Nick Yates Successful Entrepreneurship Blog

Author: Arman Rehman

For most people, starting a Home Business is a way to realise their financial dreams. With the Home Business, the entrepreneur hopes to be finally free from the routine and pains of having a job.

Like any other business, there will always be a period of time (normally in the beginning) where you will need to give more time and effort than expected to build the fundamentals of the business. As a business startup, you will be faced with risks. There is no way to eliminate all the risks associated with starting a business. However, you can improve your chances of success by good planning, preparation and guidance.

These are the factors that you must consider and prepare yourself before starting your own Home Business.

1. Do you consider yourself a Self-Starter?

When you are an employee, your boss is the one to worry about these things. You will need to seriously worry only if the salary does not come in at the end of the month. A Home Business Owner is fully accountable for the success or failure of the business.

A Home Business owner needs to create products and services, develop marketing plans, implement the plans, take orders, deliver the products and services, manage time - the list is endless.

2. Do you get along well with people with different working style and personalities?

As a Home Business entrepreneur, people management is a fundamental skill. You will need to develop good working relationship with a large variety of people namely your customers, suppliers, bankers, lawyers, accountants etc. Are you able to control your temper and nerves when faced with a highly demanding customer, an unreliable supplier or unreasonable banker all for the good of your business?

3. Are you good at making decisions? in a timely manner?

As a Home Business owner, you will need to make decisions constantly, under pressure, independently in a timely manner. You will need to account for all the factors and information in hand before deciding on matters that may affect your business.

4. Do you have the mental and physical stamina to start and maintain a business?

Running a Home Business is a marathon and not a sprint. Starting and developing a successful Home Business requires stamina both mentally and physically. Though it is exciting, challenging and sometimes fun, there is a lot of work involved and even more ups and downs.

5. Plan and Organize.

According to research, many business failures can be avoided through better planning, good organization, good counselling and guidance.

6. As the owner behind the wheels, is your drive strong enough to propel the Home Business forward?

As the Home Business owner, you must continously motivate yourself when running the business.

Some Home Business owners often experience burnout by having to carry the burden of the business on their shoulders. Motivation can make a business succeed and help survive the slowdowns and periods of burnout. It is a good idea to form alliance to manage the workloads of the Home Business. You may join support groups to keep yourself continuously motivated.

7. Balancing Home Business and Family.

The truth in any business is that the first few years of starting up can be hard on family life. The strain of an unsupportive family can make it difficult to meet the demands of starting a business. There may also be financial difficulties until the business becomes profitable.

A successful and profitable Home Business is a dream for many people. In order to make that dream into a reality, a certain amount of sacrifice together with careful planning, guidance and perseverance is needed. There is no doubt that you will face a downturn once in a while but all failures are lesson learnt. If there are no failures, there are no success.

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Author: Joel Teo

Society has a way of convincing us that wealth arises from those that work hard and get a well paying job in some financial institution on Wall Street. While I do not dispute that you can get really wealthy managing other people’s money as a fund manager or if you like to run an investment company like Warren Buffet, you can join in the fray. For the most of us, we just like to do our own thing and enjoy the freedom that exists in creating our own perception of a business.

Entrepreneurship therefore represents a leap into the unknown world and one of the most important means today of creating wealth while still retaining your own freedom. This concept of entrepreneurship is not new and existed many years ago when the founding fathers were still roaming the new world and carried with them this profound sense of adventure. Would you like to experience this kind of intensity and excitement in your life today? This article will highlight three ways to get started.

Firstly, decide if your current field is for you. Some people actually love their field of work but hate their job. If you fall into this category, then spend some time learning all you can about your business and then start brainstorming about possible alternatives related to your current industry. For example, many venture capitalist companies in the valley have amongst them experienced dot com CEOs that add their wealth of experience the deals that they do. Other stories include people who start selling their former company’s items and later became large dealer wheelers who are big time traders.

