here.

Crowd Funding for Your Business Ideas

2011-11-20T09:58:00.000-08:00

Financing a start-up is more art than science. "If I just had those ten grands..." is a phrase that I often hear from wannabe entrepreneurs. There are several ways to fund your start-up. You could go to your grandma and ask her to lend you a couple of thousands. You could borrow money from your relatives. Another option is to borrow money from a bank. Unfortunately, this option is simply not feasible for many start-ups. Traditionally, venture capital has been the best option for financing a start-up. The bad news is that it has become increasingly difficult to secure funding from venture capital firms. Even if you succeed, you have to give up considerable equity. In a nutshell, these days getting funds for a start-up has become more difficult than ever before.
Recently, a new method of financing a start-up has emerged. Crowd funding is a method of funding a project or idea through Internet and social media. Crowd funding is a relatively new concept.

Crowd funding shall not be viewed as a replacement for traditional funding methods. Rather, crowd funding is a specific funding method. There are two important points about crowd funding.

First, crowd funding is suitable for relatively small projects and ideas. Typical amount that a prospective entrepreneur can expect to raise via crowd funding is approximately $10,000-$15,000. In rare cases, the amount can go to as high as $50,000 and more.

Second, crowd funding is a phenomenon of the digital era. In order to successfully carry out crowd funding there needs to be some sort of online platform to facilitate the process. Another requirement is ease and relative low cost method for making micro-payments. Therefore, it shall not come as a surprise that development of crowd funding is directly related to Internet.

There are a couple of crowd funding platforms on the Internet. RocketHub is probably the most successful platforms. RocketHub was launched in January 2010.

Another platform, which was just launched is Bloom. Launched by a Scottish company, Bloom is the first crowd funding platform in the UK.

Is crowd funding a viable option for funding your start-up? We only have to wait and see how these crowd funding platforms behave and how many successful projects they produce. One thing can be said that crowd funding works, at least in politics. In 2008 we saw a vivid example. The President of the USA Barrack Obama has managed to raise tens of millions of dollars by crowd funding. If approached correctly, crowd funding shall work in business as well.

Profit vs. Cash Flow

2011-11-16T07:53:00.000-08:00

If you have ever read a business plan (okay, a good business plan), you may have noticed a statement called Cash Flow Statement in the financial section. Cash Flow Statement is one of the most important statements in your business plan. Beginner entrepreneurs sometimes have difficulty in understanding the essence of cash flow and very often underestimate its importance. Wait! A careful planning of your business' cash flow can make a difference between success and failure.

Did you know that a profitable company with unhealthy cash flow can easily become bankrupt? Likewise, a company with good cash flow can achieve success even if it is not profitable initially.

Let's see how profit is different from cash flow and why it is so important to have positive cash flow.

Cash Flow is the amount of money that a business receives and spends during a particular period of time, while profit is what remains from sales revenue after all the company's expenses are subtracted. Profit is often called as net income. Initially, these two financial concepts seem similar. However, there is an important difference between these two concepts. Let's analyze this on a simple and realistic example.

Suppose you started your own book business right on the 1st of November, 2011. To keep things simple, let's assume that all of your books are retailing at $10. Suppose it costs you $5 to get a book. You sell your books via your web site and your customers use credit cards for payments. The processing company charges you 5% from sales. Because you face tough competition, you have decided to pay the processing fee yourself. The processing company releases 30% of the turnover immediately, 30% of the turnover within 14 days and the remaining 40% within 21 days from the moment of sale. Finally, let's assume that according to your super research, you can easily sell 500 books in November and 800 books in December. Your advertising budget shall be $200 and $300 in November and December respectively.

Based on our simplified model, can you start a profitable and successful company? Let's do some math.

By means of simple calculations, you can see that your profit shall make:

November
=================================
Sales = $5,000 (500 books x $10)
Costs = $2,500 (500 books x $5)
Transaction processes expenses = $250 (5% of $5,000)
Advertising expenses = $200
=================================
Profit $2,050

December
=================================
Sales = $8,000 (800 books x $10)
Costs = $4,000 (800 books x $5)
Transaction processes expenses = $400 (5% of $8,000)
Advertising expenses = $300
=================================
Profit $3,300

As you can see from the calculations, the company shall be profitable for sure and you will be right. As long as your sales exceed your costs, you are running a profitable business. Congratulations! Now here comes a million dollar question.

HOW MUCH MONEY WOULD YOU NEED TO START THE ABOVE BUSINESS???

People without formal economic education would reason this way. The costs in the first month are $2,500 + $250 + $200, in total $2,950. Thus, $3,000 shall be just fine. If you think the same way, you are making a typical mistake of ignoring your cash flow. Now go a couple of paragraphs above and read this line carefully:

The processing company releases 30% of the turnover immediately, 30% of the turnover within 14 days and the remaining 40% within 21 days from the moment of sale.

Now let's work out our cash flow. Suppose you decide to start this business with $3,000.

At the end of November you have used $2,950 to buy books and do advertising. From the $5,000 of sales the processing company has immediately given you $1,500. Thus, your total cash is $1,550. And boom you are stuck! Your super profitable company is dead. Why? You are asking why? You need $4,000 to buy books for December but you only have $1,550 in your bank account. It's time to surrender and acknowledge that you have made a fatal mistake by ignoring cash flow.

