Monthly Archives: February 2011

Feb 22 2011

How to Research a Business Opportunity

Types of Business Opportunities

The FTC describes the most common types of business opportunity ventures as follows:

  • Distributorship. Refers to an independent agent that has entered into an agreement to offer and sell the product of another but is not entitled to use the manufacturer’s trade name as part of its trade name. Depending on the agreement, the distributor may be limited to selling only that company’s goods or it may have the freedom to market several different product lines or services from various firms.

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Feb 12 2011

Thinking of Starting a Small Business? Part 3

Part 3: Starting a Small Business: The Abilities of Successful Entrepreneurs

3) What abilities do you need when starting a small business to become a successful entrepreneur?

According to studies conducted by the Bank of Montreal Institute for Small Business, “The Six Success Factors” for starting a small business are:

  • self-motivation,
  • business and industry knowledge,
  • organization and management capabilities,
  • marketing skill,
  • customer/vendor relations,
  • and vision.

Business and industry knowledge should be near the top of anyone’s list of requirements for small business success. After all, how many skis or snowboards are you going to sell if you don’t know anything about the products or the sport? You can acquire this knowledge through trial and error when starting a small business, but you will probably have to declare bankruptcy before you learn all you need to know. My theory is that lack of knowledge is one of the prime reasons so many new business fail.

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Feb 12 2011

Thinking of Starting a Small Business? Part 2

Part 2: Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

2) Do you have the characteristics of an entrepreneur?

There are certain traits and attitudes that make some people more suited to running a successful small business than others.

In one study where entrepreneurs were given a list of attributes and asked to rate their importance for success, the seven most highly ranked qualities were perseverance, the desire and willingness to take the initiative, competitiveness, self-reliance, a strong need to achieve, self-confidence, and good physical health (William E. Jennings, “A Profile of the Entrepreneur” in Entrepreneurship: A Primer for Canadians).

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Feb 12 2011

Thinking of Starting a Small Business? Part 1

Part 1: Three Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting a Small Business

Thinking of starting a small business? You’re on the right track. There’s a lot of thinking to be done before starting a small business of your own.

Starting a small business is one of those huge, life-altering events. Think of it as a marriage; running a successful small business takes the same depth of commitment and desire. As in a marriage, you’re going to be living with your business 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Like any relationship, if you want your small business to be successful, you’re going to have to work at it. And it’s going to have its ups and downs and surprises.

But on the positive side, if you’re the right person with a solid plan, starting a small business of your own can be the most satisfying, exhilarating experience of your life.

This article looks at four aspects of starting a small business so you can make an informed decision about whether or not starting a small business is right for you:

  • basic questions about running a small business
  • the characteristics of an entrepreneur
  • necessary abilities for successfully operating a small business
  • reasons for business failure

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Feb 12 2011

50 Marketing Ideas for Retailers

By ,

Do you have a marketing idea? At the end of this article, you can Share Your Ideas with others.

Small business owners can easily get too involved in the day-to-day operations of their retail stores to spend any time brainstorming marketing ideas orpromotional events. Some retailers worry that marketing is too expensive, others may find it too time consuming. Without announcing who you are and what you sell, how will anyone know? Here are 50 marketing ideas for retailers.

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Feb 11 2011

Marketing vs. Advertising: What’s the Difference?

You will often find that many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are important they are very different. Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth.

Let’s start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each and then I’ll go into the explanation of how marketing and advertising differ from one another:

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Feb 8 2011

How to get rich in America

A dozen entrepreneurs, a dozen success stories: proof that you don’t need a lot of money to make a go of it, but you do have to be smart about how you invest your energy.

Smoothie operators
Kyle and Aaron Campos, 27 and 33
Buckeye, Ariz.
Lesson: If you must borrow from your friends and family, keep it formal

The downside of mixing business with blood should be obvious – or at least it will be when you start getting late-night calls from Aunt Tillie asking about your schedule for an IPO. But hitting up relatives is how a lot of businesses get going. It’s what Kyle Campos and his older brother Aaron had to do.

In 2004 the brothers, both software engineers, quit their jobs in Santa Barbara and decamped to Buckeye, Ariz. After visiting relatives there earlier that year, Kyle had become convinced that the town was “filled with wide-open opportunities,” especially compared with the software biz. “The tech sector was getting hit hard,” says Aaron. “I didn’t have a good feeling.”
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Feb 8 2011

Teen Venture Capitalist Tells His Story of Going from Public Assistance to Millionaire by Age 14

Farrah Gray went from being on public assistance to becoming a millionaire by the time he was 14 years old. In “Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out,” Gray and his co-author, Fran Harris, recount the remarkable journey that began when Gray was 6 years old, and his mother became seriously ill, prompting his decision to provide for his family from then on.

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Feb 8 2011

Becoming Wealthy One Bite at a Time

Saving Money

By Ric Edelman

From Inside Personal Finance.

A lot of people think rich people become rich because they either make a lot of money or they inherit a lot. But that’s not true for the vast majority of Americans. In fact, most of the wealth accumulated in this country was accumulated over a lifetime of saving. You see, the reason rich people get richer and poor people get poorer is that rich people keep doing the things that got them rich in the first place, while poor people keep doing the things that keep them poor. So, let’s examine how rich people became, well, rich.

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