The dependability of a steady paycheck from your job is great, but no matter how much you’re getting paid, you’re still trading in your own hours to make money for someone else. If you want to truly be free and reap the all of the benefits of your work, you should consider starting your own business and be the boss.

Can You Wear the Crown?

They say, “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” and they weren’t kidding around! When you’re “the man” the buck stops with you; there is no one else to blame if things go south. If you’re up to tackling this challenge, you need to put some serious time into planning out what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it and how to make a business grow.

Despite the challenges it presents, being your own boss is extremely rewarding personally and financially. If you’re ready to dip your toes in the pool of entrepreneurship, then check out this quick guide to make sure you have all your bases covered.

Find Your Niche

The very first question you need to ask yourself is, “What service/goods am I going to offer?” What you decide on should not only be lucrative and have a market but should also interest you. When you work in a field that you truly enjoy, it feels a lot less like work. Make a list of things you are good at and that you really enjoying doing. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Take your list and make sure there is a viable market that you can enter. You can do this by Googling the names of the market or terms that are commonly used in it. If paid ads show up in the search engine results, then you know people are making money doing this. You can also check Amazon and your local bookstore for magazines that are devoted to your field of interest. Look at the ads in the magazine and see what people in your market are buying and what they are interested in.

What’s Your Business Model?

The next thing to consider is your business model; how are you going to make money doing what you enjoy? There are a thousand of ways to make a buck, here are just some:

• Create a website or publication that makes money through advertising.
• Sell some sort of service.
• Sell a physical or electronic product.
• Consult and show others how to become as great as you are at whatever it is you’re great at.
• Be the middle man in an interaction and take a percentage or fee from one or both parties.
• Sell other people’s products and make a commission per sale, for example internet affiliate marketing.
• A mix of the above.

Make it Legit

Unless you want an unpleasant letter from the IRS one day, you need to make your business legitimate. The first thing you should do is create a separate entity like a LLC or Corporation. Research what situation works best for you given your individual situation, your business and where you live. There are tons of resources out there that can help you with this.

Next, make sure you get a Tax ID number from the IRS and pay your taxes when you start making some money. I know this seems like an obvious statement, but you would be amazed at how many people don’t. If you’re working from home, make sure you get a post office box where they will sign for your packages. You can list your home address but you generally want to separate your personal and business activities as much as possible.

Finally, have a business number where people can get a hold of you. Even if your business does not require one-on-one contact (i.e. Internet based), you still need a phone number to enhance your credibility and receive calls.

Cover Your Bases, And Then Round Them

If something is confusing, make sure you talk to a professional. Do-it-yourself services are all the rage these days but don’t risk your financial future or your business’s existence by just winging it. Accountants and lawyers are worth the money they charge and it never hurts to have a professional weigh in on your plans.

Now you are ready to rock! In the next part of this series, I’ll discuss using the Internet, social media and word of mouth advertising to get the customers streaming through your door, website or phone!

Welcome back! Earlier this week we posted the first part of a two part series called “Five Easy Steps to Finding your Flow”. The first step was developing or discovering a passion for your work. This is not always easily achieved and many find themselves working for a paycheck only. Find that extra motivation and you’ll find successes arrive much more often.

We now conclude the series with the final four steps…

2. Select the Right Task

If the task that you are working on is too easy, too hard or unimportant you’re never going to find your flow. The job at hand needs to be challenging enough that you use your higher-level skills.  But on the other hand, you want to avoid challenges that bring frustration and interrupt your rhythm. Likewise, you also need to be doing something that is important enough to matter beyond just pushing papers around.

3. Set the Stage

As mentioned before, distractions are one of the biggest “flow killers” out there. You need to clear your workspace of anything that will rob you of complete concentration.  That means you need to silence instant messages, emails and all of those other wonderful devices meant to force us into multitasking hell.

I don’t know about you but I can’t stand the nagging feeling of seeing a new email come in and not being able to at least check on its level of importance. You need to tune all of that out. Work in a quiet room or find something that blocks the world from you while not stealing your distraction.

