“I recently read your article on the secrets to being an entrepreneur during a recession. The moment I read your article I knew that was me, which explained why I have been so unhappy at work. I have always wanted to be my own boss. My work is quite uncertain at the moment and I have been there way too long. Your article assumed we already owned a company. What is your advice on how to get started?”

According to the Small Business Administration, two-thirds of new businesses survive for at least two years, and 44% survive at least four years. Not bad. The article goes on to cover reasons for business failure: Poor management, insufficient capital, poor location, lack of planning, and ineffective marketing.

There are two types of entrepreneurs and it is critical that you know which one you are so that you can survive these pitfalls and thrive as a business owner in today’s economic climate.

Passion Entrepreneurs: These are people who have a passion for one thing — a passion for opening a restaurant, a stationery store, or a garden shop. You cannot open a business without passion, however, passion is not enough. You must link that passion with a good business model.

Business Entrepreneurs: These are people who love the concepts in the groundbreaking book The e-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What To Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber. This type of entrepreneur will start any business. They often do not care what the business is, as long as it has profit potential. These people are often good at systems and managing resources and raising capital and selling new concepts and taking risks. These are the people who can hedge many of the risks associated with business failure.

Step 1: Which type of entrepreneur are you? If you are a passion entrepreneur, you must find a business entrepreneur as a partner. The way to find this person is to Google: Entrepreneur Association for _________ (city). Then join that group.

Step 2: Before starting your business, have someone else pay you to learn from their mistakes. If you want to open a seductive coffee shop where servers are scantily dressed, then work for your local popular coffee shop and observe their systems. After six months, take the owner out to lunch and ask them why they are so successful. Before you quit the job, always make sure to offer value. Stay at least one year and do not leave before you introduce a new product or system to improve their business. They trained you, you give back.

Step 3: Offer value. People don’t care what you are promoting. People care how you can help them. It’s never you. It’s them. I was recently approached by an individual who wanted to promote their women’s conference on my radio show. All they talked about was the conference. No research was put into whether the public was interested. Instead of saying: ‘My conference is so great because …,’ she should have said, ‘Recent data indicates that women’s pay equality has not improved in 15 years … therefore there is a need for …’

Email your question to: info@Dr-Career.com. Visit www.dr-career.com for a free download. Listen to Career FastTrack ‘Live’ Mondays at 5:30 p.m. on CiTR 101.9 FM or online at citr.ca.

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– Won’t-Give-Up

A: Dear Won’t-Give-Up, you cannot help everyone and taking personal responsibility for your life must be your first priority. When you do this, you can impact the world. Here are research findings and strategies to release the talents inside of you.

The Barnard Center for Research on Women found that “women continue to face gender discrimination but it does not operate through the kinds of overt barriers to participation that mobilized activists in the 1960s. It is embedded in the everyday interaction.”

On the other hand, a Time magazine cover story sourced a workplace study by catalyst which studied 353 Fortune 500 companies and found that those with the most women in senior management had a higher return on equity by more than one-third!

I set out to learn strategies women can apply to their lives to realize their potential. I invited three successful women on my radio show, Career FastTrack, to share the following strategies to stacking the odds in your favour.

Believe in yourself: One of the surprising pieces of data that came out of my interview was not competency but confidence. Denise Baker, assistant dean for the Sauder School of Business Career Centre, highlighted the importance of trusting yourself and believing that you have every right to sit at the decision-making table. She went on to say that you have valuable contributions to make, and are smart and equally capable.
Click here to find out more!

Mentoring: “Mentoring can be very powerful for women who are struggling to reach their full potential” says Diane Akelaitis, a tax partner for Price Waterhouse-Coopers who is also involved with the firms Women in Leadership and Retention initiatives. Tips she highlights are the importance of networking in certain male-dominated industries. Women who are successful cite their mentors as being critical to their growth.

Celebrate: Akelaitis went on to say that women must learn to celebrate their own achievements. Women are naturally pre-wired to be modest about what they have accomplished and this harms women in the long run. Being recognized is important in advancing your career.

Networking: Women are more likely than a man to find their next job through an ad in the classifieds. In other words, they do not rely as heavily on networking to build their career as men. Woman are also more likely to be egalitarian while men more based on power and influence. According to Norm-Jean Thompson, founder of Canada’s Young Women in Business Network, this is the old way of networking. “I believe women are more effective at networking. They are focused on relationships and finding common ground with people and this is at the core of business success.”

