There are 7 common factors to those who build net fortunes of one million dollars or more. In America, there has never been more personal wealth than there is today; yet most American’s are not wealthy. Amazingly, a mere 3.5% of our households own almost one-half of the wealth in the United States! Although we may be hard working, educated, moderate to high-income earners, why are so few of us affluent?
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Retire Rich
Entrepreneurs are good at growing businesses, but when it comes to personal portfolios, many all too often fall short. Experts share tips, strategies and secrets for the best ways you can accumulate wealth and retire rich.
Retirement is not a word that often rolls off an entrepreneur’s lips. Whether starting a new business or enjoying the benefits of an established one, few entrepreneurs care to think about their golden years-or anything else that might separate them from their companies.
Sniffing Out a Good Business Opportunity
How to tell whether that opportunity is really too good to be true
We are all a little vulnerable right after the holidays. After so much good cheer, our defenses may be down a little, especially if we have been unemployed for a while. All of a sudden, some of those spam e-mails offering “The Greatest Homebased Business…Ever” or “Raise Chinchillas in Your Backyard for Big $$$$” start to look just a wee bit attractive.
Many of these “come on” offers are actually quite legal. They are known to lawyers as “Business Opportunities” (note the capital letters). A Business Opportunity is like a franchise, except that you don’t operate under someone else’s registered trademark that has a recognized value in the marketplace. Common examples of Business Opportunities are:
How to Get Off the Hamster Wheel
To be truly successful, you have to take time off.
Starting a business is a little like having a baby: at the beginning, your life revolves around figuring out how to help it survive. Everything else–family, friends, health, hobbies, even sleep–takes second place. For first-timeentrepreneurs with no previous practice in raising a business to maturity, the experience can be even more overwhelming. They can be so passionate about the company that they can’t bear to step away for a moment–or so terrified about financial doom that they don’t dare to. And that’s where they get in trouble.
Weird Companies That Work
Marketing advice from four pioneering entrepreneurs
Starting and running a typical small venture is challenging under the best of circumstances. If you’re starting a mainstream company, there are plenty of support mechanisms and resources you can rely on for help. But what do entrepreneurs do when they are in unusual or niche businesses? We decided to query the owners of several avant-garde businesses — from a startup to a fledgling global firm — to find out how they go about marketing their unique products and services, the challenges they faced and the lessons learned from their diverse journeys.
10 Marketing Trends for 2011
From geotargeting to mobile apps and social media, here’s what you need to consider now.
As the global economy struggles to correct itself, and social-media marketing becomes a strategic imperative, small businesses will have exciting opportunities to expand in new directions this year.
The need for trust, value and brand transparency, among other trends from last year, are just as important today. But the current shift to geotargeting, mobile marketing and online reputation management require that small businesses modify their plans to surpass competitors.
Here are 10 marketing trends that small businesses should incorporate now to be positioned for success from the start.
10 Ways to Grow Your Home Based Business
When the status quo just won’t do anymore, these 10 ideas will help you take your home based business to a new level.
Small is beautiful. Slow and steady wins the race. Inch by inch, row by row, that’s the way my garden grows.
While such homespun wisdom might be fine for common folk, it can be awfully frustrating for an ambitious homebased business owner determined to take his company to the next level of growth and profitability. Sure, a thriving one- or two-person service business with no inventory, rent or employees can seem like an easy way to make money at first, but when the phone starts ringing off the hook and customers keep coming back for more, homebased business owners who fail to plan often fall victim to their own success. Either they burn out trying to juggle everything themselves or they spend so much time and money hiring people to help them that their profits go down the drain.Fortunately, there are some ways to take your homebased business to new heights without sacrificing your business’s profitability or losing your peace of mind.
Follow these 10 steps to grow your homebased business into the personal and professional success it was meant to be:
25 Common Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
Do you have what it takes to get through the recession? Here are the traits that get home based business owners through the hard times.
Regardless of your definition of success, there are, oddly enough, a great number of common characteristics that are shared by successfulbusinesspeople. You can place a check beside each characteristic that you feel that you possess. This way, you can see how you stack up. Even if you don’t have all of these characteristics, don’t fret. Most can be learned with practice and by developing a winning attitude, especially if you set goals and apply yourself, through strategic planning, to reach those goals in incremental and measurable stages.
The Home Business Musts
Like any activity you pursue, there are certain musts that are required to be successful in a chosen activity. To legally operate a vehicle on public roadways, one must have a driver’s license; to excel in sports, one must train and practice; to retire comfortably, one must become an informed investor and actively invest for retirement. If your goal is success in business, then the formula is no different. There are certain musts that have to be fully developed, implemented and managed for your business to succeed. There are many business musts, but this article contains I believe to be some of the more important musts that are required to start, operate and grow a profitable home business.
1. Do what you enjoy.
What you get out of your business in the form of personal satisfaction, financial gain, stability and enjoyment will be the sum of what you put into your business. So if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, in all likelihood it’s safe to assume that will be reflected in the success of your business–or subsequent lack of success. In fact, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, chances are you won’t succeed.
HOW TO: Market Your Small Business With No Budget
From a marketing standpoint, it’s a great time to own or start a business. The social web makes it more cost-effective than ever to get the word out about your products and services, no matter what industry you’re in. Most social media accounts are free to set up, and many targeted online ad platforms are inexpensive. The most it will cost you to get your marketing campaign rolling, at least in the beginning, is time.
In fact, the toughest challenge facing small business marketers these days is not cost, but finding a strategy to get your message heard over the din of a noisy Internet. For advice on this, we checked in with a few experienced social media marketers. Here’s what they had to offer.
5 Reasons Your Website Isn’t Attracting Leads
So, what are your big Internet marketing plans for the New Year? Will you be investing more in social media? Will you start blogging? Will you take a more proactive stance with self-promotion? Whatever your online marketing plans, the end goal is likely to attract more people to your website in the hopes that the influx of new eyes will translate into new customers, new leads and new opportunities for your business. However, you won’t be able to do any of that if your Web site is turning people off, instead of turning them on.
Below are some very common reasons SMB Web sites fail to attract customers and how to avoid falling prey to them.
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