The key rule to remember is that not only it takes money to make money but it also takes time to get money that you made. There can be a significant difference in times between the moments that money leaves your account, that profits are made and that money comes back to your account. By ignoring cash flow, you are risking your business for failure.

Finally, I would like to pay your attention to a real-world example of a company that have had a positive (and huge) cash flow, yet took almost a decade to become profitable. We all know this company and probably have used their service dozen of times. It's called Amazon.com. Yes, your very favorite online shop. In its early days, Amazon did not make a cent of profit. Nevertheless, the company was sitting on a huge cash cushion (couple of billions of dollars). It took practically ten years to make Amazon a profitable company. This example demonstrates that by having positive cash flow, you can ultimately achieve success if you somehow find ways to make your sales exceed your costs. However, without proper cash flow planning, no matter how profitable your idea is, you will be doomed for failure.

Keep this in mind when thinking about your own business and don't forget that cash flow is king!

Managing Your Time

2008-04-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

Most of the smartphones today have powerful built-in tools to aid us in managing our time. Powerful software packages are available for computers as well. Nevertheless, efficient time management still remains one of the most difficult aspects of human activity. Moreover, efficient time management is necessary not only for business people and managers, but for everyone. Simply, time is something that you cannot buy, alter, slow down or otherwise affect (well someone may argue that if you own a jet, you can seriously save time but again there are only 24 hours per day strictly for everybody). So, the only way to use time efficiently is to adopt some simple but important methods. In this post I will provide you with 9 important rules for managing your time efficiently. In the end of this post, I am reviewing a method called the Eisenhower Method. I will expand this topic in several upcoming posts.

Managing time is difficult because efficient time management depends on many personal traits, which are not sometimes obviously connected to time management. For example, usually those people who tend to regret on past failures are very bad at managing time. So the rule #1 for efficient time management is to stop regretting past failures and start learning from your mistakes.

When doing something, have you ever had a feeling that you were losing time? Sometimes we do have to do routine things and when doing such things, this feeling of "losing time" becomes even worse. So, rule #2 is to seek something positive in whatever you are doing and thus kill the feeling of "losing your time". Of course, if you are doing a totally useless thing, then no matter how you try to kill this feeling of "losing your time", it won't help for you will be really losing your time.

In the opening of this post I have mentioned that smartphones do have built-in time management functionality. Most of the smartphones (for example Symbian or Windows Mobile based smartphones) are very easy and comfortable to use with your desktop computer and synchronising data with the desktop software (for example Microsoft Outlook) is extremely easy. So our rule #3 is to get such a device or in the worst case get a plain old paper notebook and a pen or pencil.

Rule #4 is to keep reminders all the time. This is when smartphones or other electronic PIM devices come in handy and this is one of the things where paper notebooks have an explicit disadvantage. You can attach an alert to an entry in your electronic calendar and the device will beep or otherwise remind you about the calendar entry. With the paper notebook, you must regularly check the entries. Another form of reminder is to keep small sticky notes at your home or in your office.

When I first started using computers, it was a DOS era and the Norton Commander was the killer application of that time. Of course multi tasking in DOS was out of question. You were only able to run a single application at a time. If you look at a monitor of an average computer user today, you see gazillion of open windows: Internet browser, word processing, e-mail client, music player, graphic editor and so on. Multi-tasking is concentration's number one enemy. However, achieving efficient time management requires that you stick to rule #5 and concentrate on one thing at a time.

Imagine a large corporation. Companies as large as General Motors have tens of thousands of employees. If I remember correctly, GM has over 330,000 employees. GM has more vice presidents than there are regular employees in most of the small companies in the USA. It would take a whole day of GM's CEO to just say "Hello" to all company's top managers (I am not even saying middle managers). How then executives of such large companies manage to be successful in managing the companies? They delegate responsibilities. When an owner of a very small company feels and understands and more importantly is ready to delegate responsibility to others, it's the point when the company starts real growth. So, stick to rule #6 and delegate responsibilities whenever possible.

Sometimes we get lost in routine tasks and lose focus of the "big picture" and the long-term goals. In the end, the long-term goals matter. Those goals are the reason we do or at least must be doing everything. The short-term tasks are supposed to support achieving long-term goals. Yet, many people forget the long-term goals. In order to be successful at time management, stick to rule #7 and from time to time revise your long-term goals. Beginning of a month is a good point to do so. Also, whenever there are considerable changes in the environment or significant events occur, it makes sense to revise and if necessary update the long-term goals.

Try to make realistic to-do (also called a task list) lists. All of us want to accomplish as many things as possible during a day. But keep in mind that there are only 24 hours per day, not an hour more. If you make unrealistic to-do lists, in the end you will get frustrated because every day you will have many unaccomplished things carried from the previous day. At the same time you should not fall in another extreme and make very easy to-do lists. Always keep in mind that when it comes to time management, Pareto's principle works in all its beauty: 80% of tasks can be completed in 20% of the disposable time and the remaining 20% of tasks will eat up 80% of the time. However, we can make the Pareto's law to work for us to increase productivity. Did you know that 80% of the productivity can be achieved by doing 20% of the tasks? If you want to do so, keep in mind the rule #8: make realistic and achievable to do lists and the rule #9: try to find and do those 20% of tasks that will help you achieve the 80% of productivity.