Listen to the complete Career FastTrack podcast entitled Women: Empowering to Take Control of Their Career at www.citr.ca.

E-mail your question to: info@Dr-Career.com. Visit www.Dr-Career.com for a free download. Listen to Career FastTrack “Live” Mondays at 5:30pm on CiTR 101.9 FM or online at citr.ca.

A study of 353 Fortune 500 companies found that those with the most women in senior management had a higher return of equity by more than one-third!

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Being unhappy at work has nothing to do with the quality of work available. It has everything to do with your fear and inability to decide to go after what you want. Economic uncertainty is the perfect opportunity to seize control of your career. Why? Because you have little to lose.

You know everything you need to know now. However, what you don’t have is the ability to make a decision in the face of uncertainty. You will never get more certainty. The time is now. There is no tomorrow.

It’s called progress. To have progress you must suck first. The single greatest lesson you must learn is that there is no right choice for you. All decisions have opportunities. Pick the one that seems the most interesting at the moment.

First, you must die. GM and Chrysler have died. A definition of death is the termination of something. For years, these two companies knew that their old way of doing business was not sustainable. But they could not change. You also know, deep down, that you cannot continue on much longer being uninspired at work. It’s killing you. The solution is career bankruptcy.

A Morgan Stanley study found that returns were strong for companies that emerged from bankruptcy from 1980 through 1993, the last period of multiple recessions.

Covad, a company recently declaring bankruptcy, said its restructuring will “make the company virtually debt-free while putting it in a better position to obtain the additional capital necessary to achieve profitability.”

In other words, a rebirth. A second chance.

But how do you get reincarnated. Let’s look at GM. Never in my life have I ever wanted to own a GM car. After researching gmreinvention.com, I was actually inspired to consider them. Why?

They see this as an opportunity to recreate and reinvent a better product. GM CEO Fritz Henderson said it quite beautifully: “We will get the job done and do it once. We will start over and get stronger.”

A great line in the commercial is: “…The only chapter we are focused on is chapter 1.”

But starting over is too risky, right? Let’s look at the risks in your life. Your risk is that you will lose what you have. Is it all that much? Imagine you shifted your focus on the opportunity that existed if you changed your life? Is it possible that the true risk is continuing your life as is? What do you risk losing if you do not change? Your energy, your enthusiasm, your dreams? Your greatest risk now, is the status quo.

A new life is calling you. One that you yearn for deep down.

Poll question: If you could reinvent yourself, what would you do differently with your career? Send your answer to the e-mail below. The most inspiring answer may get published.

Remember: Every master was once a disaster. Failure is your teacher.

E-mail your question to: info@Dr-Career.com. Visit www.Dr-Career.com for a free download. Listen to Career FastTrack “Live” Mondays at 5:30 p.m. on CiTR 101.9 FM or online at citr.ca.

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WASHINGTON — The total number of people on the unemployment insurance rolls dropped for the first time since early January, the government said Thursday, while new claims for benefits rose slightly.

The Labor Department said the total unemployment insurance rolls fell by 148,000 to 6.69 million in the week ending June 6, the largest drop in more than seven years. The decline is a sign that layoffs are easing.

The drop also breaks a string of 21 straight increases in continuing claims, the last 19 of which were records. A dip in continuing claims several weeks ago was later revised higher.

The department also said initial claims rose 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 608,000 last week, above analysts’ expectations. The four-week average, which smooths fluctuations, fell by 7,000 to 615,750. Continuing claims data lags initial claims by one week.

The drop in continuing claims could signal a slowing in the rise of the unemployment rate, which reached a 25-year high of 9.4% in May. Many economists forecast the rate could reach 10% by the end of the year. Continue reading.

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“I was let go six months ago and thought it was the end of the world. After doing some soul searching, I realized that I am an entrepreneur at heart. My concern however is that with the economy, is it a bad idea to start a business during the recession? What do I need to be aware of in this recession to not only survive but thrive?”

According to Ideacafe.com most businesses start and fail not because of a lack of market opportunity but because a lack of vision.

I recently conducted an interview with the CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Brian Scudamore. He runs an incredibly innovative junk removal service. His company was ranked as the second best workplace in all of Canada by Great Place to Work Institute Canada.

He is also a very nice and generous person with his time and I wanted to feature his company in an article. A special thanks also to Tania Hall, senior PR manager at the company for identifying the company’s top five tips:

1.  Clear Vision: A vision is a clear picture of how your business looks, acts, and feels at any time. Knowing where you’re headed, regardless of the maelstrom of change around you, is a sure fire way of reaching your goals.

