Seattle Small Business Blog

This is a difficult world we live in. People die everyday from disease, starvation and murder. So the question has to be asked: is this a destiny that was laid out for them beforehand, or could they have possibly changed their karma?

Some people will say yes and others no. But why?

To say your new business is heading for failure and there was nothing you could do about it would be silly, now wouldn’t it? Of course the horrid examples listed above couldn’t compare to losing your business now could it?

Well, let’s say your new business venture is the key to changing the future of your kids. Things are looking grim, you lose your job, and with the economy the way it is, another job making reasonable pay just doesn’t seem realistic at this point. If this is you or someone you know, then maybe the point is being made. Is there really a major difference between you and some pour soul who can barely feed herself? Well yes and no, because you have your problems and they have theirs. Some are bigger than others, yes, but when it concerns the individual at hand, no matter the dilemma, it can appear huge and overwhelming.

So your business is failing. It isn’t producing any profit. The prospects are untargeted and uninterested in what you have to offer. The whole thing is a step away from dying and you are preparing to throw in the towel.

Is this what you envisioned when you first started out? No. But it’s happening and you just can’t find away to turn things around. Your husband or wife is nagging for you to find a real job and your kids aren’t eating the way you would like because you just can’t afford it right now.

What can you do? What will you do? Will you just roll over and die?

Do you need a reason to keep going? How about your husband or wife and kids. Owning your own business can be the greatest investment you will ever make in your own future, as well as that of your family. You already know this, but you just don’t know how to make it work.

Then answer yourself these questions:

1)Are you willing to learn?

2)Are you capable of sticking to one plan of action, rather than dabbling from one business to the next?

3)Do you like what you are doing?

4)Are you responsible with your business spending, rather than throwing away money on useless software, gadgets and schemes that bring you no return?

5)Are you a leader, rather than a follower?

If you answered these questions in the negative, there is still hope for you. What you need to do is reevaluate everything you are doing from the top to the bottom. There is a very good chance you know exactly what you are doing wrong. Let’s start with number one.

Will you dedicate yourself to learning new techniques on a daily basis? Will you read more? Knowledge is power. You must first understand what you are doing and why in order to implement it. OK, now two.

Stop dabbling from business to business right now. Stick with what you’ve got, no matter how good that new start-up appears. Stop buying into other programs and make the program(s) that you are now using work for you. Your distractions will become limited. This is important. Get to work on what you have and make a point of marketing every single day without fail, whether it is a simple article or adding content to your blog. Get it done. Now three.

If you don’t like what you are doing, then why do it? Find something else. This is your business. It should be everything you want it to be. Now four.

Please do not buy anything on impulse. Check it out thoroughly on the Internet before purchasing. Now five.

In order to succeed in business you must become a leader and in order to do this you must conquer a particular niche. Read and learn. Grab people’s attention by becoming knowledgeable. If you don’t lead you don’t succeed. That is a fact, and today is the day to get started on your quest to become that special someone people will look up to. Start today by picking up a book, magazine or other reading material, and make it a point to learn something new about your business every day.

If you really want your business to fail, keep doing what you are doing. Then maybe the naysayers are correct; a man or woman really can’t change their fate.

Prove them wrong. Make a change and watch your future become what you want it to be. The key to it all is believing, followed closely by doing.

Teaching online is becoming increasingly common. There are many benefits to learning online. However, it needs to be remembered that online education is not a ’silver bullet’ or panacea. It is just as easy to develop inflexible and inappropriate instruction online as it is with other methods. Nevertheless, there are good reasons that both students and teachers are making greater use of the Web for educational purposes.

Perhaps the greatest benefit is that of convenience. The online classroom is always open. It can be reached from anywhere with an internet connection. Greater access is useful for students living in rural areas, students with disabilities and those who cannot attend campus because of other commitments such as work or child-rearing. It can also reduce costs if there is less need to travel. Of course, providing material online can also result in reduced access where students have limited access to the internet.

Online learning is typically self-paced. This can suit students who are shy; those who are not native speakers or slower learners who need to take extra time to develop answers. The student can review material as many times as they want and references such as dictionaries can be consulted.

Online teaching tends to be more student-centered where the role of the teacher becomes that of a facilitator. It is often said that the teacher changes from being a ’sage on the stage’ to a ‘guide on the side’. Students are able to access a huge range of resources on the internet. These resources are not necessarily just text-based. The types of resources available include text, audio, video, graphics and animations. However, as there are no gatekeepers on the web and anyone can publish just about anything, students need to be taught how to evaluate and discriminate among these resources.

Being able to critically evaluate the wealth of material available on the web is just one skill that online learners develop. Students also get experience with technologies and methods that are used in many careers. For example, online courses often make use of computer-conferencing which is widely used in many industries. Hopefully, the skills that students attain can also help them become life-long learners.

Technology has the ability to enhance learning and teaching. However, if used inappropriately it can also interfere with learning. It is important to choose online methods in education for pedagogical reasons rather than let it be dictated by the availability of the latest technologies.

Are you planning for retirement? If you’re not doing any planning, then you should be. Retirement is lasting much longer today than it did for the retiring generation 20 or 30 years ago. You now could have 30 or more years to provide for in your retirement, which is a considerable amount of time compared to your working life, which may have been 50 years or less. Government pensions are not going to do anything but provide you with the bare necessities of life — a bleak outlook for the vast majority of retirees.

It doesn’t have to be that way if you implement a bit of prior planning. The problem is that most people like to live for the moment and get swept away buying the latest gadgets and technological wonders. There’s so much to spend their money on that it’s extremely difficult to put a little money aside for retirement. Suddenly the big “six-oh” looms up, retirement is almost upon you, and nothing has been planned.