Finally, I would like to talk about a very powerful method for efficiently managing your time called the Eisenhower Method. It is believed that the US president Dwight D. Eisenhower was using this method. I'm not sure if he was the inventor but it if this method worked for Mr. Eisenhower, then it must work for you and me as well.

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important - President Eisenhower would say. More formally, we can categorize tasks on two scales according to their importance and urgency. If we make a matrix as shown on an exhibit below, we get 4 quadrants.

Thus, according to this system, each task can belong to one of the 4 quadrants and thus a task can be: A. urgent and important (top-left quadrant), B. urgent but unimportant (top-right quadrant), C. not urgent but important (bottom-left quadrant) and D. not urgent and not important (bottom-right) quadrant. After you classify your tasks, the matrix shows how you must approach the tasks. As you can see from the exhibit, you must get done urgent and important tasks right away, make note and when time comes do the important but not urgent tasks, you can easily delegate urgent but not important tasks to others and finally you must try to minimize spending your time on unimportant and not urgent tasks. Yes, the tasks from the bottom-right quadrant eat up that 80% of your time. Examples? Here you are: chatting, gossiping on the phone, watching absolutely useless TV programs, clueless and useless Internet surfing, taking 2-hour showers (like our Juliet) and so on.

Time management is a topic that can easily fill a book or two and of course it is impossible to speak about all of the aspects in a single blog posts. However, I hope I have given you a good starting point. I will expand the topic in the upcoming posts and provide you with external references as well.

Slogans and Mottos

2008-03-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

In one of the previous posts I have talked about missions statements. We have defined a mission statement as a brief but at the same time broad declaration describing the overall purpose of the organization. I have also reviewed missions statements of some of the well known companies. As it was noted, missions statements can be several paragraphs long.

It is not always practical to advertise a mission statement. That's why, companies have slogans and mottos - a short distinctive phrase used to identify a company or organization or its goals. In effect, a slogan can be viewed as a short version of a mission statement.

It is very interesting to know that the word slogan comes from Gaelic sluagh-ghairm (pronounced slua-gherum), which means war cry. A good slogan is as important in business as it used to be in the past in warfare. Usually slogans are brief and rhetoric, sometimes even vulgar.

It must also be noted that while companies have one mission statement, they can have more than one slogan. Also, slogans are subject to more frequent change than mission statements.

Well, after this brief theoretic excursion, let's get down to reviewing slogans of some of well known companies. Mostly, these are Fortune 500 companies.

Exxon Mobil

"Taking on the world's toughest energy challenges"
"We're drivers too"
"Understanding Energy"

Chevron - "Human Energy"

Gillette

"The best a man can get."

"Look Sharp! Feel Sharp! Be Sharp! How are ya fixed for blades?" - this is a slogan from forties of the past century. Good slogans live long. Don't you agree?

General Electric

GE's slogan is "Progress is our most important product." The well known "We bring good things to life!" was abandoned in 2002. That slogan was introduced in 1979.

General Motors - "Fuel efficiency with a choice."

American Airlines - "Something special in the air."

AVIS Rental Cars - "We're Number Two, We Try harder"

This slogan was invented in 1962 and in my opinion is very interesting. Why? Because it is not only a catchy phrase, but also entails a company strategy as well. You see, sometimes being the second (i.e. not a market leader, but a follower) is a good strategy and AVIS clearly underlines that. It is interesting that the company's current website displays only the second part of the slogan, i.e. - "We Try harder".

BMW - "Sheer Driving Pleasure"

This is my favorite car maker and I'm a proud owner of their car. It is interesting that the company has another slogan "The ultimate driving machine", which was invented back in 1975. Personally, I like the "The ultimate driving machine" more.

Canon - "Image is everything."

In this slogan we have a pretty nice play of words. Yes, image is everything.

Carlsberg Beer - "Probably the best beer in the world"

Citibank - "The Citi never sleeps"

Again, in this slogan you can see the play of words. This is a really cool slogan coined in seventies of the past century.

IBM has a cool single-word slogan - "Think". However, that slogan has had a serious impact on the company and the whole computing industry as well. That slogan deserves a separate, dedicated post and I will be writing about it in the upcoming post.

Sometimes, companies devise slogan for each individual product or product line. For example, we can recall a well known slogan of Hershey's Kit Kat - "Have a break. Have a Kit-Kat". Probably, that slogan was coined far before many of our readers were born. More precisely, that was in 1957.

L'Oréal - "Because I'm worth it"

This is a very nice slogan coined by McCann-Erickson in late sixties of the past century. The slogan implies that the price of the product may not be the cheapest but she is worth it. Not a surprise this slogan has been working so well for decades.

McDonald's belongs to those few companies that frequently change slogans.

The current slogan "I'm lovin' it", which was adopted in 2003, had been preceded by such slogans as "We Love to See You Smile" (from 2000), "Did Somebody Say McDonald's" (from 1997), "Have You Had your Break Today?" (from 1995), "What You Want is What You Get" (from 1992) and many others.