Sometimes silence isn’t the answer though. Many masters of flow (including yours truly) listen to music while they work, or even play movies that have been seen a million times in the background. I personally find silence deafening, so I need something in the background to keep my mind from wandering. Experiment and find what works best for you.

4. The Hour Matters

Have you ever noticed you do your best work and are most productive at certain hours of the day? Maybe it’s in the morning before everyone else shows up or late at night when your household has quieted down, but everyone has their optimal work time. This is the fertile soil in which flow grows. Combining an environment with no distractions and working at your own optimal time is a huge stepping-stone to achieving flow.

5. Practice Makes Perfect

Getting your mind to enter a certain state of activity is never easy and even those who play on the field of flow regularly can’t always reproduce it. Like anything else, practice makes perfect; keep on trying to find your optimal levels and tweak your routine where necessary.

Final Thoughts

Most importantly don’t stress about it. If you’re desperately driving for flow then you’ll never get there. It would be like someone putting a gun to your head and trying to force you to relax! Flow happens when you let go, lose yourself in your task and the world around you melts away. Do your best to set the scene and see what works and what doesn’t.

The application of Zen practices to business and personal life has been getting huge amounts of attention these days, and for good reason. The advantages of simplifying, tuning out the noise, being in the moment completely and finding higher levels of creativity and productivity can have staggering effects on your output.

Zen Life: How Close Are You?

If the ideals behind being Zen just don’t register with you, you’re not alone. Wrapping your mind around Eastern philosophy can be about as easy as doing a Rubic’s Cube blindfolded. Surprising as it might seem, you have taken part in many Zen experiences and have reaped the benefits without really knowing it. One of the most common is the State of Flow.

State of Flow

Have you ever been totally engrossed in a task or activity to the point where you cease to think about every single action, lose track of time and just act? This is the state of mind known as flow and it increases productivity and creativity, reduces stress and allows your conscious mind to take a backseat to the other parts of you. Throughout history many practitioners of Zen Buddhism such as monks, martial artists and samurai warriors have used their meditative abilities to enter this state and achieve almost superhuman feats.

Even if you’re not into decimating opposing armies on the battlefield or breaking iron bars with your head flow can still be easily achieved. Here’s five easy steps to find your little slice of productivity Nirvana:

1. Be Passionate About Your Work

You can’t lose yourself in a job that you absolutely loathe. This kind of task encourages distraction and procrastination, which are the enemies of flow. While we all have to do things we don’t enjoy from time to time, if your job is filled with these, maybe you’re not in the right line of work. I’m not saying you should give your two weeks notice today or take revenge on that vending machine that robbed your Milky Way last week…but maybe it’s time to consider a change.

If that just isn’t the cards for you, then try to do more jobs you do enjoy in your position. Take your examples of higher productivity to your boss and see if you can’t map out a better job description for yourself.

This is the first part of a two part series focused on Finding Your Flow.  Please join us on Friday for the conclusion to the series and the final four steps to finding productivity.

Is the internet making us smarter, or is it becoming a crutch whereby we no longer have to remember information?

What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

That was the subject of a recent book by Nicolas Carr called The Shallows:What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains in which he opines, backed by research, is while the internet has increased the amount of activity in our minds, it is making us lazier in remembering information. The reason for this is the advent of hypertext. Instead of being able to read something in a linear fashion, with the web we are often confronted with a barrage of links. These links lead us to other places, to different browser tabs, and eventually leaves us wondering what exactly we’re spending our time really doing.

Do You Need the Links?

Take some time to perform a little experiment with yourself to prove that your internet browsing is affecting your ability to focus. Pick up a book. (Yes, remember those?) Pick one up, preferably one that interests you, and start reading it. Keep track of how long you can continuously read it for while storing the information on the pages. I tried this myself recently and found that I simply could not read a traditional published work without hypertext for as long as I once could.

It’s this sequence of straightforward, linear information that we once used to be able to absorb like a sponge which is being lost in a hyperlinked, information overloaded world.