2. Smart Marketing: It is a mistake to begin penny-pinching the marketing budget when the economy is on the downturn. Brand awareness is more important than ever! Some strategic scaling back may be necessary, but the money you spend to raise awareness about your business now will put you top-of-mind for your customers in the future.

3. Customer Focus: Maintaining a strong customer focus is essential during hard economic times. Regular evaluation of customer satisfaction is important, but when people are cautious about spending, businesses must work extra hard to earn their trust. Now is the time to show your customers why they need your business. For example, at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, we are currently using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) system, which gives us detailed information about our customers’ experience and enable us to provide a better service.
Click here to find out more!

4. Great People: Great people drive a great workplace culture, which in turn can achieve miracles. It takes time to cultivate a work environment that’s full of passionate, hard-working people who really love their work, but the investment in finding great people is always worth it. When times are tough, great people are committed to doing the work needed to achieve success.

5. Stay Positive: Keeping a positive attitude is crucial to an entrepreneur’s success during a recession. People look to you as their top role model at work. Lead by example and even when there’s sobering news to impart, always ask your people: What lesson can we learn from this?

Entrepreneur Contest: The president that sends me the best company vision will win an opportunity to promote their business on my show Career FastTrack. Entry deadline is June 19 at 5 p.m.

E-mail your question to: info@Dr-Career.com. Visit www.1daydreamjobchallenge.org for a free download. Listen to Career FastTrack “Live” Mondays at 5:30 p.m. on CiTR 101.9 FM or online at citr.ca.

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I want to invite you to something really
special.

http://partners.thesgrprogram.com/affiliates/signup.php?m=1544dd9f

A couple of years ago, back in 2007, I
made a decent amount of money from this
just by pushing copy, paste and send. It’s
called the Science of Getting Rich
(sounds like something the market would
like to have right now, doesn’t it?).

So boy, was I glad to see Bob Proctor and
his team relaunch it!

http://partners.thesgrprogram.com/affiliates/signup.php?m=1544dd9f

I’m signing up again because I know it will
be another success. (I mean, we ARE talking
about a powerful product from Bob Proctor,
Jack Canfield and Rev. Michael Beckwith)

And I want to personally invite you to jump
on the bandwagon.

They have a great affiliate plan. And it’s
so, so easy.

http://partners.thesgrprogram.com/affiliates/signup.php?m=1544dd9f

The pre-launch date is April 14th, so hurry
to get your head start.

Cheers,
Eugene Gregorio,
Founder & CEO of MPLOYR

PS: Oh, and did I mention it’s a 50%
commission 2-tier program? Plus, there’ll
be an additional ONGOING 50%
commission on a new continuity program
they’ve got. It’s a beauty!

http://partners.thesgrprogram.com/affiliates/signup.php?m=1544dd9f

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Feel like your career is on life support? You are not alone. There is a cure.

“I worked in the advertising industry for 11 years and rose in the ranks. I was very good at my job and got promoted to a role where I was surrounded by all men.

I recently was let go and I am convinced it is because I am a woman.

Do you have any advice for women in the workforce?”

In 190, men made up 80% of the workforce and women 20%. As of March 2009 in the United States, women made up 49.7%.

Women are working more, but they are making less.

You’re only going to see this announcement once (ever), so please read every word very very carefully. It’s really that important. To all women, I want to invite you to something really special. Click here.

According to the Canadian Labour Congress, “the gender wage gap in Canada has remained stuck since the mid 1990s at one of the highest levels in the advanced industrial world.”

Most recent figures show that women make 7.5% of what men make in comparable roles. These are the facts.

However, I wish to share three anecdotal lessons I learned from three women and how women can make more money:

- Ask for more money:
A human resources manager I had on my radio show told me that about 90% of people do not negotiate their salary or ask for a raise.

What was even more shocking to learn was that she expected most people to ask for more money.

Women in her experience, were less likely to do so. This could explain par of the reason why women make less money then men.

Managers have greater respect for employees who stand up for their monetary worth.

Both men and women are qualified to ask for more money.

- Strut your stuff:
You do not have to be a man to succeed. n 2007 I met a very powerful and successful real estate broker, an industry dominated by men. She told me that many women she meets try to ignore their feminine side. She said this is a mistake.

Women have an innate ability to relate to people and a keen sense of intuition.

She went on to say that ambition and drive are normal human traits for both men and women.

