LemonaideGuide

Entrepreneurs Just Don’t Give Up!

MJ Gottlieb — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:20:57 +0000

Happily, or sadly, depending upon how you look at it, entrepreneurs just don’t give up! Why? Well there are two answers to this question one negative, one positive. I’ll give you the negative first. Always the bad news first, right? Right… Entrepreneurs play in a game of high stakes poker. Everything being relative, whatever the amount of money they have, they are usually putting it all on the line. We are extremists. The bad part of this is, just like blackjack, when we lose our chips, we just pick ourselves up, look for a new game, find new resources (chips) and try the slots… and God forbid we lose at the slots, we try Roulette or any other game that will make us the quick dollar. Now what I’m telling you is not a good thing. People lose their shirt playing these games, and to fix it, they re-finance their homes, collateralize the cars, scoop up a bunch more money and hit the tables again to start yet another business!

WARNING: IF THIS REMINDS YOU OF YOU, THEN STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND KEEP READING THIS ARTICLE UNTIL YOU FINISH IT.

Entrepreneurs, re-directed in the right direction, can and should start as many businesses as they want, but you need to know there is only one thing that puts them in the right direction, it’s called purpose. If the purpose of starting your business is to re-pay your parents and friends the money you lost, well, then, the purpose of your business will lead you to yet another failure and you will keep starting new businesses for all the wrong reasons. After that business fails, now, the next business you’ve started you’re not only doing it to pay back your friends and family, but also you are trying to PROVE to everyone that you can in fact make it, and you want to especially prove it to those people that never thought you could make it in the first place. Now this is where it gets dangerous. Your motives start becoming similar to that of a desperado. Now you’ve completely lost the purpose that entrepreneurship is supposed to give you. You’re in a dark place. You don’t care about WHAT your business is, only that it needs to serve the purpose of blanketing all of your mishaps.

Now here’s the good news… You ever heard the saying, “If you love your work then you’re not working?” Well if you haven’t learned it, it’s time you did. Especially if you are in one of those dark places. To get the right purpose back, let’s look back to when you started your first business. If you are like most entrepreneurs, when you start your first business, you are bright-eyed, ambitious, confident, excited, and most importantly, PASSIONATE about what you are getting into. Sound like the person you used to know? Well that’s where you need to go back to. Me personally, I always am always driven when customers call to say they are very pleased with the product or service I provided. Even in these blogs, I feel great when I receive positive comments people make on how my articles help them, and am equally as attentive to hearing about ways I could have helped them more. I am excited about camaraderie. Motivating people. Learning how to be better… and yes, my bills are being paid while this is happening!

Why are they being paid? Because this time, I planned in advance what I needed for the business to sustain itself during its growth period, thus I had the cash on hand to survive the initial bumps and bruises along the way. If you do this, you know the investment that it’s going to take to get your business running, and you are not going to start until you have the start-up capital you need. You don’t want to be bleeding money when you start! And if you are telling me, NO! YOU MUST START NOW! I OWE THIS PERSON, AND THAT PERSON… believe me, these “people” you owe will be much better served if you take the time to plan this next venture with clarity and not haste. Your chances of paying them back will increase exponentially.

It all comes down to purpose. Without a meaningful purpose and excitement in what you are doing, you will never have the focus you need to get things done properly. I lost my focus for a long period of time. I lost the house, the car, and many other things to boot! Luckily I caught myself just in time. I understand the ventures I am in and am certainly aware they can lose their luster at any time, but I choose to accept that possibility and make the necessary changes to prevent them from happening. And if things happen to be faltering in one area, I can leverage myself by capitalizing where I am profiting in other areas. That’s another thing that a clear mind gives you. Foresight. Seeing the mistakes before they come, but that’s for the next lesson! If you have the focus and clarity, I am confident that you will be surprised how quickly you achieve your level of success that you have been trying for so long! And remember, given what we know now, having a sense of purpose, we can now be proud to say, “Entrepreneurs never give up!”

