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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

To be truly successful online, you must desire true success. You see, there is no shortcut to success, and success is within your reach and it all lies within you. You have the extraordinary factor that moved you into possessing a state of never-ending success mindset.

Though there are many techniques, methods and even strategies that will propel you towards the direction of success, but the key to unlock the door to success, you must develop an attitude of success deep inside of you.

So what does this attitude of success look like?

1) You must set your mind that you are worthy of success. Do not place self-limiting thoughts against yourself and if you ever think you cannot succeed, you might as well throw in the towel now. Don’t waste your time. Instead, begin to think about the end of the matter and visualize what you want to become, the man and woman you want to be.

Thoughts give birth to desire and desire leads to actions. With the right vision brings about a positive motivation which leads right actions, you will become unstoppable.

2) You must associate yourself with people who are successful and find mentors who want to see you succeed. In other words, partner with successful people and network with them whether online or offline. Take small little action each day and start getting on a few mailing lists. Mind you, the contacts you made will be priceless.

3) You must have faith that you can create successful online ventures. Do not be alarm by the fact that you are a beginner, the fact is that everyone do start from zero and they succeed because of the necessary things they do each day whether they like it or not. Do not rush but learn to be patient. Every action is a momentum itself. The seed you plant is there. You may not see it at first but certainly, it is growing.

The online world is not like the offline job market, where a diploma buys you entrance. Online, everyone starts out equal, and the winner is the one who works the hardest and smartest.

4) You must be determining to become the cream of the crop in your chosen niche. Good is not enough, strive to become the best. Be number 1, for in history, it is the first that is remembered.

There is too much competition online but fortunately – most everyone online only makes an average effort. You must be the best and you must gives more than an average effort. Then you will out win all others and you standout among all.

Lastly, you really can achieve your wildest dreams online, but you must believe in yourself first. Once again, start believing and you shall see the possibility of never-ending success coming true.

Raise your hand if you are the owner (or part owner) of a successful family business, and someday you want your kids to step into your shoes [as the new owner(s)]. Let’s be specific about the word ‘kids’. We mean only those kids who are now in the business and who will someday run the business. Kids who are not in the business should not share ownership with the business kids. Of course, the non-business kids will receive other assets, usually of equal value to the amount (value of the business) received by the business kids.

Yes, the situation that is described in the first paragraph comes up often. But rarely have we seen a solution to the how-to-transfer-the-business-to-the-business-kids-and-treat-the-nonbusines-kids-fairly problem. This article tells you the solution. Step-by-step.

We’ve done it hundreds of times for family business owners and their business kids.

We have nicknamed the process “Industrial Strength Succession Planning” because when the transaction is properly done, it holds together and successfully survives the test of time. Interesting, when there is a problem, it is never caused by the technical aspects (the tax law and legal documents). It’s those human beings (with different agendas and opinions) that make up normal American families. Rarely, very rarely, are problems caused by the immediate family. Who creates the friction?… You guessed it… Typically a brother-in- law or sister-in-law (married to a nonbusiness child) when that nonbusiness child owns a piece of the business.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example, where the roof—because of family squabbling—almost caved in on a highly successful family business (Success Co. owned by dad Joe). Success Co.’s stock was owned 52% by Joe and 48% by his four adult children, 12% each… three of the kids (Sam, Sol and Sue) work full time for Success Co. The fourth kid (Ray) is a successful professional and has no interest in the business.

Sue had a baby and told the family she would not return to work until her daughter went to college. The squabbling started… sort of even sides… Joe and the now only two business kids, Sam and Sol, on one side… and Sue, her husband (Roy), and Ray’s wife (Roz) on the opposing side.

The most minuscule business issues created a flurry of hot-tempered conferences that rarely resolved anything. Success Co.’s profits turned down. Joe, a smart businessman and a fair-minded type of guy, was frustrated. The family called me for help, yet Joe assured me that, except for the divisive confrontations concerning Success Co., everyone in the family got along fine. Mary, Joe’s wife agreed, but she asserted that the nasty business stuff was sometimes creeping into their everyday out-of-business life. Sadly, Joe nodded his agreement.

The business, which after the early years of a struggle to become successful, had always been a source of pleasure for Joe and Mary, now has become a thorn in their sides. First, together we (Joe Mary and me) pinned down their specific goals as related to the business and all of their children. Here are their goals: (1) stop the business bickering; (2) treat the kids equally (after much discussion “equally” was redefined to mean the business to the business kids and other assets, of equal value, to the non-business kids); and (3) transfer Success Co., in a tax-effective manner, to the business kids, but allow Joe to maintain control for as long as he lives.