- Network
A partner at a large accounting firm successfully rose through the ranks of her company. She was talking to me about the greatest barrier women face in reaching her position: Networking.

She said women are less likely than men to attend evening company networking sessions due to family obligations.

These networking develop the relationships with senior management and be on the promotion track.

If you are a woman and experiencing a gender wage gap, we would be very interested in hearing your story. Please email us.

Email your question to: info@Dr-Career.com. Visit www.1daydreamjobchallenge.org for a free download.Listen to Career FastTrack “Live” Mondays at 5:30pm on CiTR 101.9 FM or online at citr.ca.

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• Protect your job
• Move while others are distracted
• Earn extra money
• Evaluate your mortgage
• Refinance high interest credit cards
• Reduce spending
• Haggle your way to savings
• Conserve and reduce your energy bills
• Avoid taking on any unnecessary debts

I really could go on to reach 99 just to represent the saying, “99 ways to skin a cat”. But I won’t waste your time. I know you can Google it for yourself and find hundreds more advice from every Tom, Dick and Harry out there.

So let me get straight to the point.

With so many ways and advice, how come not everyone gets rich? How come not everyone who reduces their spending get rich? How come not everyone who has an education get rich? How come not everyone who starts a business get rich?

Because it’s not about what you do, it’s about how you do it. Cause while there are 99 ways to skin a cat, if you don’t do it RIGHT — whichever method you have chosen — it won’t bring RESULTS.

So what is the ONE right thing that you need to do to get rich?

Bob Proctor knows. And he wants to tell you that there is a science — a formula — to get rich. It’s about doing certain things in a certain way. And this blueprint has been proven to make anyone get rich across centuries.

So before you waste your time trying out 99 ways blindly, get this one formula that will transform your financial future.

To learn more about the Science of Getting Rich - go to http://www.thesgrprogram.com/?m=4a1f14ff29377

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If the idea of working from home interests you, I’ve compiled a list of our list of top 10 Work At Home opportunities.

1. Six Figure Yearly
2. Six Figure Cash Machine
3. Maverick Money Makers - Get Paid For Life!
4. Home Job Group
5. Classified Surveys
6. Big Weekly Earnings
7. Express Paid Surveys
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As with the resume a well written cover letter is vital when applying for employment. Many job seekers spend hours preparing the resume, while very little if any thought is given to creating an effective cover letter.

Although, some employers may not take the time to read the entire cover letter, it is almost always the cover letter that greets the employer when applying for employment opportunities.

It is also a well written cover letters that will get you noticed and stand out from other candidate submissions.

The following outlines my personal recommendation to keep in mind when writing a professional cover letter:

- Customize each cover letter to specific contact or department (do not use “to whom it may concern”)
- Free of grammatical errors. Proofread your cover letter and use spell check. Keep it professional not personal (e.g. do not mention marital status etc.).
- Keep the cover letter relevant to the job you are applying for.
- If you don’t have a specific contact person, address the cover letter as Dear or Attn: to specific department.
- If you do have a contact name, spell out the entire name (e.g. Dear Jane Smith). Do not refer to the contact on a first name basis or use any nicknames.
- Don’t be overly-flattering or over the top. (e.g. “it’s been a dream to work at ABC”). Just be honest (e.g. “I’m applying for the recent job posted on the myjobnow website for _____”)
- Use an e-mail address that matches your name in some way. Don’t email your resume from js6547@yourdomain.com.
- Don’t sign your emails with some kind of hand or nickname. Use your given birth name.
- First impressions count, don’t be forgetful, attach your resume to the cover letter.
- Show some creativity, write a letter that conveys both your personality and professionalism.
- Every sentence of your cover letter you should show enthusiasm, passion for the position and industry, and interest in working for the employer.
- The cover letter length should never exceed on page. The cover letter is only a brief introduction to get the employer interested in reading your resume.
- Mention names if you know someone within the company for which you are applying. Hiring managers pay more attention to unsolicited resumes when they assume you were referred by one of their employees or customers.
- Cover letters should always be typed, not hand written.
- Always close with a promise of action (e.g.. you will follow-up with the contact or company within 7-10 days in regards to the status).

These are just a few tips to keep in mind when writing a professional cover letter.
Unfortunately, there is no secret formula that guarantees you employment, or even a job interview.
An effective cover letter is simply a way to ensure you get noticed by employer and helps you stand out from other job applicants.

Have questions about how to wow potential employers? Visit us at www.hrinmotion.com. Providing job preparation services from human resources perspective.

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