!Good luck

http://Thelemonaideguide.com is a site committed to the advancement of entrepreneurship and small business in America. It is a site, not only for aspiring entrepreneurs of our next generation who need guidance before they start their journeys, but also for those that are already in the game who need some extra help and direction. MJ Gottlieb is a business consultant living in New York City, and is the creator and chief consultant of thelemonaideguide.com. Feel free to contact him at mj@thelemonaideguide.com.

Capital vs Financing

MJ Gottlieb — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:48:21 +0000

Many aspiring entrepreneurs are misled into pursuing a capital investment without taking into account financing, which is the key component that gives your company its ability to grow. Say you are in a product driven business and you are looking for a million dollars for your initial cost of goods, your selling expenses, and all of your general & administrative expenses (i.e. salaries, office space, telephones, utilities, etc). For arguments sake, let’s say your cost of goods allows you to make $500,000 dollars in product with a respectable thirty percent margin. Let’s take it a step further and say your pursuit of the investment was successful and you have your million dollars.

And just to put the icing on the cake, let’s further say that your product sells well and you make that thirty percent margin, translating into $150,000 profit on that first order. Sounds great! But wait a minute. What happens when your customers come back and now re-order $5,000,000 dollars in product because your sales were so good? Who’s going to come up with the money now to finance $5,000,000 in sales? You can’t go to back to your investors and quickly try to convince them into exposing themselves with further capital, because that simply wasn’t the deal. And a deal is a deal. Plus it will scare them away.

What you need is a financing entity to fulfill your orders because that’s what they do. They charge you an interest rate to finance your orders up front. Not inject capital, that’s for the other guys. However, financing purchase orders up front (purchase order financing) is a dangerous business because the financing entity doesn’t have a guarantee that the goods will be made properly, if you’ll ship late, etc. For this reason, they will charge you a very high interest rate that will eat away your margins. If, however, you had the money to manufacture the goods and simply needed interim cash before the customer pays, that is much easier and attainable through a factoring company, who is similar to a bank but specializing in these types of transactions.

This is called accounts receivable financing, which you can get at a very respectable interest rate, because you have taken the manufacturing risk away, and then it becomes their job to check the credit of the customer to decide whether or not they are worthy of a credit line for the order. But that’s a mute point because you don’t have the money to manufacture the goods (it will take a lot more than your $150,000 profit), so you are stuck in the mud. So now what? Without the financing in place, you will be unable to grow and the investment you secured will be useless if you don’t have the fuel to go forward. Think of it as the investors bought you your car, but you need fuel for it to move. Financing is the fuel that keeps your engine running, and the more fuel you have, the farther you can travel.

So how are you going to get purchase order financing at an interest rate that doesn’t swallow all your profits? Certainly not from a bank in this day and age. This is where forming strategic alliances come in which I will fully discuss in detail in my next article. To give you an idea what a strategic alliance is, it is where go to manufacturers in your industry who are already doing what you are doing and look for your financing there, because they can control risk by making the product in their own factories, so your interest will be much lower.

The best possible scenario however, and your most probable, will be that you kill two birds with one stone and get both the investment and financing all under one roof. Bottom line, they are doing what you are doing and they are succeeding so why wouldn’t they? Most of these companies have a built in turn-key model that makes it infinitely easier to create a successful business model. But don’t think you’re going to hold on to all your equity. Anyone that does, doesn’t understand that 20% of something is worth a heck of a lot more than 100% of nothing.

Bottom line, strategic alliances most often end up far more profitable for you, then if you got the investment in one place, and the financing in another. True, it also makes the manufacturer you aligned yourself with more successful, but then again, they deserve it!

