It is difficult to get a business loan to start a small business.  Family and friends are typically the initial sources of funds for most entrepreneurs.  But as an entrepreneur, how will you get financing while preserving the relationships with these people who are close to you?  Entrepreneur.com shares some tips on how to ask for money from family and friends.

In 2010, 5% of U.S. adults polled said they had provided funding to someone starting a business in the past three years, according to a survey by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a research consortium which includes Babson College. Of those respondents, 32% said the funding went to a friend or neighbor, 26% to a close family member, 11% to some other relative and 8% to a work colleague.

1. Choose a strategy.
Do you want to solicit large chunks of money from a few investors, or small amounts from many?

There’s less pressure associated with small sums. “You’re less likely to ruin a relationship over $25,” says Cornelius McNab, founder of Atlanta-based 40billion.com, which facilitates friends-and-family loans and gifts. Most of the site’s fundraisers target a few dozen people for sums between $100 and $500 apiece.

2. Choose an investment type.
When you accept money from others, strings will be attached, no matter how you structure the transaction.

Consider whether you want to accept and pay back loans, have your friends and family own an equity stake, or offer up a token of thanks – say, some amount of free access to your product or service in exchange for a gift.

If you take on investors, you may have to give up a portion of your company, and perhaps make one or more board members.

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Business Interruption Insurance, or Business Income Insurance, is one of the most important coverage for a business, but is most often overlooked. It is the coverage that will keep a business up and running or restore it after an event, such as a fire, hurricane or earthquake. Business Interruption Insurance is not a stand-alone policy, but is rather an add-on provision to a comprehensive policy. This coverage will not compensate the physical damage to the business; it covers the profits that would have been made during the period of interruption. Business owners should be certain they inquire about this add-on while getting a cheap insurance quote from their provider.

Business Interruption Insurance may vary from company to company, but will basically cover the following:

• Business Profits – Verified by the businesses prior accounts receivable and/or financial statements
• Operation Expenses – This is determined by previous accounts payable records, such as electricity, phone and/or water bills
• Temporary Operating Costs – Expenses incurred due to operating out of a temporary location while business is being repaired/rebuilt

Due to the volume of insurance companies, it is best for the owner to get further details on what the plan will cover while getting their cheap insurance quote when first obtaining business insurance or adding the Business Interruption Insurance provision to an existing policy. However, regardless of the company, it will only cover the interruption period which is usually defined as the first day of damage through the first day of restored normal operating conditions.

Again, to purchase Business Interruption Insurance is imperative for any business, especially small businesses and it is not a stand-alone policy. This must simply be added to a property or comprehensive policy as an add-on.

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Workplace coaching can come in a variety of forms. It can exist to enhance technical, professional, business or leadership skills. Its purpose may be to help with immediate skill application in the employee’s current role, or it can be used to develop the employee for a future role. The latter purpose is more usually described as “mentoring”. In setting up a coaching program, other than agreeing the purpose of the program, your key question that you will need to answer is who will play the role of coach. Your options here include the employee’s manager, a trainer, a technical expert and a professional coach, amongst others. Which is right for your program will depend on your particular circumstances. In this article, I will look at each of these options in turn.

Manager

I include in this option anyone with a supervisory or management responsibility that sits in the organizational hierarchy in a position above that of the employee. So, this option includes:
• immediate team leader, foreman, supervisor, manager, etcetera
• manager’s manager
• immediate manager’s peer
• three levels or above manager
• three levels or above manager’s peer
• executive or director

Here, I will refer to all of these positions simply as “manager”. The immediate manager is mostly used for assisting with the application of technical skills. Where the manager actually possesses the skills in question, this can be a prudent choice for three reasons. Firstly, it can serve to strengthen the personal bond between the manager and their direct report. Secondly, it allows the manager to provide up-to-date information on their work objectives and to give accurate and timely feedback on the employee’s job performance.

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Listen Up Because It Is Listening Time

There are many times when we are ‘listening’ to our bosses as they are explaining some high priority task or a new policy, while our brain is on its own mental vacation to Hawaii. In a few seconds, you are at the beach, relaxing with a nice beverage in your hand with the sound of waves melting in your ears. But then you come back to reality- only to notice that you have missed out everything! And if you are lucky enough, your boss didn’t notice you were gone.

There are also cases when you are listening to your client (or maybe prospective client) explain an issue, but your brain is somewhere else, imagining what you will do in the evening. But when they stop talking and wait for your suggestion, you are blank. This is because thanks to your listening skills, you completely missed the point!