Social Media: Productivity Killer

This is especially true when you put this into the context of social media. Productivity experts are renowned for advocating that people only check their email or smartphone at certain times of the day in order to properly manage time. This strategy is effective in controlling message bombardment, but how in the world you can do something like that on Twitter or Facebook?

It’s not possible to manage social media developments by carving time around these activities. In reality the only way social influence can be spread is through the constant flow of tweets, updates and whatnot. The worst part? Most people don’t even realize why they cannot get anything done with their time with their brain activity constantly aflutter trying to keep the social media boat afloat.

Time to Delegate

So what is there that one can do? Delegation. This method is by far the most effective way I’ve seen social media work successfully is by having a specific person take the wheel and manage campaigns. By trying to do everything on Twitter and Facebook you’ll leave your head spun if you’re not careful.

Social media may be bad on the brain if you’ve got other things to get done in your day, so if you plan on making it a part of your business strategy, set yourself clear goals. Having people around you whether they are freelancers, experts or employees who can focus on this task while you are trying to manage your business will also save you a ton of time.

As anyone who knows about working for or perhaps starting a small business is the degree of change one must deal with. For some people, change is hard to deal with. On a higher level, when you ponder the road that life takes everyone on this always has to be grappled with, and it becomes very troublesome for people who have problems dealing with change on a consistent basis. When you are launching a new venture or managing a longstanding small business you have to come to terms with the fact that in order to survive you have to go with the flow.

The Business Plan

Those who are rigid in their ways need not apply here. In order to grow a business you have to be able to quickly adapt to ever-changing environments. I always have to laugh when I hear about these entrepreneurship courses that people take in college. What is your first assignment or the capstone project for the class? Create a business plan.

That’s right. You spend your time looking at competitive analysis, market research and capital outlays. In essence, you carefully craft a set of rules and procedures in starting a business. You submit your first draft to your professor, and he or she essentially gives you an opinion on how tough it will be for you to survive. And the professor is probably right.

Can You Really Map Your Way to Success?

That is in a nutshell what the inherent problem is of going by the book, or along with a rigidly set business plan. That plan is going to fly out the window the first time you make a sale, the first time you lose a customer and the first time you have to let someone go. There isn’t a “plan” that can teach you how to do this kind of stuff; you have to learn as you go. Of course, if you’re a true entrepreneur, that’s how you’d prefer to have things done: on the fly.

But let’s go back to the college course and a perfectly crafted business plan. There’s a method in that madness in doing this for a grade: you need to find out how viable your best idea in business really is. Can you identify an under served market? Are you prepared to spend hours Googling your competition? Can you take the risks to actually implement and back up what you are saying on paper?

Change is Great!

That’s why in the rules and regulations that befit a university classroom, the best measure of if you can start your own business is to create a business plan. And the point here is not to say that having a plan is bad, just make sure you’re not writing out what you expect to do in any kind of stone, because change will surely be constant in your process ahead.

Thanks to Mad Men, we all have an intriguing image of what goes on behind the scenes at big advertising firms. Sure, the days of smoking, drinking and flagrant sexual harassment in the office are probably gone but the big budgets, art departments and well crafted pitches still dominate.

Once upon a time, you couldn’t get your message out unless you had a long line of zeros on a check to get you some serious advertising muscle. While this form of advertising has done well for decades and continues to dominate the market, technology is bringing about a revolution. Like all innovative changes, it starts off small but gains momentum and eventually captures the attention of the titans of industry.

E-Marketing Makes a Difference

The internet and more specifically social media is taking the focus off of traditional, large scale advertising campaigns and making everyone from small businesses to multinational corporations stand up and take notice. Social media is based on the concept that all people can have equal access to information and share ideas with one another. This is radically altering the way a lot of people do business and especially how they advertise.

It’s not enough for a company to build an awesome car and put up a bright shiny web page with all the Flash graphics that you could possibly handle. People want to interact and find out more about the car, or any other product for that matter, on a personal level. This is why you now see Twitter campaigns, Facebook fan pages and a variety of other social media services receiving a bunch of attention from corporations and advertisers.