Also, McDonald's has some localized slogans. For example, "There's a little McDonald's in Everyone is for the Canadian market and "Things that make you go 'mmm'" has been used in Australia and Great Britain.

Coca-Cola

However, a recordsman in changing slogans is Coca-Cola. I have counted over hundred slogans since 1886 till 2007. Well, the latest slogan is "Give a Little Love and it All Comes Back to You".

This is all for now. More slogans will come in the upcoming posts. I will also bring slogans of some less known companies. Belive me, sometimes even tiny companies and one-man companies have cooler slogans.

B2B vs. B2C - The Nature of Your Business

2008-02-20T23:30:00.000-08:00

The terms B2B and B2C were coined to differentiate e-commerce companies that sold primarily to consumers from those whose market are other businesses. Some people involved in business can't even see differences between B2B and B2C marketing. After all, selling is selling and marketing is marketing. No matter if you sell your products or services to a national corporation or to John down the street, you ultimately sell to humans.

While certain marketing techniques work equally well both in B2B and in B2C contexts, it is politically incorrect to assume that there are no differences between B2B and B2C marketing. Differences are deep and complex and if you ignore them, your business will be doomed for failure.

But let's make things simple. In order to analyze those differences, let's look at some facts, which are easy to observe and easy to check against the reality.

Businesses and Consumers Buy Different Products and Services

Sometimes both businesses and consumers buy the same products and services. However, often, the products and services bought by businesses and consumers are different. This can be easily explained. Consumers are usually the end-users, while businesses acquire many products and services for their business processes. You buy milk and so does B en & Jerry's Homemade. But you are the one who consumes that milk, while Ben and Jerry's Homemade use the milk to produce ice-cream. On the other hand, there are not many business that buy tooth-paste, while you can hardly ever find a person who doesn't buy it. Likewise, I seriously doubt you have bought or will ever buy many of the products purchased by such companies as General Motors, General Electric, Apple, Coca-Cola and other large, medium and small businesses. Please note that the size of the business does not always determine the nature of the products bought by businesses. There are many really small companies that purchase products that many of us have not even heard of.

Quantities Purchased by Businesses and Consumers Are Different

Even when both businesses and consumers buy the same products, they do so in different quantities. Getting back to the example above, both you and Ben & Jerry's Homemade buy milk. However, while you may buy a couple of liter's per week, Ben and Jerry's Homemade's weekly purchases probably measure in tons. You can observe many other examples. You may have several computers in your household, however even a very small company may have more computers.

However, because businesses usually consume products in larger quantities, don't be fooled to think that you can sell more by targeting to businesses. While Ben and Jerry's purchases more milk than any one person can do, there are not MANY ice-cream producers (or other milk-consuming businesses), however, there are many, too many people who consume milk.

Deal With Few or Deal With Many

Usually B2C companies have many customers, while companies whose primary market are other businesses have few customers. There are exceptions to everything, though. Microsoft, has a lot of business customers and while most (if not all) buyers of Bugatti Veiron are end-consumers, I doubt there to be many of them. However, a general idea is that when you are a B2B company, you deal with few customers and if you are a B2C company, you cater to a lot of consumers.

Dollar Value of a Purchase

Even when businesses and consumers buy the same products, usually the dollar amount of the transaction will be different. You may buy a PC for $1,000 but when Google buys 1,000 of such computers, it makes the deal a million dollar one.

Please note that in this post, I will be reviewing some fundamental differences between B2B and B2C natures of businesses. Only after giving a careful thought to the facts below can we see what makes B2B and B2C marketing different. So, let's start.

Nature of Purchase Decision Making

As a rule purchasing decisions made by businesses are more rational buying decisions than those made by end-consumers. At the same time, purchasing decisions made by consumers are emotional based on status, desire, price, etc. However, this is not always true. Sometimes businesses make wrong purchasing decisions and consumers do pretty well on that end. In our complex world, with many alternative products, it has become very difficult to make right purchasing decisions. However, at the same time, the advent of the Internet made it easy to do quick research prior to purchasing a certain product. A quick example. From the last 20 books that I've bought on Amazon only one turned out to be under my expectations.

Influencers and Real Decision Makers

The person sitting in front of you might not be the one who has made the purchase decision. Usually, purchasing decision made by businesses are affected by multiple influencers. This is also true with some of the purchasing decisions made by end-consumers. For example, you don't buy a house spontaneously or choose a college without consulting with friends, relatives, etc. When it comes to less expensive things, most of the decisions made by end-consumers are automatic and spontaneous. Of course, businesses also automate purchasing decisions, but again, most of the purchasing decisions are influenced by more people than the purchasing decisions made by end-consumers.

Sales Cycle Are Different

Usually sales cycle are longer with businesses than with end consumers. Are you already running Windows Vista on your PC? Pretty safe to assume. However, there are many businesses that still use Win 95 and are pretty happy with that. So, you see the morale here. A business may not care at all if their vehicle is 10 year old. As long as it does the job fine, they won't replace it. However, we, end-consumers, would like to drive the latest models of cars. The same goes for other things like mobile-phones, computers, etc.