Younger people can learn from the mistakes of their elders and use the help of innumerable resources, including online and community sources, and/or private investment advisors. In fact, investment advisors are a great help, but be sure to choose a reputable one. There have been too many stories of people losing their life savings from taking bad advice, or worse still, being completely fleeced by disreputable advisors. So always do your due diligence.

There are many ways to save for your retirement, from government subsidized programs to employee pension plans. You can invest in real estate or put your money into blue chip stocks. But keep away from speculative investing. This money needs to be safe and should be in a variety of vehicles, so that if one investment fails you don’t lose everything.

One common “alternative” to retirement planning is to have a good time while you’re young and have the money, and then live on the bread line when you retire. Some people see plenty of sense in this approach when they’re young, but then panic as reality sets in later in life.

If you are lucky enough to own a house, then you at least have a life line. You can sell the house and buy something cheaper. You could go live with your kids. You could even rent a mobile home to live in. If you do sell the house and free up your equity, then you can use some of this money to live on and spread the rest around in some decent investments to bring in a little extra income.

Think about your retirement now and decide how you would like to live when you reach that stage in life. Start to plan for retirement now. Do not leave it any longer. It could soon be too late.

While goal setting and planning are activities that are important to achieving your dreams, creating a vision is an important first step. You need to know first what you want to achieve in life. What are your dreams? What kind of a person do you want to be? What do you want to build? What is the legacy you want to leave behind?

As you answer these questions, start visualizing how you will be when you have achieved that vision. Do not dismiss this as day dreaming. Consistent visualization done daily will attract the right resources to you. This is the power of the mind.

Creating a vision board will help you tremendously. A vision board is a poster board on which you can paste pictures torn out of various magazines. Look for pictures that reflect your dreams and desires.

Go through the magazines and tear out pictures that fit your vision of what you want to be. Have fun with this. Do not paste the pictures yet.

Once you have selected your pictures, lay them out on the poster board. Eliminate the pictures that do not fit. As you do this exercise, you will typically intuitively know which pictures you like.

You could organize the board such that different sections may be for different aspects of your life, like career, family, spiritual, social and others that you may have in mind. Some people like the images to be spread all over the board. Choose what feels best for you. You then paste the pictures.

Once you have pasted the pictures, you can then use markers to write anything that you want on the board.

An excellent idea would be to paste a photo of you looking radiant and happy right at the center of the board.

Put up the vision board somewhere you will see it often. Each time you see it, besides the pictures you see, add your emotions to your thoughts. Imagine as if you already achieved what you have created on your vision board.

Play with this. Bring out the child in you.

While vision boards have become popular when it was talked about in The Secret, it is not a new concept. People have been using this concept for a long time.

The vision board helps you to energize and give life to your visions. As this vision that you have painted in your mind becomes stronger, you will naturally find yourself beginning to take new directions. You will find that you meet different people or find reading materials which are aligned to your vision.

When surfing the Internet, your searches may lead you to something that you would not have intentionally looked for.

This is about the power of attraction. Whatever we attract into our lives is based on the thoughts we have in our minds. If it is negative thoughts, then we attract what is negative.

The beauty of having a vision is that we can visualize it and create positive thoughts. We then attract the appropriate energies from the universe to assist us in achieving what we created in our vision.

Some people question if this can happen every time. People who have practiced this say that if their vision did not happen, something better than that happened. Or sometimes, it just took longer but happened at a better time with greater value.

The beauty about creating a vision is that you do not depend on anyone else. Furthermore, you can have fun creating a vision board. Then each time you look at it, imagine and feel as if you already achieved it. You can even just imagine it without a vision board and it still works.

Start creating a vision. Visualize it daily and see the magic happen in your life.

Business owners everywhere are working seven days a week, struggling to sell their products and services, as well as attending to all the daily tasks of keeping the business going. The paperwork alone can be a full time job. Few seek help, often saying, “I can’t afford to hire someone… I barely make enough to pay myself!”

The truth is, you can’t afford not to hire help for those mundane tasks. This is especially true if those tasks require expertise you don’t have. Every minute you spend learning how to do something is precious time you could be spending on developing your business.

Self-made millionaire, Cory Rudl, said the best business decision he’d ever made was to hire someone to help him. Although he was paying out almost half his earnings to his employee, that move freed him to develop his business into a money making machine, to the tune of millions of dollars.

You can do the same for your business, and it won’t cost half your earnings either. By creating “mini projects” you can hire a freelancer to do those routine chores and pay them for the hours you need them.

Creating those mini projects will take some effort at first. It means you have to stop and think before you tackle a task, “Is this something I have to do myself, or can I delegate this to someone else?” Even after getting started on a task, it’s important to be aware of your time spent – if it takes you too long to do it, you’re wasting your time! That’s the signal to hire a freelancer who can do the job for you.

Although many freelancers can come to your business office, you can save even more money with “virtual assistants.” The craze for virtual assistants has taken the Internet world by storm.

Virtual assistants are capable, competent people in every country who are looking for work they can do from their own office. And their rates are incredibly low. For $2 or $3 per hour, you can have your website developed, all your QuickBooks transactions entered, have a software program developed to make your life easier…the options are endless.

For a few more dollars per hour, you can hire the best available copywriters, marketing gurus, graphics designers…you name it. The key is to define your mini project, decide what you’re willing to pay to have it done and get the word out.

The Internet is a great way to get the word out about your project. Websites such as www.GetaFreelancer.com, www.ScriptLance.com, www.Elance.com and www.RentaCoder.com have hundreds of professionals eager to work. Post your mini project on these websites and you’ll have 20 bidders or more in a few hours. In a very short time you’ll be able to choose the best qualified professional for your project, at your price.

So, if you’re working in your business, doing everything from sales to bookkeeping, decide now to get help. If you want your business to grow, you can’t afford not to.