The Secrets of Building A Successful Business

by: Brian J Fanale

Are you one of the many who are struggling building your home based business? If you are then you are part of a 95 percentile who deserve better results. It's a tough industry out there with all of the options and if you don't know what you're doing, you will get eaten alive and run out of money very quickly.

I can tell you from experience that the reason the 5 percentile have success is because they received exceptional training/support and they also had the mindset for success. Sadly, there are a lot of companies out there that promise a lot but when the rubber hits the road they just don't deliver. Promises of a fully automated system, a 6-figure income with very little work or even no work involved, a support team that will be there 100% of the way, you name it and the company has probably claimed it. If this were all true there wouldn't be a 95% drop out rate with home based businesses. So how do you know you've picked the right company and are headed for success instead of failure?

Imagine for a moment how nice it would be to move into the 5 percentile category who are generating a 6-figure income working from the comfort of their own home. The freedom, the ability to pretty much do whatever you want whenever you want. Nice life, wouldn't you agree? Now what do you think the difference is between the 5% and the 95%?

Well, if you're like I was 15 months ago, tired, broke, struggling, and ready to do whatever anyone would show me to do to actually start making some serious money, you’re probably ready for a big change in your life. Now that you’ve made the decision that you’re better than the measly salary your boss throws at you every year and that you’re ready to leap from mediocrity to excellence, it’s time to find the company that can get you there. I hope you’ve looked at all of the options out there and done your due diligence. You will only find one that fits the mold for success. One where there are live training calls from the top income earners, people already making 6-and7-figure incomes using the exact same system you will be using, taking you step-by-step and showing you exactly how they run their business so you can follow suit to get the same results. Also, a 24-hr support stream of recorded calls so they can fit your busy schedule as you initially build your business and slowly get out of your J-O-B. Along with a lead generation system that anyone can follow to generate so many leads that you can’t even get back to. Couple this support/training with the right mindset training, a company who's core product is to develop your mindset for success, to train you how millionaires think and how they attract success into their lives so you can do the same and you have a powerful, unique system that will allow you to SUCCEED in business.

Lets face it, without the right training/support or the mindset it takes to have success, you're dead in the water. If you're ready for a turnkey business model that will produce for you the results you desire, then you deserve to hear what this company has to offer. I look forward to assisting you in building massive wealth and results in your life.

TRIPLE YOUR BUSINESS WITH LIST BUILDING

by: Keith Wellman

There are several things that you can do to really boost profits within your business but the real secret is collecting emails. Several companies have already realized huge profit gains by simply adding one simple step to their business...collect your clients name and email address. Doesn't sound very profitable until you realize what you can do with that information. No I am not talking about spamming, I am talking about sending emails to your client that they can't wait to receive.

One business that implemented this technique sells video games, hardware, ext. After walking up to the counter to pay for their merchandise the cashier simply asks for their information and includes the email address of the buyer. What better way to get someone back into your store than inviting them. So how do you send your clients an email without their getting angry and yelling spam?

Send them legitimate offers that make sense. If you just email your client to tell them to come back to your store then their is no real reason for that email. In fact the person who received it might think it to be junk mail. How about setting up your system to email a person 3 days after they purchase from you to let them know that when they come back, they have a 10% discount waiting for them. You let them know that all they need to do in bring in a special code that you give them or just let them know to mention the email.

There are several ways to profit from you list, especially if you run an online business. What you have read here is just the tip of the ice burg. What is written here is the very basics. The real aspects come with knowing how to multiply profits several times with other email techniques. Beware that when you start an email list you are going to run into several "road blocks".

One such road block is managing your email list with the right server. Certain domain names get email delivered to your prospects much better than others. This is due to spam blocking my many of the major email companies. Another road block is timing your emails to go out at the right time. Send your email at the wrong time of day, or even the wrong day, and you may not get any responses. Another big problem is managing spam complaints. So what can you do to ensure that you do things right the first time?

There is a new website that is being released that does reveal many of these major marketing techniques. Many of the secrets revealed have more than doubled profits for several businesses...online and offline. If you are interested in finding out more about the website you will need to see the resource box of this article.

Women Have Secret Weapons In Business

by: Monica Willyard

Women have 3 assets that I see as secret weapons in the business world. For the past 30 years or so, women have been encouraged to behave as their male counterparts do so they can succeed and achieve equality. To me, this is backward and counterproductive because we have several valuable skills that businesses need to grow and serve their customers well. Since people are unique, these assets show up differently in each woman. Today I'll share the 3 most important of these abilities with you. My hope is that these skills will be recognized for the powerhouses of strength that they truly are.

Women have strong verbal communication skills. In fact, scientists and psychologists tell us that women speak more than 3 times as many words during a day than men do. Furthermore, our conversations tend to involve responsive listening and focus on the process of relations rather than sharing facts. Women know how to build rapport, understand a person's strengths and weaknesses, and can easily include encouragement in conversation. Businesses need effective communication and team building skills, especially in sales, marketing, and negotiations.