My advice was tough love: really my insistence that only business kids own stock of Success Co. Here’s the plan we implemented:

1. Success Co. was recapitalized (100 shares of voting stock and 10,000 shares of nonvoting stock). Everyone of the shareholders got their proportionate share (i.e. Joe got 52 voting shares and 5,200 nonvoting shares).

2. Success Co. was professionally appraised with a specific fair market value (FMV) per voting share and nonvoting share.

3. Success Co. redeemed (bought) all of the shares—voting and non voting—owned by the non-business kids (Sue and Ray). At what price?… exactly FMV.

Note: At that point Joe owned 68% of Success Co., while Sam and Sol each owned 16% (rounded) of the stock.

4. We used an intentionally defective trust (IDT) to transfer—tax free—the nonvoting shares (5,200) to Sam and Sol (2,600 shares each). The IDT saved Joe and his two sons about $2.7 million in income and capital gains taxes. Since, the nonvoting shares, which contained about 99 percent of the FMV of Success Co., were no longer owned by Joe, the shares were out of his estate for estate tax purposes. Sam and Sol will receive the voting shares (half each) when Joe goes to the big business in the sky.

That’s it. If you have kids (one or more) who will ultimately own your business, reread the above. Slowly! It’s the basic plan—with slight variations as necessary to accommodate each family’s unique circumstances—we have used for years. From a tax standpoint, it always works perfectly. From a human standpoint, must admit we sometimes hit bumps in the road. Have not figured out how to change human nature. In Joe’s (and his family’s) case, the plan eliminated the constant turmoil. Even Roz, to everyone’s surprise, bought into the plan.

As readers of this column know, solving just a portion of a client’s estate tax problem is not our style. Always, but always, the comprehensive plan includes a complete lifetime plan (here, the succession plan was a part of the lifetime plan) and a complete estate plan that dovetails with the life plan. The overall plan for Joe and Mary is built around two basic concepts: (1) maintain their lifestyle for as long as they live (lifetime stuff); and (2) an estate plan that will pass all of their wealth—every dime of it—to their kids, instead of losing it to the IRS.

Unfortunately, the right way to do a business succession plan and properly tie it into a comprehensive estate plan seems to remain a mystery to almost all closely held business owners and their professionals.

I remember attending a meditation workshop with Mark Epstein, a well-known ‘Buddhist psychologist.’ He told a story about a meeting he had with Ram Dass, spiritual teacher and author, where Ram Dass had asked Mark Epstein about his work with his patients. As Mark talked about his work, Ram Dass interrupted him and asked, “Do you see them as already healed?”

I was so struck by this story. As a coach and healer of businesses, I saw the clarity in this question. So often as solo-service professionals it is easy to focus on our success by looking at ourselves (what we are doing, creating, visualizing, etc.), but the results are incredible when we turn the focus on those that we serve.

What do you see when you look at your clients or customers? Do you see failure or success?

When I worked as a high school teacher–in moments when my students were working on their own–I would say to myself, “The light in me sees the light in you.” I really felt that. I could see my students succeeding long before they could see it or could even venture to believe it. However, I knew as their teacher it was my duty to hold that vision and energy for them and then guide them through the action steps of getting there. It always worked. I have countless high school teaching success stories.

I see that same (if not more–I’ve learned a lot in the past few years) success for the private and Boot Camp clients I work with now. I literally see them as a successful magazine owner, professional organizer, coach, meditation expert, Feng Shui practitioner…and the list goes on. It continues to work.

I ask you to begin to apply this to your own business. Here are 3 steps to begin SEEING success in those that you serve.

1)Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.

In Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention, he sites that, “It turns out that at the tiniest subatomic level, the actual act of observing a particle changes the particle.” This is a clear example of energy affecting energy. If I look at you and see your success, then you begin to create more of and be success! How great is that?

So when speaking to a prospect, customer, or client, instead of questioning your abilities (wondering if you’ll get the sale or joining them in their woes), the most powerful action you can take is to change the way you are looking at the situation. See them as happy, joyful, peaceful, well, successful…and more. You will be effecting a change that will result in more success and abundance for the both of you. (It feels so much better than worry and doubt!)

2)Be constantly giving.

The energy of success is constantly giving and the supply is limitless. When you can come from this place in your own business, you begin to attract more into your life.

I know when I first heard this, it was hard for me to grasp. Mostly, because I used to come from a place of giving, but have one eye immediately on making sure that I was compensated and at the same time convinced that I wouldn’t be. Guess what? I wasn’t and I felt a whole lot of resentment at the same time.