Relationship Driven vs. Product Driven

Businesses that sell to other businesses try to maximize the value of a relationship and use it as a means to maximize profits. Businesses that sell to end-consumers try to maximize the value of a transaction. For example, if a company sells expensive, specialized software to other companies, it may take a couple of rounds of negotiations until the deal is finalized. This is rarely observed with B2C businesses. Again, there are plenty of exceptions here. For example, when buying a house or an expensive car, it may take some negotiation but with most of the products purchased by end-users, the transaction goes without any negotiation at all. With B2B transactions, most of the transactions are pre-negotiated.

These are the fundamental differences between B2B and B2C companies. As you see, while there are many commonalities, the differences are deep too. Therefore, we can now safely assume that B2B and B2C marketing require different approaches and techniques. More about this will be coming in one of the next posts.

Real-world Examples of Mission Statements

2008-01-24T00:28:00.000-08:00

In this post I will analyze and compare mission statements of real companies. I will mostly review mission statements of some of the Fortune 500 companies. Here we go.

The Walt Disney Company

The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to be one of the world's leading
producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of
brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to
develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences
and related products in the world.

As you can see, this mission statement emphasizes geographic locations (...the world's leading producers…), products (...entertainment experiences and related products...) and quality (...the most creative, innovative and profitable...).

Nike, Inc.

To Bring Inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.

Nike's mission statement is brief but very specific. Global markets are addressed and the customers - every athlete.

Microsoft

At Microsoft, we work to help people and businesses throughout the world realize
their full potential. This is our mission. Everything we do reflects this
mission and the values that make it possible.

Microsoft is one of my favorite companies. Could not really omit their mission statement. Again, we see that the mission statement emphasizes geographic location (…throughout the world…). The mission statement also clearly shows the customers - people and businesses. However, because in the Microsoft's products are targeted to anyone and everyone, there are no specific details. The mission statement also says that the company's every effort reflects their mission and their values.

NWA

Workforce diversity gives us access to a world of different ideas and
perspectives. Northwest Airlines is committed to maintaining a corporate culture
where men and women of all ages, races, physical abilities, preferences and
backgrounds are treated with dignity and respect. At Northwest Airlines we
recognize that when diversity is valued and respected the results are improved
service, customer satisfaction and a positive community image. We believe our
employees make a world of difference and work to maintain an environment where
diversity and inclusion is a critical component of our success. Our Diversity
Vision To build a high performing environment where individual differences and
contributions of employees, customers and business partners are respected and
valued, the result of which is a business organization where fairness, trust and
integrity govern relationships and the way we do business.

NWA's mission statement is one of the most verbose mission statements. The primary focus is made on corporate culture, the company's employees and the diversity.

The McGraw-Hill Companies

We are dedicated to creating a workplace that respects and values people from
diverse backgrounds and enables all employees to do their best work. It is an
inclusive environment where the unique combination of talents, experiences, and
perspectives of each employee makes our business success possible. Respecting
the individual means ensuring that the workplace is free of discrimination and
harassment. Our commitment to equal employment and diversity is a global one as
we serve customers and employ people around the world. We see it as a business
imperative that is essential to thriving in a competitive global marketplace.

Again, this mission statement's major focus is on the company's employees.

Mattel Inc.

Mattel makes a difference in the global community by effectively serving
children in need . Partnering with charitable organizations dedicated to
directly serving children, Mattel creates joy through the Mattel Children's
Foundation, product donations, grant making and the work of employee volunteers.
We also enrich the lives of Mattel employees by identifying diverse volunteer
opportunities and supporting their personal contributions through the matching
gifts program.

Mattel's mission statement addresses the geographic location (…global community…), customers (...children…) and higher motives (…charitable organizations…). At the same time, the mission statement is addressed to the company's employees.

Sometimes along with a mission statement, companies have short slogans and mottos. Mattel Inc. has a really cool motto: The World's Mattel. Again, Matte's motto emphasizes the geographic aspects.

Kelly Services

To serve our customers, employees, shareholders and society by providing a broad
range of staffing services and products.

Here the accent is made on the products and services offered by the company. The mission statement also addresses customers, employees, shareholders and the society in general. The company's motto is: Steffing the World.

JPMorgan Chase

The Corporate Governance & Nominating Committee exercises general oversight
with respect to the governance of the Board of Directors.

This mission statement sounds very formal but hey it's JPMorgan Chase not a toy company. The mission statement addresses company stakeholders. However, their motto, Strengthening communities, addresses customers. However, in my opinion, the motto is quite vague.

IBM

Operating a safe and secure government.

This mission statement is one of the most interesting in my opinion. Yes, it's IBM's mission statement. Did you think anything else?

The Hershey Company

Undisputed Marketplace Leadership

This mission statement emphasizes market leadership. No other information is given. It could be a mission statement of any company. In my opinion, this is one of the worst mission statements. However, I am planning to dedicate a separate post to discuss what it takes to craft a good mission statement, mission statement do's and don’ts.

Fedex Corporation

FedEx will produce superior financial returns for shareowners by providing high
value-added supply chain, transportation, business and related information
services through focused operating companies. Customer requirements will be met
in the highest quality manner appropriate to each market segment served. FedEx
will strive to develop mutually rewarding relationships with its employees,
partners and suppliers. Safety will be the first consideration in all
operations. Corporate activities will be conducted to the highest ethical and
professional standards.