Second, women are intuitively skilled negotiators. They have been conditioned for centuries to get what they want through negotiation and community. No matter how you feel about it, this is an historical fact and is our present reality. Women had little economic power, and they learned how to work in a system where they weren't the boss. Rather than bloody fighting and wars, they learned to work with others and create good compromises or find a win/win outcome. Now that they have economic freedom, they can use the skills they've learned to help themselves reach their goals and do it with class. these skills can help a business flourish by creating partnerships with those they do business with. Win/win situations are good for everybody, and women have a talent for finding ways to make that happen. They've done this socially for centuries, and their mothers have taught them these skills from infancy. Women just don't recognize it and thus think they can't negotiate in business matters. They can, and they can often see win/win options that their male colleagues miss.

The final secret weapon women have is their ability to work as part of a team. Again, this is partially due to their inborn character as a female and partially due to their cultural conditioning. Have you ever noticed that when you're with a group at a restaurant, one woman at the table says she's going to use the ladies room; almost immediately others will go with her. They often will go as a group and will come back to the table together. You don't see this behavior from men. Our culture seems to value the image of a self-made tycoon who takes the business world by storm. Reality is very different though. Most "self-made" business tycoons have a quality team of support staff behind them. It is actually the power of the team that brings success. Those companies who reward employees for good teamwork will profit and will survive when hard times come. Women excel at teamwork, and they should be sought out for this quality. Mary Kay Ash understood this well, and she became wealthy by creating a team and helping each team member to reach his/her personal goals.

Women who recognize the power of these 3 secret weapons can accomplish anything they want to do. Using her strong communication skills, her ability to negotiate well, and her teamwork skills, the sky is the limit. Will she be a self-made tycoon? Probably not, and to me, that's as it should be. Can she build wealth and reach her dreams? Yes! You would win that bet.

8 MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN NAMING YOUR BUSINESS

By Phil Davis, April 07, 2005

When choosing a name for your new company,

keep these tips in mind to help you find one that will work now and in the future.

Naming a business is a lot like laying the cornerstone of a building. Once it's in place, the entire foundation and structure is aligned to that original stone. If it's off, even just a bit, the rest of the building is off, and the misalignment becomes amplified. So if you have that gnawing sense that choosing a name for your new business is vitally important, you're right. With 18 years experience in the naming and branding business, I've witnessed the good, the bad and the really bad. To help you get off to a good start, read on to discover the top 8 mistakes I've found people make when it comes to choosing a name for their business :

• Mistake #1: Getting the "committee" involved in your decision
  We live in a democratic society, and it seems like the right thing to do--to involve everyone (your friends, family, employees and clients) in an important decision. This approach, however, presents a few problems. The first and most obvious fact is that you'll end up choosing only one name, so you risk alienating the very people you're trying to involve. Second, you often end up with a consensus decision, which results in a very safe, very vanilla name. A better method is to involve only the key decision-makers--the fewer the better--and select only the people you feel have the company's best interests at heart. The need for personal recognition can skew results, so you'll be best served by those who can park their egos at the door. Also make sure you have some right-brain types in the mix. Get too many left brains on board, and your name will most likely end up too literal and descriptive.



• Mistake #2: Employing the "train wreck" method of creating a name
  When forced to come up with a catchy name, many aspiring entrepreneurs simply take part of an adjective and weld it onto a noun, essentially colliding the two words head on to create a new word. The results are names that have a certain twisted rationale to them, but look and sound awful. Someone starting a high-end, service franchise becomes QualiServe. Someone starting a classy day spa becomes TranquiSpa. It's a bit like mixing chocolate syrup with ketchup--there's nothing wrong with either ingredient, but they just don't go together. Other common truncations include Ameri, Tech, Corp and Tron. The problem with this approach is that it's simply forced--and it sounds that way.



• Mistake #3: Using words so plain they'll never stand out in a crowd
  The first company in a category can get away with this one. Hence you have General Motors, General Electric and so on. But once you have competition, it requires differentiation. Imagine if Yahoo! had come out as GeneralInternetDirectory.com? The name would be much more descriptive but hardly memorable. And with the onslaught of new media and advertising channels, it's more important than ever to carve out your niche by displaying your uniqueness. Nothing does that better than a well conceived name.