When I shifted my attention to giving for the sake of the success of those that I was serving and simultaneously confidently took care of what I needed for myself and my business (instead of waiting for someone else to do just do it), there was more success ALL around.

3)Detach from the outcome.

When you are able to SEE success, you don’t need to be attached to the outcome because you KNOW that it’s going to be successful. Whenever you are caught up in accumulating (I have to get this client; I have to sell to this customer), then you lose sight of what your main goal is–to see the success of those that you serve.

Find out exactly what’s going on for the person that you’re speaking to. Ask them and ask yourself, what do they need? The answer to this question is usually multi-layered. (For example, prospects that come to me may need more income from their businesses, but they also need to move through the blocks they’ve unconsciously set up for themselves that’s keeping them from getting more money). So, you then SEE them as getting their needs fully met and begin the process of working with that person, so you can help make it happen.

Call To Action:

1)Ask yourself, how do I see my prospects, clients, or customers? Be honest. Just let the answer come. No judgment. It will give you a lot of information.

2)With whatever answer you get now, ask yourself, “How can I improve?” How can I see this situation differently?

3)For one day focus only on those you serve and their success. Write down the difference in how you feel, the results that your clients get, and anything else that pops up.

Through observing business people who have been successful, and how they achieved their success, I have concluded that there are a number of factors that must be present for business success to occur. As I like to keep things simple, these success factors can be condensed into a formula. It is:

Success = Startup Business Person + Product/Service + Market

Let us look at this formula in a little more detail. Firstly, what is success? The definition of success depends on what you want to get out of the venture, that is, what your goals are. Business success usually means creating a viable entity (business) that returns its investment and earns a profit.

Appropriate and realistic goals include to be challenged, to achieve, and to build something good. For example, your definition of success could be to earn $100,000 a year from your home business so that you can replace your full time job income.

The most crucial element of the above formula is the “Startup Business Person”. This element decides all the others.

Ultimately, a successful startup business person is someone who opens, manages and runs a successful startup business and can repeat the process. This is someone who has accepted the responsibility and learned how the job is done.

Successful startup business people usually always start small and grow the business. They do not have too many irons in the fire at once so that their efforts are not diffused. They give it everything they have and believe that hard work counts. They try repeatedly until they achieve the success they are looking for. Moreover, most of all, they possess a positive mental attitude.

They have learned to emulate success. Do you know what emulate means? To emulate means to attempt to equal or surpass. In other words, if you were to attempt to emulate someone else’s success, you would imitate them and as you gained further knowledge and skill, you would attempt to do better than them. Remember that emulation takes things one step further than imitate.

The next part of the formula is “Product/Service”. Without something to sell, there can be no business. Generally, the product or service needs to be of a high quality. It also needs to be something that people are prepared to pay for.

The last component of the formula is “Market”. A successful business person knows who their market is and how to reach it in the most cost effective manner. The market is defined as the people who want and are prepared to pay for the product or service.

I would now like to run through with you what I consider are the basic principles of home, small or online business success.

Believe in Your Product or Service

First, you need to believe in your product or service. If you do not believe in it, you will have a great deal of difficulty selling your product or service to other people. You also need to have confidence in your ability to provide and promote your product or service. An old saying sums this up best: “All things are possible to he who believes”.

Aptitude for the Business

Secondly, you need to have an aptitude for the business. You will also need the motivation to acquire at the very least basic skills and experience before you start your business. If you were to set yourself up as a home electrician but did not have any skills or training in this area, then you will almost certainly fail. However, if you are employed as a bookkeeper and you enjoy the job, then setting up your own bookkeeping service would be a sensible choice with a greater chance of success.

Be Responsible

Thirdly, you need to be responsible to your customers. This is achieved by only making commitments you can keep and by not engaging in misleading or dishonest advertising. If you want to build long term success in your home business, then you need to develop long term satisfied customers. When their needs are being satisfied, customers are at their happiest.

Aim for High Quality

The next principle is that you need to have a high quality product or service. This will be your best advertisement. Inferior quality products usually generate poor customer satisfaction. A dissatisfied customer can be very dangerous for your business. Usually they tell on average about fourteen other people who will then be disinclined to buy your product or service based on the experience of that one dissatisfied person. Therefore, always aim for a top quality product or service.

Make a Profit

However, it is not enough to have a top quality product or service. You also need to have a product or service that will generate enough income to cover all your business expenses and give you a satisfactory wage. A friend of mine once said that business is only about two things: satisfying customers and making a profit. A simple statement but very true.