Build A Conversation, Level the Field

People just don’t want to be sold to – they want to take part in something and they want to share. Social media fanatics are willing to share very minute details of their lives on the internet; what they are doing, watching, eating, thinking, and everything else you never knew you didn’t want to know about. So, if someone finds an awesome product or service they like sharing it with their friends. The social media element to it all is just second nature.

Social Success = Business Success

All of this doesn’t only level the playing field; it drops an missile with multiple nuclear warheads on it! With free social media accounts, a basic web site and the right marketing tactics anyone can create and run a business, selling pretty much anything out there. The days of the “mom and pop” store not being able to compete with the corporate behemoths are fading. Now, it’s the corporations who are worried about the social media influencer running a business from abasement.

Being an owner of several web based businesses, I can personally attest to the power of the internet and social media. With a little hard work and the right know how, you have just as much of a shot as dominating the first page of Google as anyone else. Not only has technology made the world smaller, it’s helping the business world become more accessible to everyone.

No Time Like the Present

If you’re interested in utilizing the Internet and social media to promote or start a business then there is no better time. More people visit Facebook every day than Google; even my VHS tape-watching grandma has a Facebook page! The barriers to entry are low and the potential rewards are staggering.

In the end, there is no magic bullet or secret that will let you sit on a beach somewhere while the internet makes you money hand over fist. It requires hard work, research and perseverance but it can be done. Simply put, social media marketing has radically altered how we all look at business, advertising and the world around us.

We’ve all been there before – you find yourself completely engrossed in a task, time melts away and you act on instinct, without consciously thinking. Many martial artists, Buddhist monks, sports stars among others routinely enter this state. Us mere mortals can also slip into this mindset doing everyday things like playing video games, developing software and even writing mega-awesome blog posts like this one (I think).

Flow: Completely Focused Motivation

This totally absorbing state of being is called flow and was researched and proposed by the Hungarian psychology professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Csíkszentmihályi (shown right) labeled flow as the mental state where you have “completely focused motivation.” While experiencing flow you are so focused on the task at hand that your conscious mind, emotions and everything else going on in your head are all aligned to help complete whatever task you are doing.

My first experience with flow was at a very young age while playing video games. I was on the final level of a game I had been trying to beat for around three weeks and could not quite manage to get it finished. My Dad watched me play for a few minutes and when I had come through an exceptionally difficult part of the game he said, “Wow, how did you do that?”

He was amazed at the blank stare on my face and how fast my little fingers moved across the controller. I realized that during the time that he was watching me, I hadn’t been focusing on my character in the game; I had simply been taking in the entire TV screen. When I really thought about it, I hadn’t been thinking about anything at all. My fingers moved from muscle memory and I was able to break through the barrier that previously had stopped me from beating the game.

Three Conditions for Flow

I now know looking back that this is an example of flow at its finest. So if flow is one of the best ways to get focused and get something done how do we get there? Here are Csíkszentmihályi’s three conditions for flow:

1. You must be involved in a task that has clear goals. With clear goals set you have structure and direction. I was able to achieve flow when playing video games because I was really trying to beat a level, and the smaller tasks at hand all pushed me into the direction of my end goal. Writing words or code is no different – the logic in your head become keystrokes and appear on the screen because you are trying to express an idea straight from your mind.
2. There must be a balance between the challenges and tasks at hand. You need to feel as though you capable of doing what is laid out before you but it can’t be so boring that you don’t care. When the task requires a high level of skill, is worth doing in your mind’s eye and is highly challenging you will achieve flow.
3. There must be immediate feedback on your performance. This can generally come from your own intuition on the level of performance, video games obviously have this built in. Nevertheless, without feedback that you should adjust what you’re doing to the overall skill level of your task, interest may begin to waver. Consistently adjusting to nuances in the task at hand (if this is needed) can help you to stay in the state of flow.

