One of the things that I always find interesting with my small business clients, is the attitude some small business owners have with their business. This attitude quite often becomes apparent right at the start of my dealings with them, when I am going through the pre-sales and sales stage of my offering. Very often, it becomes clear very quickly, that the business owner I’m dealing with does not approach their business with the mindset of the business owner, rather they approach their business with the mindset of someone who has a job. It is as if in starting their own business they have simply purchased a guarantee to have a job out into the future.
There is a big problem with this approach to small business. The problem here is that whether you like them or not, as a small business owner, you own all the risks and responsibilities of a business owner. You are not actually guaranteeing yourself a job into the future as your job into the future also depends upon your ability to sell. You still need to sell yourself and your services to ensure there is work there for you to do.
If you want to do a job or have a job it is far easier to be employed by someone than to prop a job up in a small business. If you want to be a small business owner is important to approach your business as if it is a business. This means you need to take risks, business risks. This means you must have a plan for the growth and development. This means you must consider advertising and other means to reach your target audience, knowing full well that the advertising may fail. If an advertising campaign fails, as a small business owner it is your job to measure the results of the advertising campaign and make the decision regarding the continuation or discontinuation of the campaign.
It is in this simple process that so many small business owners that I meet, fail. All they really want is to have a job. As such any spending on their business they see as money out of their own pocket money, that should not have to be spent, money that would much rather be spent on their lifestyles. They actually resent the fact that they have to spend money on marketing and advertising. They do not realise that every dollar they spendon marketing and advertising, could very well put three or four or five dollars back into their pockets. And this includes every dollar they may spend on their website or internet marketing efforts. As such, they have no budgeted cash flow to advertising or marketing. So when it comes to the crunch of doing something about their business and increasing their reach to more customers, they always say “I can’t afford that now I have no cash for it”.
You are in business now, you need a business budget and part of this budget must be growing your business and finding new clients using marketing and advertising techniques.
I find much of my time with new clients is spent in educating them on the simplicities of business. A website is nothing more than a medium for advertising and marketing your business and your brand. You need to be prepared to commit to the advertising campaign which means developing a website and marketing it properly in the search engines. You need to commit some of your business’s budget to ensuring that campaign is executed in a robust manner. You must measure the results of their campaign to decide whether it needs to be refined restructured or continued as it is.
If you are a business owner of a small business and you cannot commit a few thousand dollars to get a website created and marketed properly, you really should ask yourself whether you want to be in business or or whether you have just bought yourself a job. If you don’t want to be in business and just want a job, why do you want the hassle of bookkeeping, tax accounting, finding clients, GST reporting, etc, when all you’re getting for it at the end is a job. You can always find someone who wants to be in business to take care of all those administration tasks while still doing your job, so you won’t have to spend all the extra time you’re standing at the moment doing all the administration tasks in your business. Just go to seek.com.au and start applying.
If you want to be a business owner though and run a small business, run it like a business. Allocate a budget to marketing and advertising. Find the experts in the industry of advertising and marketing. Have a plan for business growth, have a plan for increasing your workforce if your business growth exceeds your capacity to match the demand on your own. Have a plan for removing yourself from the business, so you stop working in the business and rather work on the business. That is what every good business owner should do and what all successful business owners do do.
Tags: Advertising, business, business marketing, Internet Advertising, small business website, SMB, SMB marketing
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If you are thinking about your next move in these times of economic turmoil, you have undoubtedly begun to think about your own business. With corporations now in the habit of laying off more employees than they are hiring, it’s a wise move to think of how you can protect yourself. Remember: if you are in control of your own fate, you are in the driver’s seat of your life. Your own business will succeed based on what you do with it.
There are millions of options available to any individual thinking of starting a business. How can you set up a company that will reflect your ideals, your goals? Perhaps the greatest solution is to start a lifestyle business. A lifestyle business focuses on what you love to do in your free time and making that a key source of your income. Can you imagine loving what you do and getting paid for it? That beautiful scenario can be achieved with a lifestyle business.
A perfect example of a lifestyle business is in outdoor sports. There is a feeling of individuality that naturally comes with outdoor sports.
Are there ideas you know would make a skiing experience better? The options are limitless: maybe there’s a type of ski you would love to see designed. If your expertise is not in design, you can partner up with someone who can help.
Do your summer days lead you to the beach in search of the perfect wave? Every surfer can think of hundreds of ways their surfing experience could improve. Maybe it’s the flexibility of a wetsuit. Maybe it’s the stickiness of wax for a surfboard. Whatever it is, your idea can lead you into a brilliant business move.
Sports are not the only side of lifestyle businesses. Abstract concepts, different ways of thinking and being, are just as viable.
Has meditation led you to success in other areas of your life? Maybe you can start a website to promote the best that meditation has to offer. The same goes for yoga. Directing the world’s yoga enthusiasts to a single website will send advertisers flocking in your direction.
In many ways, a lifestyle can be recession-proof. For example, maybe you love staying in shape and leading an active life. Fitness is both therapeutic and a way to extend your life. No matter how the economy is performing, people want to stay fit and feeling good. Why not capitalize on the moment?
If you are better in financial fields, there are plenty of lifestyle businesses suited for you as well. The idea of a lifestyle business is supporting a way of life and enjoying it at the same time. If you are a wise investor, you can direct your business from home and stay with your family for all the important moments.
Maybe you have the idea already in your head. Why not try and flesh out the concept? Maybe you need some ideas to get you going. If so, the internet is the way to research what’s going on with small businesses. You can even find some shining examples of businesses waiting for a partner with ideas like yours.
For more information about my online business marketing services and the power of internet advertising visit my website
Tags: Advertising, business, business marketing, education, Internet Marketing, leisure, marketing, Online Advertising, online business, SMB, society, work from home
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Many people ask me what a lifestyle business is, what I do and how it pertains to small and medium sized businesses (SMB). Here are the answers:
What is a Lifestyle Business
When I talk about a lifestyle business, it is more about your approach to business. Its all about work-life balance. Most people go to work to earn enough money to support themselves. Once they finish work, they have a small amount of time left in the day. Once they finish paying for their basic living expenses, they also have a small amount of money left. They then have the liberty to try and carve a lifestyle out of the small amout of time and money they have left after work and basic necessities are covered. Because their resources of time and money are scarce, they need to make some tough decisions – this is the opposite of the approach I am talking about.
A lifestyle business starts with what you want out of life. What are the parameters and requirements for your perfect lifestyle? A lifestyle business starts at this point and then creates a business model around these prerequisites. Time enhancement, money generation and portability typically become priorities in such model. When the business model is a success, it supports the owners lifestyle rather than consumes it.
Why A Lifestyle Business
The answer to this one is simple. Lifstyle businesses let you live your life on your own terms. You still get to help people, make a difference to others by providing a product or service of real value. But you do it on your own terms. And you do it in a way that puts the life of you and your family first, and ensures your business activities support your life values.
How Do Lifestyle Business Strategies Apply to SMB
The reason the strategies of lifestyle businesses are so readily applicable to SMBs are the goals of SMBs typically are very similar. Business owners of SMBs invariably created their businesses as they had a product or skill of real value they could market and they wanted to own their own destiny. Unfortunately and often, success in SMB means that the business owners get consumed by their businesses. They spend so much time in their business they cannot extract themselves to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
As the strategies of lifestyle businesses are all about automation and reducing time spent in the business, they are typically excellent strategies to offer the SMB business owner who cant see the end of any day, due to the burdens of his own creation.
Tags: Internet Marketing, lifestyle, lifestyle business, online marketing, SMB, SMB marketing, Work-Life Balance
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