Sufficient Startup Capital

You also need to have access to enough cash to set up and run your business, and enough income to meet your private expenses during the startup phase. A major problem with many home and small businesses is that they fail to have enough money available to ensure their success. There is nothing more discouraging than having a great idea, getting it started on a shoestring, not being able to expand due to cash shortages and seeing a competitor come along and steal your market.

Start Small

Another fundamental principle of home business success is that you start small. This will enable you to minimize your overheads until you are confident of your success in the marketplace. For many of you, this would mean starting part-time while retaining your full-time income source. When you can, expand your business into a full-time venture. This is a great way of minimizing the risk of failure.

Be Well Organized

Successful home businesses are well organized. They have a system for keeping track of expenditure and earnings. This level of organization in your business will help to ensure that you are providing your customers or clients with a top quality product or service. It will also ensure that you have enough information available to maximize your profitability and to satisfy your legal requirements for record keeping.

Be Prepared

Preparation is another important ingredient in your business success. This preparation will include being aware of the regulations and laws affecting small, home or online business in your area or country. Armed with this knowledge, you should not have any nasty surprises from unintentional violations of the law.

Have a Business Plan

Finally, successful home businesses have developed a comprehensive business plan. This is their road map to success. It tells them where they are going and how they are going to get there. It is very useful for comparing actual performance against what you planned and enabling you to make adjustments to lead to greater success. There are many useful software packages available to assist you with your business plan preparation.

How do you know whether you can be a successful entrepreneur, or if you are better off as a salaried employee? Everyone has bad days at work, when they start to fantasize about how great it would be to be their own boss. But before you make any drastic moves, it is wise to do a bit of self reflection to determine if this is really something you’ll be naturally suited for. Although there isn’t a tried and true formula for success, studies have shown that successful entrepreneurs share many common characteristics. Do you possess any of these personality traits? Many of them? If so, you may be a natural entrepreneur, a person who is inherently better suited for owning your own business than working for someone else.

Owning and running a business is a creative, challenging and highly rewarding way to become your own boss and chart your own future. It’s about creating and finding a better way to do things, offering customers a new choice that is of value to them. In addition to making your own living, it is also about providing opportunities to help others advance as well, whether it is through job creation or simply by hiring other contractor firms. Ultimately you want to create a business that you run, instead of it running you, and hopefully it will make you a nice little fortune in the process. It takes courage, determination and foresight to decide to become an entrepreneur. Leaving the relatively safe corporate world, where paychecks arrive regularly, and benefits are guaranteed, you will be venturing into the uncharted territories of business and it can be a daunting adventure, but if you’ve got what it takes, it can be the best challenge you ever face. I have met many people who have made this decision without really thinking through all of the long term implications or really what their long term goals are for the venture, and the ideal role that they would play in the company. I can tell you from experience that you will be able to achieve far greater results in your business more quickly if you take the time early on to determine what characteristics you possess that will be your entrepreneurial strengths and where any weaknesses may lie so you can be aware of them and hire and outsource to bolster them.

While there is no recipe for success, most successful entrepreneurs share many common characteristics. To determine whether you can be a successful entrepreneur, or if you are better off to work for somebody else, see if any of these sound like you:

1. Big dreams. To attain the kind of success that you want, you need to dream big. Every success story starts with big dreams. You don’t hear Oprah saying that she wanted to just pay the rent and get by. She had big dreams. If you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur you need to have big dreams for yourself. Just making enough to pay the bills or getting a few customers is not enough of an aspiration to fuel you forward. Make no mistake; this journey will not be an easy haul, so you really need one heck of a carrot out there to motivate yourself to keep pushing. Similarly, success is not achieved in a vacuum; your dream needs to not only inspire you it needs to inspire others as well. Your dream should be something that others will believe in, see as worthwhile and want to support. Your dream needs to include being wealthy or famous but it definitely should center on being fulfilled. Do not enter this race to be just another runner, but do not feel that you need to be the winner or else your efforts will be in vain. Many small companies have done a great job at providing a unique value to a select niche market that has lead to great results for them. These companies have made an impact on targeted people and on businesses, communities or organizations. They didn’t just sell something; they made a difference, caused change, made things better, easier, faster, more effective or made something never possible before, possible.

2. Clarity and vision. You need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. Along with dreaming big you should actively visualize success in your mind so that you can almost feel it, touch it or see that it is within your reach. You should play this image back at every opportunity. What does it feel to triple your current income? How will your life change? What will your business look like if you achieved the million-dollar mark? It is not enough to just think that you can wait and see what happens. You must be able to see what happens before it does happen, that is how you make it happen. Successful entrepreneurs possess an attitude of openness and faith that they can have what they want if they can simply envision it as the first step on the path of action to acquiring it.