• Mistake #4: Taking the atlas approach and using a map to name your company
  In the zeal to start a new company, many businesses choose to use their city, state or region as part of their company name. While this may actually help in the beginning, it often becomes a hindrance as a company grows. One client came to me with complaints that he was serving more of the market than his name implied. He had aptly called his business St. Pete Plumbing since he hailed from St. Petersburg, Florida. But Yellow Page shoppers assumed that was also his entire service area. With a little creative tinkering, we changed the image of St. Pete from a city to St. Peter himself, complete with wings and a plumber's wrench. The new tagline? "We work miracles!"
  Many other companies have struggled with the same issue. Minnesota Manufacturing and Mining was growing beyond their industry and their state. To avoid limiting their growth, they became 3M, a company now known for innovation. Kentucky Fried Chicken is now KFC, de-emphasizing the regional nature of the original name. Both of these companies made strategic moves to avoid stifling their growth. Learn from them, and you can avoid this potential bottleneck from the beginning.



• Mistake #5: Turning your name into a cliche
  Once past the literal, descriptive word choices, your thought process will most likely turn to metaphors. These can be great if they're not overly used to the point of being trite. For example, since many companies think of themselves as the top in their industry, the world is full of names like Summit, Apex, Pinnacle, Peak and so on. While there's nothing inherently wrong with these names, they're overworked. Instead, look for combinations of positive words and metaphors, and you'll be much better served. A good example is the data storage company Iron Mountain, a name that conveys strength and security without sounding commonplace.



• Mistake #6: Making your business name so obscure, customers will never know what it means
  It's great for a name to have a special meaning or significance--it's sets up a story that can be used to tell the company message. But if the reference is too obscure or too hard to spell and pronounce, you may never have the opportunity to speak to that customer because they'll simply pass you by as irrelevant.
  So resist the urge to name your company after the mythical Greek god of fast service or the Latin phrase for "We're number one!" If a name has a natural, intuitive sound and a special meaning, it can work. If it's too complex and puzzling, it will remain a mystery to your customers. This is especially true if you're reaching out to a mass audience.
  I pushed the envelope a little on this one myself, naming my branding firm Tungsten after the metal that Thomas Edison used to create light. But because my clients consist of knowledgeable professionals who appreciate a good metaphor and expect a branding firm to have a story behind its name, I knew it would work. It's also a way to differentiate my services--illuminated, bright, and brilliant. But while something different might work for a branding firm, it wouldn't work as well for more common businesses, like an ice cream parlor or an auto body shop.



• Mistake #7: Taking the Campbell's soup approach to selecting a name
  Driven by the need for a matching domain name, many companies have resorted to awkwardly constructed or purposefully misspelled names. The results are company names that sound more like prescription drugs than real life businesses. Mistake #2 sometimes gets combined with this one and results in a name like KwaliTronix. It's amazing how good some names begin to sound after searching for available domain names all night. But resist the urge. Avoid using a "K" in place of a "Q" or a "Ph" in place of an "F". This makes spelling the name--and locating you on the internet--all that much harder.
  And it's not that coined or invented names can't work--they often do. Take, for example, Xerox or Kodak. But keep it mind that names like these have no intrinsic or linguistic meaning, so they rely heavily on advertising to convey their meaning--and that gets expensive. Many of the companies that successfully use this approach were either first in their category or have large marketing budgets. Verizon, for instance, spent millions on their rebranding effort. So did Accenture. So check your pocketbook before you check into these types of names.



• Mistake #8: Choosing the wrong name and then refusing to change it
  Many business owners know they have a problem with their name and just hope it will somehow magically resolve itself. The original company name of one of my clients, for instance, was "Portables", which reminded some people of port-a-potties or portable classrooms--neither was accurate nor something the business owner wanted to be associated with. This added to the confusion when sales reps tried to explain their new concept of moving and storage. After some careful tweaking, we came up with the name PODS, an acronym for Portable On Demand Storage. The rest is quickly becoming history as they expand both nationally and internationally.
  Mike Harper of Huntington Beach, California, bought a 30-year old janitorial and building maintenance company named Regency. We both agreed it sounded more like a downtown movie theatre than a progressive facilities management firm. After a thorough naming search, we developed the name Spruce Facilities Management. Spruce not only conveyed the environmentally friendly image of a spruce tree, something important to the client, it also meant "to clean up." The new tagline fell right in place: Spruce..."The Everclean Company."
  It's only a matter of time before Southwest Airlines, Burlington Coat Factory and others who have successfully outgrown their original markets begin to question their positioning. Much like 3M and KFC, they may need to make a change to keep pace with their growth and image.
  In the fever to start your new business or expand a current one, take time to think through some of these issues. By tapping into your creativity and avoiding these potential pitfalls, you'll be able to create a name that works for both the short and long term. Like the original cornerstone of a building, it will support upward expansion as your company reaches new heights.

DONT DO THE "20 THINGS" WHEN STARTING A BUSINESS

Too often, many would-be entrepreneurs spend all of their time planning their corporate structure, getting all of the necessary permits, licenses, bank accounts, and doing all of the other minutiae of business before they actually figure out whether or not they actually have a product or service that someone will pay for.