The uses and implications of flow in education, work, sports and many other fields are huge. As anyone who strives to achieve things, it’s vital to understand that flow represents the ultimate level of focus and you should do everything possible to encourage it to do your best work. Elimination of distractions, having clear goals as well as being in a focused environment along with these three conditions above can help you to get more done and at better levels of quality.

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A good sales person uses every bit of information available to convert leads to happy clients. Therefore, one of the first steps in the sales process should be to listen and find areas where your service or product can help. When sales people want to be absolutely sure they can provide the best service for the prospect they rely on sales intelligence.

Sales intelligence refers to equipment and applications and that help analyze and present information that can be used by sales people when making decisions. This concept covers many aspects of decision-making, from how to approach a prospect, down to what a prospect’s revenue was the previous quarter. Most sales professional rely on sales intelligence daily, most without knowing it. A great example of this crucial part of the sales process was exemplified in NBC’s hit comedy, The Office.

Dunder Mifflin: Master of Sales

The Office is a mock-umentary style show depicting the everyday hustle and bustle of a branch for the fictional paper company, Dunder Mifflin. Throughout the life of the show, episodes depict the sales ineptitude of Michael Scott, regional manager of the branch. The audience has very little faith in the office’s sales ability, but in the episode entitled “Traveling Salesman” of Season 3, the team relies on Sales intelligence to lead a series of successful sales calls.

In the episode, each sales person in the branch pairs up for their onsite sales calls. As the teams travel to their respective prospects, the audience sees various forms of Sales intelligence at play.

Phyllis & Karen

The team of Phyllis and Karen practice a form of sales intelligence focused on their prospect’s personality and history. Phyllis is a sales veteran and has dealt with this client on previous occasions, while Karen is new to the relationship. Phyllis, aware of the client’s background and personality, takes Karen to a beauty shop for a rather gaudy makeover. Although Karen (and the audience) are confused, the ploy works. As the sales team leaves the office, a picture of the client’s wife reveals that she wears her hair and makeup in a similarly gaudy manner. By studying the client, Phyllis was able to assemble a sales pitch crafted specifically for the client; a crucial part of sales intelligence.

Jim & Dwight

Another sales team is made of two of the shows most beloved characters, Jim and Dwight. Relying on their sales intelligence, Jim and Dwight find a strategy of their own. The team is meeting with new prospects so it’s more difficult to craft a pitch tailored to each call. Rather, the pair discusses strategy and uses their personalities as their biggest asset. Sales intelligence includes using your own strengths to convey the most effective message. Jim’s straight-and-honest sales approach combined with Dwight’s aggressive, erratic tactics helps each client understand the value of Dunder Mifflin’s products. While different than the strategy of Phyllis and Karen, Jim and Dwight found sales success.

In both examples, the sales teams collected information before deciding on their approach for each call. It’s impossible to provide a script for each sales call a salesperson makes; each interaction with a prospect is different. That’s why it was important for each Dunder Mifflin team to collect information and make decisions and pro-actively present actionable, relevant information to each prospect.

The Importance of Sales Intelligence

The sales process is hard enough without a plan in place. Sales intelligence simplifies the sales process, identifying the best route to success. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) aids the sales intelligence data collection. By tracking the conversations held with clients throughout the pipeline, you are able to better address their needs and build a successful relationship.

High tech sales intelligence solutions are able to cross reference customer buying patterns and delivers opportunities to up-sell, cross-sell and switch-sell. Whatever sales process you are involved in, you should make sure sales intelligence is involved too.

Let’s be honest, almost everyone dreams about having enough money to build a fort out of stacks of $100 bills. It’s why we play the game and enter the rat race, right? Many people strive to be at the top of the food chain and have enough money to support their family and live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

The Oracle of Omaha

Maybe that’s why it shocks so many people when they learn about Warren Buffett. We have all heard about this titan of business that has earned the moniker “The Oracle of Omaha” by turning a failing textile business called Berkshire Hathaway into a multinational conglomerate that employs almost 50,000 people and make billions every year. Depending on the day you check on Mr. Buffet he just might be the richest man in the world, if not he’s only off by a few billion here or there.