There is a reason why we all have one mouth and two ears. This is because listening is twice as essential as talking when it comes to effective communication. If you cannot communicate effectively, it means you don’t listen carefully. Lack of listening skills is not only inefficient, it is also expensive. It can lead to mistakes and misunderstandings, can ruin employee and client relations, raise the number of unsatisfied and angry clients, and negatively affect the overall profitability of the company.

So if listening skills are that important, how can we improve them? The bad news is that becoming good listeners can be a difficult task. But if you follow a few points, it will become simpler.

Attention

Focus completely on the one who is talking to you. Multi-tasking doesn’t go well with good listening. So whatever you are doing, stop it and give your mind to the speaker. If they deserve your time, they also deserve your attention.

Attitude

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The bottom line is that to be successful as an entrepreneur today in business and in life you’ll need to cultivate a sense of balance in your life.  Choose to do work you love, delegate the rest.  Find time each day to sit quietly with yourself and enjoy the tranquility of not having to think about anything but yourself, as difficult as that might be for you to face.  Be decisive by trusting your own intuition while balancing the advise you seek from professionals who can hold you accountable.

Most of all, let go of the notion that you have to be perfect.

Richard Dennis, a super successful futures trader once said, It’s amazing how rich you can get without being perfect.” I’ve often contemplated the dilemma of producing perfect work, work that meets the expectations of the client and the cruel alternative, less than perfect work.  It can be counter-productive when you’re continually expecting perfection.

In a blog post, Internet marketing System Seminar founder, Ken McCarthy, in a muse on perfection noted “the perfectionist will resist and reject what IS – simply because it can never measure up to his imagined goal of what SHOULD BE.”

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And the question at that point would be “Why Not”? My guess would be that nobody ever shared with you the reasons for having one of these. Allow me to do so now. Here’s a few:

a. Better impression for your business. More people trust simply paying via Visa / MasterCard / Discover / Amex, than do going through PayPal. This is not to say that you should not have a PayPal Business account (you should) but getting a Wholesale Merchant Account will allow you some additional flexibility.

b. MORE of your Money into your bank. Because the discount rates are lower than PayPal, you get to keep more of your money. Additionally fees are structured lower than PayPal’s business accounts so you literally get to keep more of your own money.

c. Your money into your bank faster. Our accounts will get your money into your bank within 24 – 48 hours during the business week. The FED does not shift funds between banks on the weekends. If you put something through on Friday, you’ll probably see it on Tuesday as Monday would be the first Business Banking Day.

d. Reliable support 24 hours a day. We provide great support to our clients all the time and are here for your to resolve your issues.

The other benefits with our services are we use high security standards to keep your information safe, we constantly monitor your transactions to ensure that your accounts are always in working order, and we don’t hold or delay your funds when you need to have them move into your accounts as other providers.

We guarantee your rates for the term of your contract and if you find a better deal that we cannot meet or beat, we will release you from your contract with no disconnect fee. Right there we save you $350 which is our fee (others charge more like $450-475).

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Your products or services are the heart and soul of your business; without them, your business cannot exist. Much like the human body, a healthy heart is imperative to a healthy body. Although there are other organs and appendages that carry out the body’s functions, none of those can be completed without a functional, intact heart. As the business owner, you must become in tune with every facet of your business. Let’s apply this to your business:

Strategic customer service, brilliant marketing, nor effective human resources can overcompensate for mediocre products or services; when a business’s products or services are of the highest quality, the task of building a functional, productive business around those products or services is an achievable one. You must be able to create functional supports around your product or service so that you can deliver them; in essence, your business’s products or services are its foundation – they are why you went into business in the first place. How well do you know your products and services?

How comfortable are you with speaking about your products and services? Could you present an impromptu presentation on your products and services, clearly articulating to your customers the benefi ts that they will receive? Do you understand the pricing? Are you able to differentiate your products or services from those of your competitors?

If you had some difficulty in answering any of the above questions, do not be alarmed. Many businesses struggle with being able to truly understand their products or services – most seldom do. However, by becoming introspective and really doing some investigative work, you can improve your professional level of confidence and comfort.

Check out the Functional Business Plan Assignment – Part 4: Products & Services to form a better understanding of your products and services.