3. Passion for what you do. As an entrepreneur you started a business to change your life, to create something better, something more. You saw a need, an opportunity. To attain this change successfully, you need to develop or uncover an intense, personal passion to change the way things are. A passionate person lives life to the fullest, has a lot of energy to give, and their passion inspires others and that passion sells. It is not enough to just have a good product or service, you must have passion. Success comes easily if you have a great love of what you do. Why is that? Because we are more relentless in our pursuit of goals about things that we love. If you hate your job right now, do you think you will ever be successful at it? Never. You may trudge along, even become competent at the tasks, but you will never be a great success at it. You will achieve peak performance and do what you have to do to succeed only if you are doing something that interests you or something that you care deeply about. Entrepreneurs who succeed do not mind the fact that they are putting in 18 hours a day in their business because they absolutely love what they do and they believe in their mission.

4. Openness to new knowledge. You don’t need a degree in business to succeed at your own business. Studies show that most self-made millionaires have average intelligence. Nonetheless, these people reached their full potential and achieved their financial and personal goals in business because they were willing to learn. To succeed, you must be willing to ask questions, remain curious and open to new knowledge. This willingness to learn becomes more crucial given the rapid changes in technologies and ways of doing business and those that are open to change based on knowledge are the ones that have the best chance of being successful. Become a student of business best practices. You will want to learn about other businesses and strategies that have worked and see if you can adopt them to your business. Sticking with what you know because it’s all you know is never the best option. As soon as someone decides he knows it all, it is all over. There is a wealth of knowledge out there; those who find the knowledge that will best serve them and then put it to work are those who reap great rewards.

5. Health and high energy. I mentioned long hours before. It is not uncommon for entrepreneurs to put in two normal work days for every one weekday as well as spend time on the weekends in their business, especially in the first two years. In addition to mental dedication, this takes physical stamina as well. You need to be able to put this kind of extra stress on your body without it taking a toll on your health or on your personal life. Maintaining a healthy diet and exercise regime are highly recommended because they will strengthen your body and your mind to enable you to deal with this better. Many successful entrepreneurs say that they don’t need very much sleep. They are fine with four or five hours a night and wake up full of energy. As a small business you are not going to have a huge marketing budget or the best of anything from a resource standpoint, so you need to make up for this lack with your high energy level. People love energetic people and they tend to make natural assumptions about their success level, their intelligence and their competence based on this energy.

6. Persistence and faith. The people who say that the road to success is easy are forgetting the drive it took to get them there. Even with all the hard work and good intentions imaginable many entrepreneurs will fail. Some successful entrepreneurs suffered setbacks and defeats and even bankruptcy, but they managed to stand up again and make it big in their fields. The courage to persist in the face of adversity and ability to bounce back after a temporary disappointment will assure your success. An entrepreneur must learn how to pick up and start all over again. Persistence is the measure of the belief in yourself and if you persist you can succeed.

7. Discipline. Self-discipline is the key to success. You should be getting into work routines and forcing yourself to stick to those routines. If you are going to be a successful entrepreneur you have to have self-discipline. It cannot be a thing that you strive for and think about. It must be a part of who you are and how you operate. Going the extra mile for your business is not just a bonus it is a necessity for a successful business and successful entrepreneurs know it.

8. Self confidence and optimism. Successful entrepreneurs know that they are going to be successful. They refuse to have let the possibility of failure enter into their minds. They don’t see setbacks and think that they are on the road to closing their business and giving up. As an entrepreneur, you need to fully believe in your goals, and that you can do it even in the face of adversity. You should have a strong conviction in your business, in your capabilities and in yourself. You must believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have the ability to succeed and not let that belief be shaken. The more you can develop faith in your ability to achieve your goals, the more rapidly you can attain it. However, your confidence should be balanced with calculated risks that you need to take to achieve greater rewards. Blustering forward with full confidence but without thinking through all of the risks is not the mark of a successful entrepreneur. Successful entrepreneurs calculate risks and take setbacks as lessons learned that will not be repeated.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is hard work. It takes time and effort and a certain drive, but it can be one of the most rewarding and best things you do in life. Achieving your long term business goals will require energy and endurance. Commitment is what will keep you on task and having a flourishing business is the end reward for that work. For more information about how becoming a successful entrepreneur, visit www.flourishingbusiness.com.