Yet Warren doesn’t live on a tropical island somewhere. He makes his home in Omaha, Nebraska, away from the sun and sand of America’s coasts. Warren doesn’t live in the city’s best or biggest house; instead he lives in a relatively modest home he has owned for decades. The man who presidential hopefuls always make it a point to come and talk to during their campaigns doesn’t even have a chauffeur. He enjoys cheeseburgers, cherry coke, French fries and watching college football in his sweatpants.

Simple, Simple, Simple

While this blows the minds of most people it is a reflection of how this man sees the world and why he is so successful. He loves doing what he does and doesn’t need the trappings of wealth or the toys to make him happy. He is a simple man with simple tastes and understands that with patience and planning you can make a really good living in this world.

We could all take a lesson out of Warren’s daily playbook. And I don’t mean analyzing what stocks he owns. He bought those stocks when the market was heavily discounting them so to buying now would be pointless and most likely, unprofitable. Instead, let’s imagine that Warren had cared about Mercedes, mansions and material accumulation…it’s unlikely that he would have gotten where he is today. If he was more obsessed with having the most toys and adventures outside of his professional life, he probably wouldn’t be a household name around the world.

Luxury Redefined: Buffet’s Priorities

Warren once said,

“Your standard of living isn’t equal to the cost of your living.”

So instead of trying to break our necks to upgrade to the next level of toys, why don’t we put that effort into finding something that truly inspires us and motivates us? If you love doing what you do it will never seem like work. “Really getting to do what you love to do everyday — that’s really the ultimate luxury…” says the man who is richer in more ways than just what his bank statement says.

WWWD: What Would Warren Do?

Remember to keep Buffet in mind when you start your work day. Strive to work hard, look for opportunities others have overlooked and above all, enjoy what you do. If you don’t like it, maybe it’s time to find something that you want to do every day because you’ll never truly be successful until that happens.

You’re doing all the right things…you have a beautiful website, an SEO team and a well optimized Adwords campaign complemented by a social media presence…but you still aren’t getting the sales you want.  So what’s the next step?

Balance Innovation with Tradition

Technology is great; we’re huge fans of it here at KarmaCRM. That doesn’t mean that we can abandon proven business activities that fatten up our bottom lines in favor of the latest new marketing methods. You have to look at all of the tools available to you and balance their implementation. Like making a cake, you combine different ingredients into one marvelous thing of beauty. On the other hand, using online marketing is like trying to eat pure flour; yeah it might fill you up but it sure won’t taste good.

Conversations Go a Long Way

The problem with new Internet marketing methods is the lack of communication involved.  Driving sales through the internet rarely involves picking up a telephone.  Most people find this process easier, but as a business owner, you must ask if it is working.  You must remember that internet marketing is just one tool in your arsenal. Combine the passive arts of internet marketing with the strategic aggression of phone sales.

If you’re finding your efforts are at a standstill then here are a couple of things you can do to breathe new life into your sales program:

• Mine Your Current Accounts: Have you gone through all of your current accounts and made sure everyone is all set? Who’s on deck for a reorder? Are you currently running any specials that may entice a customer to up their order or reorder early? Do you have new products you can cross sell or up sell?
• Remind Your Past Accounts: Just because they haven’t done business with you in awhile doesn’t mean they don’t need you now. Maybe they just need a friendly call to remind them you exist and you sell the best widgets on the market. This is where a good CRM platform is invaluable. It can remind you who has lapsed and needs to be reminded how awesome you are.
• The Dreaded Cold Call: Pick up that phone and start making some new friends out in the wide world of business. Even if you’re not a sales professional who loves the smell of a good cold call in the morning starting new lines of communication is never bad. If they don’t want what you’re selling thank them for their time and ask them to keep your info. Every month or so drop them a friendly hello and let them know you’re still out there and see if their needs have changed.

Try out these simple steps in conjunction with your online advertising programs and you’ll be good to go.