I like Fedex's mission statement very much. It addresses company stakeholders, products (...high value-added supply chain, transportation, business and related information services…), the means to achieve the goals (...through focused operating companies…). The mission statement also emphasizes the company's customers (Customer requirements will be met…) and employees and partners (... develop mutually rewarding relationships with its employees, partners and suppliers…). Corporate ethics and professionalism are also addressed (...the highest ethical and professional standards). In my opinion, Fedex's mission statement is one of the best you can read.

Chevron

At the heart of The Chevron Way is our Vision to be the global energy company
most admired for its people, partnership and performance.

This mission statement emphasizes geographic location and markets (global…), their employees (...admired for its people…) and partners. Their motto is: Human energy.

Barnes & Nobles, Inc

Our mission is to operate the best specialty retail business in America,
regardless of the product we sell. Because the product we sell is books, our
aspirations must be consistent with the promise and the ideals of the volumes
which line our shelves. To say that our mission exists independent of the
product we sell is to demean the importance and the distinction of being
booksellers. As booksellers we are determined to be the very best in our
business, regardless of the size, pedigree or inclinations of our competitors.
We will continue to bring our industry nuances of style and approaches to
bookselling which are consistent with our evolving aspirations. Above all, we
expect to be a credit to the communities we serve, a valuable resource to our
customers, and a place where our dedicated booksellers can grow and prosper.
Toward this end we will not only listen to our customers and booksellers but
embrace the idea that the Company is at their service.

The beginning of the mission statement is very interesting. B&N sells books, yet they say to be best regardless of the product. In my opinion, this mission statement is needlessly verbose and it could rephrased to make it shorter. The mission statement emphasizes mainly the quality of the company, its position on the market. Customers (... a valuable resource to our customers…), partners and suppliers (...a place where our dedicated booksellers...) are also addressed. The motto is made of a single word: Booksellers.

The last mission statement that I will review is not from a business sector. Imagine, even the U.S. Department of State has a mission statement.

U.S. Department of State

Create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the
American people and the international community.

I will revew more mission statements in the upcoming posts. Stay tuned and check this blog frequently.

What is a Mission Statement?

2008-01-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

A mission statement is a brief but at the same time broad declaration describing the overall purpose of the organization. The mission statement defines the organization's reason for existence in one or more paragraphs. The mission statement is a declaration of what an organization aspires to be.

A mission statement usually embodies the organization's philosophies, goals, ambitions and values. A mission statement can be focused on the organization's employees, customers and other stakeholders, as well as geographic locations, technology, etc.

A mission statement outlines what the organization is now and/or what it wants to become in the future. In respect of the future, for managers, the mission statement becomes a good benchmark against to which to evaluate performance. Very often, mission statements, identify critical business processes as well.

From the qualitative point of view, a good mission statement must be visionary, broad, realistic, motivational, easy to understand and as short as possible. Most of the mission statements that I've read are limited to a couple of paragraphs. However, there are some organizations whose mission statements can span on a whole page or two.

Is it mandatory to write a mission statement for your organization? There is no unequivocal answer to this question. However, most of the experts agree that it is a good idea to have a formal, written mission statement. Empirical data further strengthens this point of view. Over 60% of the Fortune 500 companies have written mission statements.

However, there is no use of a formal mission statement if it is just written and then thrown away on the shelf with a half inch dust on it. As mentioned above, a mission statement can serve as a good benchmark for managers. At the same time, a good mission statement distinguish your organization from others of your type.

In the next posts we will review, analyze and compare mission statements of several Fortune 500 companies. Further, we will delve into what it takes to write a good mission statement.

Business Blog Is Back

2008-01-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

After quite a long pause, I am glad to announce that the Business Blog is back. There have been some objective reasons to this break. However, I'd been getting quite many e-mails from our readers all of them asking whether the blog would continue or not.

I would like to thank our readers for their patience and support. Stay tuned and don't forget to subscribe to our RSS feed. Some reaaallly cool posts are coming up.

Managing Your Own Business - Part I

2007-10-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

In the previous post I described some of the mistakes that you can make when starting your own business. I mentioned that usually, the founder of the business appoints himself/herself as a manager or the boss of the company. This is a critical moment for a new company, which may determine whether your company becomes successful or becomes doomed for failure.

There is a prevailing opinion among people that management is required in medium and large organizations only. Unfortunately, this is an extremely false assumption, which goes contrary to empirical facts. The size of an organization has nothing to do with the need for management. Management is required if your company has hundreds of thousands of employees and management is required if your organization consists of only you and your companion. Whenever we have two or more persons engaged in a process of achieving some goals, we have an organization and thus we there is a need for management. However, it must be noted that there is a dramatic difference between techniques for managing a large corporation and for managing a company that employees 4 or 5 people.

Management is important because good management will allow you to achieve your company goals in the most efficient way. A business organization is like a living entity. Businesses have inputs (resources, for example money, labour, natural resources, etc). Business process those inputs and finally businesses have outputs, or the results of the processing. The need for management stems from a simple fact that the resources that your business can consume are scarce. If you had unlimited money and other resources, you would not care much about management. However, because the resources that you can use are limited, you must use them in the best possible way.