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Billionaires From the Frozen North
Any annual listing of the world’s richest people invariably conjures up many of the same names from one year to the next.  Yes, Warren Buffet is on there, and so is Bill Gates.  Ho hum.  But the average American-centric observer usually fails to recognize the wealth and entrepreneurial spirit that continues to thrive in our Neighbor to the North – Canada.  That country has its share of wealthy people, and successful people, and successfully wealthy people.  And even though the recent economic downturn has had some negative effects on those Billionaire Balance Sheets – comparing 2009 to 2008, the world’s billionaires shed approximately $2 trillion in asset valuation – none of these people is expected to show up in a bread line anytime soon.  According to Forbes, the magazine nearly everyone reads when it comes to exploring entrepreneurs and their successes, here are the ten richest Canadians for 2009, along with a brief description as to how they got there in the first place.  Unless otherwise noted, all figures are [not ironically] in U.S. dollars.

1. David Thomson and family ($13.0 billion); media conglomerate
Thomson is the grandson of Roy Thomson, who founded Thomson Corp. in 1934.  The company began as a book publisher, and today it continues to be one of the world’s prominent providers of textbooks for higher education.  But the corporation really took off once it got involved in electronic media and information technology, dominating such sectors as healthcare, financial services, law, and science.  The company acquired the Reuters news service in 2007 and is now formally known as Thomson Reuters.

2.

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What Is an Entrepreneur?
The conventional definition of “entrepreneur” goes something like this: “A person who innovates while taking a risk in developing a product, service, or business.”  Another definition, a bit less precise but equally effective: “Someone who identifies an opportunity and creates a means to pursue it.”  Either way you look at it, the concept of entrepreneurship encompasses several traits.  Entrepreneurs want to create something of their own to bolster their feeling of personal achievement, and they do so with the knowledge that risk can sometimes equal failure.  For the new entrepreneur, he or she should concentrate on minimizing risk while maximizing opportunity.  How is this done?  The best way for new entrepreneurs to succeed is by following the life lessons laid out by those who have gone before.

Are You a New Business Entrepreneur?
Running your own business imparts great responsibility.  You will have employees who rely on you to provide a stable work environment.  You will have customers who expect you to deliver exactly as promised.  Suppliers want to be paid on time, and investors look to you as a source of profit for the money they have put into your company.  The successful entrepreneur takes calculated risks, not crazy ones.  By following the fifteen lessons below, you will have a leg up on the competition.

Fifteen Dynamic New Entrepreneur Ideas

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Personalities and Entrepreneurship
As any business owner knows, it takes a certain type of person to operate a successful business.  But did you know that experts have identified as many as nine different kinds of personalities that apply to entrepreneurship?  By looking at any list of entrepreneurs – business owners who have built successful companies from scratch – you can match at least one of the following traits to each of them.

Nine Types of Entrepreneurs
By knowing which kind of an entrepreneur you are, you will find greater success by knowing what kind of business you should operate.

1. The Developer
Your intention to run your own company involves using it as a means for improving the planet, helping humanity, or simply making life easier for the general populace.  This field runs the gamut from healthcare to creating new personal products (healthier food or a soothing body spray), and it is your belief that morally upstanding companies will reap great rewards for working on worthwhile causes.

2. The Advisor
By offering a high level of customer service in the form of outstanding assistance and advice, no matter what kind of product or service you sell, you will satisfy people’s need and build a great company.  Any business founded by this type of personality invariably ends up as a customer-focused enterprise.

3. The Magnetic Personality
Individuals with immense levels of high energy and charisma have the ability to attract equally committed workers who help them build important businesses.  Although there is a “workaholic” element to this type that can be detrimental if left unchecked, some of the world’s greatest companies have been founded by superstar entrepreneurs.

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What is the SBA?

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is a federal agency, created in 1953, responsible for assisting and protecting the interests of American small business.  The agency operates through a series of field offices around the country – as well as in partnership with public and private organizations – to offer such things as technical assistance (how to do business overseas; how to teach your workers new skills), contracting assistance (how to bid on government jobs), and other areas of importance to small business owners.  These might include recovering from natural disasters, complying with civil rights laws, or helping young entrepreneurs get a business off the ground.  But the main reason most people approach this agency is to obtain an SBA business loan – either as start-up funding or for financial assistance to expand an existing business.

What Are SBA Loans?