I advise everyone that asks me, and some that don’t, not to quit their day job until they have actually gone out, talked to potential buyers and had someone they didn’t already know pay for their product or service. Nine times out of ten, what you originally thought was going to be a big hit in the marketplace is a dud, and you have to go back and rework your product. If you spend all of your savings establishing your corporate presence, you won’t have any money left to pay yourself when you have to go back to the drawing board.

In addition to not quitting your day job, here’s my list of twenty things not to do before starting a business :

• Don’t quit your day job


• Don’t incorporate
  Seventy five percent of all businesses are sole proprietorships, and they already make money.


• Don’t get a bank account
  Your personal banking account will work just fine if someone wants to write you a check, or if you need to pay for something.


• Don’t rent an office
  Work from home. It won’t require a first, last and security deposit. Plus, it’s tax deductible.


• Don’t hire an attorney
  What’s an attorney going to tell that you didn’t already know, or couldn’t figure out on Nolo or in a good bookstore? There are only two times to call an attorney: if you’re in jail, or if someone else’s attorney contacts you.


• Don’t hire an accountant
  Quickbooks Simple Start will get you going.


• Don’t get a loan
  To get a loan from anyone, even your family, will require that you do too many items on this list. And besides, if you get a loan, you know work for the bank — not for yourself.


• Don’t hire anyone
  Don’t hire someone if you can do it yourself. For everything else, use contractors and give them 1099.


• Don’t get a business license
  I’m not advocating that anyone cheat the government. Once you can sell your product/service, go out immediately and get all of the necessary business licenses and permits in your jurisdiction.


• Don’t try to patent anything
  It takes 1.5 to 2.5 years to get a patent. Who knows what the market will look like then.


• Don’t design a logo
  You are your own brand, you don’t need a logo.


• Don’t waste time picking a business name
  As a sole proprietor, you already have a business name: your own!


• Don’t advertise
  Advertising costs money, and takes time to perfect. Selling takes only you.


• Don’t buy office supplies
  If you need a pencil, get one out of the kitchen or your son’s backpack. You are working from home, aren’t you?


• Don’t buy any equipment
  Outsource everything. Fedex Kinkos can handle all of your printing, and instead of splurging on a postal meter head down the post office. Need something big? Rent it! If it’s not something you can rent by the day, maybe there’s another local business with one. Can you rent it during their off hours in the middle of the night?


• Don’t try to find a partner
  What do you need a parter for? Capital? Don’t take loans. Need someone with some sales experience? If you the inventor of your product/service can’t sell it — no one will be able to.


• Don’t join the Chamber of Commerce
  Chambers of Commerce have great mixers where you can meet and network with other local business people. Right now, you don’t need to network, you need to sell! Plus, you can always go as a visitor.


• Don’t tell all of your friends about the business that you’re going to start someday soon
  Every minute that you spend telling someone you love about your future business is one less minute you have to either try to find someone to buy your product/service or to refine it. Plus, everyone knows an "entrepreneur" that is all talk and no action: don’t be one yourself.


• Don’t write a business plan
  Sure you need to know what you’re going to do and how you’re going to make money, but don’t waste time formatting it into a structured plan.


• Don’t get a business telephone number or mailing address
  You have a cellphone, use it. If someone needs to mail you something, have them send it to your house. You’re working there, remember.

HOME BUSINESS SECRET

It's no mystery to anyone who has been in business, especially a home business where funds are tight that referral marketing is the fastest and cheapest way to build a business that makes making money at home a lot easier than with traditional advertising. And there are many ways of going about getting referrals. For example, one of the best ways is to do it when someone has complimented you. But another great time to ask for referrals is the moment the sale has been made.

In fact, according to Jay Conrad Levinson (one of the world's most prolific and respected marketers) as soon as the sale has been consummated and they’ve paid for it, the person is feeling a sense of positivity. And while they’re feeling that positivity, that’s the time to ask for the referral. You don't have to get fancy or anything, just ask for the names of three people or five people who might benefit from getting on your mailing list. And to make it worth their while, so it's easy and fun for them to give you referrals. You can also give them a reward or a free gift in exchange for those names. And then, to really milk the opportunity for all it's worth, go back to those same customers who gave you referrals a month later and ask for more. And then, again six months later.

Reason why is because people meet new people all the time. And during that month and the next six months after that, they will most likely have even more names for you. This is some of the best referral advice I'd ever heard. And I can guarantee you, if you use it for your home business, you will grow it much faster and easier than you would otherwise, and put more money in your pocket almost right away.

Michael Senoff is a sought-after Internet marketer, interviewer and business coach with more than 50,000 students on four continents. For a limited time he is giving away free over 120 hours of in-depth audio interviews with some of the richest and most successful marketers, copywriters and business experts in the world at his famous website: http://hardtofindseminars.com/

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