Hence, we have come to the first function of management and this function is planning. Planning deals with setting goals (company objectives) and then devising a plan how best to achieve those goals.

Even the best plans in the world are useless if they never get implemented in life. Implementing plans is another management function called organizing. Basically, organizing is a process of allocating the resources for carrying out the plans. Keep in mind that your resources are scarce. You will almost always be dealing with limited resources and thus the importance of good organization must never be underestimated.

When managing your organization, you deal with people working with you. You must be able to influence those people to engage in the work processes to achieve organizational goals. Your employees will expect you to share your vision with them, help them in difficult situations, direct them towards achieving the organizational goals. In other words, you will be doing the third function of management called leading.

Think about your business like an aircraft going from destination A to destination B. If the aircraft deviates from the course, the autopilot can adjust it. In business you are both the pilot and the autopilot and the only way to adjust deviations from the "course" is to have good controlling in place. Controlling is an important function of management. It helps you regulate organizational activities and check that the actual performance conforms to your company goals. If there is a discrepancy between the actual performance and your company goals, good controlling can diagnose problems early and let you take necessary measures.

Unfortunately, the above four functions are not enough for managing your business successfully. Usually, you as a manager, will need a specific knowledge of the industry in which your company is going to operate.

Another problem associated with being a boss in a startup is the fact that you will have to deal with everything from hiring new employees to marketing and sales.

You may be thinking that throughout this blog you read mostly about difficulties associated with running own business. However, this is very close to reality. Running your own business is not an easy endeavour. You must be ready to face many difficulties and usually they do arise in front of business owners. However, if you build a successful company, you will be getting such a satisfaction that is difficult to compare to anything. So, don't be scared. Stay tuned and check out upcoming posts.

Mistakes That You Can Make When Starting Your Own Business

2007-09-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

In this post I will speak about typical mistakes that you, as a future business owner can make. These mistakes are very common among new business founders. If you take these points into consideration, you will increase your chances of success.

The first mistake is starting your own business without having adequate experience in the relevant field. It is imperative that you gain experience in the field where your business will operate. If you plan to start a software development business, it is important that you work in the industry a year or two. Even if you won't become a professional programmer, having experience in software engineering will help you. The same is true for other industries as well. Under experience I imply not only technical expertise, but knowing key players in the industry, having contacts with key people and so on, well you get the idea.

The second mistake that a business founder can make is to appoint himself/herself as a CEO of the company. Usually new businesses are started by people who are professionals in certain fields. For example, a programmer after working 5 years for a software developer company quits his/her job to start own business. Experience shows that such new businesses have slim chances of surviving and becoming successful. Why is it so? Simply, because being a boss requires additional skills along with the domain knowledge and expertise. Unfortunately, most of the newly founded small businesses does not have enough financial resources to hire professional managers and thus the founders are becoming de facto managers. This point is so important that I'm obliged to bring a an example.

Let's take Google. It is a software giant, a multi-billionaire company, dominant player in the industry. The company was started in a campus room. One of the factors why Googles has become so successful is that its two young founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired a professional manager as soon as the company could afford it. The same can be said about Apple. I won't take much of your time by bringing additional examples, there are quite many, both today and in the past.

The third mistake that you can make is to start your own business in order to avoid hard work. Some people are so bored with their jobs that in order to avoid it start new businesses. Such endeavours are usually doomed for failure. If you think that running your own business will save you form working hard, pardon, but you are deeply mistaken. George Eastman, the founder of Kodak would spend nights experimenting prior to founding the company. Successful entrepreneurs work almost 24 hours a day.

The fourth mistake is starting your own business when you are not ready to sacrifice. Spending less time with your family, cutting down on personal expenses, taking risks, being overstressed are a number of things that you may face. If you are not ready to cope with those things, you'd better not start your own business at all.

The fifth mistake is being very optimistic about future. Being too optimistic I would say is dangerous when you run your own business.

The sixths mistake is starting a business without a sound and well thought out business plan. Equally terrible mistake is having a business plan which is put on the shelf covered with an inch thick dust. Business plans are to be followed, reviewed, reworked but not put on the shelves.

Of course, there are many other pitfalls and difficulties, however I've tried to direct your attention to the most important mistakes. Hopefully, these introductory topics are giving you a good idea whether to start your own business or not.

Business Nature as a Factor of Growth Potential

2007-09-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that some businesses grow extremely fast while other businesses don't grow at all? Yet another businesses grow slowly but steadily.

For example, let's take Google. The company is celebrating its 9th birthday this year. Google has demonstrated phenomenal growth, hence their owners are one of the quickest guys to become billionaires.

Now let's look at pharmaceutic companies. Almost none of the well established pharmaceutic companies experiences rapid growth, yet almost all pharmaceutic companies grow slowly but steadily.

Finally, let's look at a local grocery store. It has a limited growth potential. Even if it is a profitable business from year to year, still it has a very limited growth potential.

You may object that Google is a big corporation and the local grocery store is a home-based business run by a family. Well, you are right if you compare today's Google to the grocery store. But please notice that 9 years ago Google was a small company as well.