With no sense of irony whatsoever, it is not possible to obtain an SBA business loan unless you have been rejected in your application for a conventional loan.  In order to keep this government agency from unfairly competing with commercial lending institutions – banks, credit unions, and so on – the law states that the SBA may not guarantee a loan if the customer can secure one “on reasonable terms” from some private source.  There are a number of different types of SBA loans available to the business owner, depending upon the size of the loan, the use to which it will be put, and other factors.  Here are some examples:

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Americans are obsessed with Top Ten lists as well as with money.  What better way to satisfy their cravings than to combine the two?  While fortunes may rise and fall from one year to the next, the list of the ten richest Americans—as measured by Forbes magazine—has remained fairly stable for quite some time.  No matter what sort of business may have caused them to reach this state of extreme financial well being—technology, retail sales, manufacturing, or energy—the common denominator is entrepreneurship.  Other than inheriting money from your relatives, there is no better way to accumulate personal wealth than by starting a business, making it successful, and watching it grow beyond all expectations.  Here are the rankings for 2009:

1) Bill Gates — $40.0 billion
As one of the founders of the personal computer age, the Gates story has been retold so many times that it has almost become a cliché.  At the age of thirteen he was already programming computers, and he continued his interest in technology while a student at Harvard.  Before this, most computers were mainframe dinosaurs whose memory banks took up entire rooms.  Prior to graduation, Gates left college to found Microsoft along with Paul Allen (who was on the Top Ten list as recently as 2006), which eventually struck a terrific deal with IBM.  Gates convinced the computer giant to allow him to keep the licensing rights for the MS-DOS operating system Microsoft had designed to run IBM’s first foray into personal computing.  Every PC loaded with MS-DOS—in other words, every PC on the market—put a licensing fee into the Gates coffers.  This generated millions of dollars a year for the company and its owners.  Once the Windows operating system came to the market, the riches poured in at an even faster rate.

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The number of resources available to help write a business plan is virtually infinite.  With the aim of narrowing down the list to a helpful few, here are a few of my favorites:

Business Plan Website

The Small Business Administration (SBA) at www.sba.gov.  The specific link for business plans is:

www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/plan/writeabusinessplan/index.html.

Business Plan Book

My favorite book is The Business Planning Guide by David H. Bangs, Jr.  It explains each part of a business plan in clear, concise language without too much jargon.  Examples can be found throughout.

In-Person Assistance

These wonderful organizations offer literature, seminars, workshops and consulting services at little or no cost:

• SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives):  www.score.org

• SBDCs (Small Business Development Centers):  www.sba.gov/sbdc

Legal Issues

Nolo Press (www.nolo.com) is the resource for legal information for consumers and small businesses.  Their legal self-help publications address a wide variety of topics, and can be purchased online or found in local bookstores and libraries.  More importantly, their information is trustworthy and easy to understand.  Topics include patents, trademarks as well as how to decide on the best legal entity for your company (LLC, incorporate, etc.).

Creative Financing

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Attracting an investor is like attracting a mate—you want to pique the investor’s interest without showing all your cards at the outset.  The perfect vehicle for achieving this delicate balance is the Executive Summary.

The goal of an Executive Summary is to whet the appetite of the investor by presenting a compelling premise, an irresistible hook.  Your short (5 pages or less) document is meant to give a potential investor every reason to say “yes” and little reason to say “no” to a face-to-face meeting.

While it’s typically included as part of the business plan, the Executive Summary should ideally function as a stand-alone document.  Its function is to build enough interest to get you meetings with potential investors.  Once you’re at the meeting, then you can dazzle them with your presentation and ready answers.  Ideally your Executive Summary should include the following 10 ingredients:

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Okay, you’re finally writing your business plan.  But will it help you secure the funding you need?  Will it be your road map to success—helping you to build a successful business?

Most entrepreneurs write their business plans with one goal in mind:  to raise money.  Even so, a business plan is a double-edged sword.  While it allows you to introduce and sell your business to the reader, it also gives the reader the opportunity to say “No, thanks.”

Don’t blow your big chance.   Now more than ever, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.  Below are 7 mistakes to avoid—7 sure-fire ways to shoot yourself in the foot.

Note:  If you are writing your business plan for the purpose of developing an operating blueprint, it is just as important that you avoid these 7  mistakes.

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I don’t think I’ve ever met a business owner who wasn’t busy. Managing your time is one of the hardest things you’ll need to do as an entrepreneur. There’s always too much to do, so you’ll need to manage your time well in order to get everything done. Here are my top time management tips:

Find out what you’re doing with your time.
One of the first things to do is to actually find out what you are doing with your time. Try monitoring your time for a week and see what’s going on. Use colour coding if it makes things easier i.e. yellow for administrative tasks; blue for marketing; green for client work and so on. At the end of the week, you’ll be able to see what you’re spending too much time on and adjust your time accordingly.

Get organised
The more organised you get yourself, the more you’ll be able to handle all the tasks you need to do. Tidy your desk; set up filing systems; and have procedures to deal with the work that comes in. I know it’s hard, but try to deal with each thing only once so that you get it out of the way.