Thelemonaideguide.com is a site committed to the advancement of entrepreneurship and small business in America. It is a site, not only for aspiring entrepreneurs of our next generation who need guidance before they start their journeys, but also for those that are already in the game who need some extra help and direction. MJ Gottlieb is a business consultant living in New York City, and is the creator and chief consultant of thelemonaideguide.com. Feel free to contact him at mj@thelemonaideguide.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=MJ_Gottlieb

Covering Your Bases – By MJ Gottlieb

MJ Gottlieb — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:36:47 +0000

When starting any company you need to be able to tackle all the obstacles you will be running into BEFORE you start your business. A business plan helps you understand your business and is actually more important for your own knowledge, than any business you may be presenting it to. But you need to ask the right questions about your business in order to answer all the relevant questions. Here are some of the key questions you must ask AND ANSWER before you even begin to search for a company to help you executed a business plan.

A) Is your product or service marketable?
B) Are you a commodity (product)-based brand or marketing driven brand? That is to say, do retailers or consumers by the product because of the product, whether it is superior to the competition, or because the price is less (product driven), or, do they buy your product because you have created an inherent value through marketing the product through advertising and promotions, such that the consumers gain a feeling of value even before they buy it?
C) Who are your competitors and why are they succeeding?
D) How are you going to make your value more significant to your consumers such that you can gain competitive marketing share?
E) What are your selling tactics?
F) What is your marketing strategy?
G) How much money do you need from a capital standpoint to get your product off the ground.
H) What is your planned return-on-investment (ROI)?
I) Is your product patented, unique or proprietary?

These are just a few of the questions you need to ask yourself when you are in the strategic planning phase of your product launch. Get yourself small start-up capital in order to get the consulting you need up front so you can eliminate the majority of your mistakes before your business starts. Don’t wait until you are too late and already in the game when the dollars are high and the stakes are high. Again, remember, your business plan is first and foremost important to help you understand your business better. When you fill in all the areas that are required in a business plan, you will be forced into answering these questions. Remember, this is a good thing. To find out the appropriate format, Google “Business Plans” or, “Business plan format” on the web and it will be easy enough to find.

I hope the above article provided you with some insight into what it takes BEFORE you take the leap into the world of the entrepreneur. Again, good luck!

Thelemonaideguide.com is a site committed to the advancement of entrepreneurship and small business in America. It is a site, not only for aspiring entrepreneurs of our next generation who need guidance before they start their journeys, but also for those that are already in the game who need some extra help and direction. MJ Gottlieb is a business consultant who resides in New York City. He is the creator of http://www.thelemonaideguide.com. Feel free to contact him at mj@thelemonaideguide.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=MJ_Gottlieb

MJ Gottlieb – How to Prevent a Spendaholic from Spending Money

MJ Gottlieb — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:20:47 +0000

Key tips on how to curb the spending appetites of our most frivolous spenders.

The Two Worst Traits That Prevent People From Getting a Job In This Economy – MJ Gottlieb

MJ Gottlieb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:57:25 +0000

Many times, half the battle to winning a war is showing up on the battlefield. In this video, MJ discusses the two traits that prevent so many Americans from even trying to seek employment.

MJ Gottlieb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:50:41 +0000

MJ Gottlieb – How to Guarantee You Make Money From Your Business

MJ Gottlieb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:21:22 +0000

Entrepreneur MJ Gottlieb stresses the importance to keeping to your business model, and learning to say No.

How Much Are You Worth to an Employer – MJ Gottlieb

MJ Gottlieb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:43:12 +0000

Sometimes the most valuable assets we have we tend to overlook the most.

How to Get Your Commissions in Advance – MJ Gottlieb

MJ Gottlieb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:40:49 +0000

Many commission-based salespeople in the product-oriented market become slaves of time as they wait for their orders to ship so they can finally get paid. Heres a great way of getting your money up front that benefits both you and your boss.

How to Get Money in a Bad Economy – MJ Gottlieb

MJ Gottlieb — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:38:36 +0000

In this day and age, we constantly have to re-define the definition of creative financing, as tricky times warrant the development of tricky strategie