We can conclude that a company size does not have much to do with its growth potential. However, the nature of the business does. This is such an important point, let me repeat it. The nature of the business is one of the factors that determines the growth potential.

Generally, businesses introducing innovative or revolutionary products and services have the fastest growth potential. However, at the same time such companies have the greatest risks. Companies offering well established products and services are usually associated with low risks but at the same time low growth potential.

There are many factors that affect growth potential. Generally, the industry or the segment where the company operates determines the growth potential. As a rule, when a particular industry experiences fast growth, so do the companies involved in that industry.

There are several other factors that determine growth potential, however the nature of the business and the industry are one of the most important factors. We will get back to the topic of growth in the upcoming posts as well.

By the way, the next post will be very interesting. In the next post I will speak about pitfalls that expect you and the most common mistakes that business owners make. So stay tuned, and don't forget to subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Good of Running Your Own Business

2007-09-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

In the previous post I have tried to highlight some (but unfortunately not all) of the difficulties associated with running your own business. It's time to move to the bright side of running your own business.

First, if your business becomes successful and financially healthy, it may generate considerably more income to you than what you would get by working for someone else.

Second, even if you had a high salary job, you would still be limited in your annual income. This is not true when you run your own business. If your business grows, so does your fortune. Theoretically, many businesses don't have much growth limits. For example, if you have $500,000 per year, your income will be half a million no matter what you do. However, if your business makes half a million in net profits and you expand it and start making quarter a million more, then you earn $750,000 per year.

Third, you are your own boss. Unfortunately, many people, especially young and inexperienced business owners see this advantage as the most attractive. Unfortunately this is not true in reality. You should never abuse this privilege.

Fourth, if you establish your business with long term objectives (i.e. not a business with quick exit strategy) then every minute spent by you working you work on yourself. Thus you make yourself richer, not your employer.

Fifth, you have more control of your life. As long as your business is doing fine, you don't risk losing your job whereas a slight reorganization in an employer might have left you jobless.

Sixth and the most important thing about running your own business is that if you do right things and do things right, your own business will give you a perfect chance for self-realization because only in your own business will you have full creative freedom.

Finally, I would like to mention that neither this list nor the list from the previous post, is or can be complete. Rather, I've tried to highlight the most important (at least from my experience) negative and positive aspects of running your own business.

Running Your Own Business vs. Working For Someone Else

2007-09-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Running your own business is such a tempting thing that sometimes I think at some point in life everybody must try it. I'm 28 and I've been running my own business for over 8 years. I started working when I was 18 and the very first two years was the time that I worked for someone else.

Starting your own business when you are a teenager and your experience is almost zero is a tough thing. The same is true when you are 55, experienced but lacking the energy that you would have at 18.

If I had a possibility to go ten years back in my life, I would follow the same track and would start and run my own business. The reward outweighs all difficulties, pressure and risks. We'll talk more about this below.

There is a prevailing misunderstanding among people that running your own business is always the best thing. Unfortunately, in life, nothing has only positive sides and running a business is no exception. Let me quickly mention a couple of disadvantages of running your own business.

First, your personal income depends on the success of your business. With an employer you have a guaranteed income. As long as you are not fired from your job, you get your monthly salary.

Second, you must take care of your superannuation. When you work for a company, your employer is taking care of your superannuation. The same is true for a paid leave or a sick leave. For example, according to contracts with my employees, they are entitled to a 4 week paid leave.

Third, at 6 PM you leave your work, right? Even if you have a lot of work and have to stay longer at the office, at some point you will leave your work. Unfortunately, this is not the case with your own business. When you are running your own business, it's always with you, at 3:00 PM, at 4:00AM or when you are dreaming about Ferrari 430.

Fourth, as a business owner you are under a heavy pressure. If you grow your business, at some point you will have to hire employees. Those people's and their families' well being is heavily dependent on the success of your business. If your business runs into difficulties, you will have problems paying salaries and this will put serious pressure on you. In a worse case the pressure may drive you to a nervous breakdown.

Fifth, in many cases you will have to compete against companies that have more financial power than you do. Your financial power limits your abilities to spend enough on marketing, research and development, operations and thus puts you in a less competitive position.

Sixths, mistakes for a small business owner might be fatal whereas a large corporation may easily survive a row of such mistakes.

There are many other difficulties and disadvantages associated with running your own business. However, I've tried to highlight the most important and critical difficulties. Hopefully, you are not scared. In the next post I will speak about positive aspects of running your own business.

Welcome

2007-09-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our Business Blog, a new member of the Blogvasion Family of blogs. As you may have already understood, main focus of this blog will be business. I will cover such topics as entrepreneurship, business planning, management, marketing, finances, negotiating, game theory and strategic thinking. Both theoretic and practical issues will be addressed. Most of the blog posts will be based on real-world experience. Here we won't talk about Mr X. or ABC Corp., rather all of the examples and case studies will be based on real people and real companies.

Target audience for this blog are people who would like to start their own small business, existing entrepreneurs, managers as well as students of business schools. In order not to make the blog too dry, from time to time we will include interesting business news and funny stuff. It is my plan to publish a new article in every two days. So, stay tuned and don't forget to subscribe to this blogs' RSS feed.