Practise the “Do it now” philosophy
As soon as a new task comes in, try to “do it now”. You’ll be amazed at how many tasks you can get rid of. Things very rarely take as long as you think they will once you get cracking.

Do things in short bursts
If you’re really not looking forward to doing a task, make yourself do it for 5 minutes only. If you know you’re only going to be doing it for 5 minutes, it doesn’t look as daunting. And once you’ve got started on the task, you’ll probably find you’ll continue on it once the 5 minutes is up.

Ask yourself “what’s stopping you?”
Lack of time is often used as an excuse for not doing something.

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14 Steps to Maximum Value and Profit

Professional M&A (merger & acquisition) experts follow well-defined, orderly steps to sell a business. It is the only way to negotiate the best deal structure and price.

As a business owner interested in selling your company, you will probably rely on an intermediary to take these steps for you. Even so, it is wise to understand the process so you can play an active, educated role in the sale of your business.

Here are the 14 steps most often followed by professional M&A experts:

Step 1 – Value Analysis
Studies have shown that 80 percent of privately held companies are sold for less than fair market value. For that reason, this step is critical to all that follow. A proper valuation of your business should involve the analysis of many factors, such as gross sales and profit percentage, company infrastructures, product or service leadership, current market conditions, growth opportunities, market demand for that particular type of business, and many others.

Step 2 – Sell Now or Later
Two main factors will decide whether you proceed to sell your business. One is the value established in Step 1. If that value is satisfactory to you and meets your goals, you may want to proceed with the sale. A second factor is the potential value of your business. The value analysis may reveal that you could enhance the value and marketability of your business significantly, in a predictable and acceptable time frame, if you delay going to market.

Step 3 – Value Building Program
If you decide to enhance your business before selling, you may want a professional who can help you create and implement a specific program for reaching your goals. You do not want to leave this to chance or optimism alone.

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Starting a business for the very first time is incredibly difficult today. Market trends and service demands are extremely hard to predict in the modern marketplace, but if you have a specific state in mind, or even better a specific area of an individual state, then there are hints and tips that can help to get you started. For example, when finding out how to start a business in California, you may want to take a look at the tips below. They will give you an idea of where to start and what to think about.

The California Market

When you start a business in California, you may find it incredibly difficult to come up with an idea that works. The state, like any other, can be tough for new small businesses to break if they do not have a clear product or service on offer. That is to say that you have to ensure that your product fulfills a specific need. In order to determine whether or not it does this, you will have to perform extensive research.

You should research the product or service you are offering in relation to the reach in the local community and that community’s demand for it. It is wise to research the population of the state in general and then several areas in order to start a business in California. You can do so through government agencies and business agencies because they will be able to tell you exactly what kind of businesses occupy certain areas. The demand for certain services is present in some areas but not in others. For example, it may be that one area does not have a lifestyle coach but in other areas there may be one for every fifty people. The demographics of the area is important as well as the volume of business in your chosen industry, so get to know the area very well.

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GOAL SETTING

PART ONE

Learning How To Dream PEOPLE DON’T KNOW HOW TO DREAM:
One of the main focus points of my life is helping other people set and achieve goals. It pains me when I see someone struggling and not able to be all that they were meant to be. Goal setting works! It just simply works. Yet we know that only about 3% of the people in the world set goals. WHY? I have studied that phenomena a lot. I think I know at least part of the answer. It is because some people do not have the ability to dream.

LIFE’S WHIRL POOL OF INDICISION:
Many people are just living day to day. They do not believe that they can have anything better. They do not have a plan to find anything better. But more than that, THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO WANT. That is one reason they do not set goals. They don’t know what to want. Does that sound silly? They would set goals, but they just don’t know what they want to do or be. They are caught in what I call “the whirl pool of indecision”. Does this sound familiar to you? If it does I can show you how to break out of the whirl pool of indecision and get going in a set direction for improving your circumstances. I can help you break out of this “round and round we go” life style. I can help you do that by helping you LEARN HOW TO DREAM. Want to know how?

SUCCESS WORKSHOPS NOT SEMINARS:
Well actually it is quite simple as far as what to do. Actually doing it, on the other hand, is not so easy. In fact it is not something you can do in one day. You may have noticed by now that I do not call the presentations that I give “SEMINARS”. I call them “Success Workshops”. Why workshops rather than seminars? Because when you come to a Success Workshop you can not just sit and listen like you do in a seminar. You have to work.

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