Secondly, figure out how to get into the industry of your dreams. Assuming that you want to change career or profession, getting an MBA may be actually a good bet if you think you are the academic sort. Else, why not get a job in a related industry. For example, stories abound of accountants, lawyers who find jobs in fortune 500 companies and later become the CEOs of such companies.

Thirdly, “chicken hearted entrepreneurship” is a term that Michael Masterson in the Early to Rise Ezine advocates that I agree with. Get a job that will give you enough money to test your business ideas each month and test your market. The internet allows you to test various money making ideas and learn what actually works and can make you money. Focus your off work time on certain segments of your business daily and have unwavering faith.

In conclusion, making money via entrepreneurship is critical to generating wealth on an exponential basis. By all means get a job as that will be part of the process, but remember real wealth is obtained when your get equity in a business rather than remaining as a mere employee. Take action today to reach your wealth dreams!

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Author: Alan Dowler

There is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship, but a definition supplied by Eugene Luczkiw, Director of the Institute of Enterprise Education, aptly describes enterprise and its link with education:

“…to facilitate development of enterprising individuals who possess a positive, flexible and adaptable disposition towards change seeing it as normal and an opportunity rather than a problem. To see change in this way an enterprising individual has a security borne of self-confidence and is at ease when dealing with insecurity, risks, difficulties and the unknown.

An enterprising individual has the capacity to initiate creative ideas, develop them, and see them through into action in a determined way. An enterprising individual is able, even anxious to take responsibility, and is an effective communicator, negotiator, influencer, planner and organiser. They are active, confident, purposeful: not passive, uncertain and dependent.”

Entrepreneurship and the extent of entrepreneurial activity within the UK has only just started to command attention over recent years. With regards to employment and the workforce at large, the emphasis had been on assigning much resources to attracting inward investment – large companies with the capability of employing a vast amount of people at one time.

Repetitive failures on behalf of government to successfully secure foreign investors over the past few years (let’s face it, who can compete with the tiny wages paid in the Far East and Eastern Europe) has only served to confirm doubts about the viability and the ‘economic sense’ in attaching as much importance to achieving inward investment.

I have long argued for a substantial re-addressing of the existing balance between: resources awarded to encouraging the growth and development of indigenous businesses; and resources awarded to attracting employers from overseas to invest in our infrastructure and, more specifically, our workforce.

The prime argument behind this is that the latter is essentially a short-term solution to the problems of the UK economy. It is also damaging as it often proves insensitive to the culture and environment of the local area, and eventually causes a severe unemployment situation – this is particularly dire when the vast majority of the working population of the area were employed by the company who had set up in the area only a few years ago.

Early indications show that the former is increasingly ‘catching up’ with the latter, if only in the ‘discussion’ sense for the time being.

The future of entrepreneurship lies with our young population. If a strong and sustainable entrepreneurial culture is to exist, it is essential that it is fostered at the earliest possible stage. If more emphasis is placed on teaching the basic principles of entrepreneurship, thereby encouraging people to develop commercial awareness and attaching a more outward-looking view, we would be in a better position to encourage a greater percentage of business start-ups and expansions.

So in the strong tradition of my company, Entrepreneur Secrets, what would I advise would-be entrepreneurs to do? This is where I come into my own – to give people ideas to just ‘go out and do’. And here is a great example that I’ve actually been working on since 2006! It involves the biggest industry in the world – the food industry – and the fact that it has been on the threshold of a great change for two years, in Europe at least. And with it will bring great opportunities for those who will be ready for these changes.

Agriculture has been one of the flagship areas of European collaboration since the early days of the European Community. In negotiations on the creation of a Common Market, France insisted on a system of agricultural subsidies as its price for agreeing to free trade in industrial goods. The Common Agricultural Policy began operating in 1962, with the Community intervening to buy farm output when the market price fell below an agreed target level.

This helped reduce Europe’s reliance on imported food but led before long to over-production, and the creation of “mountains” and “lakes” of surplus food and drink. The Community also taxed imports and (from the 1970s onward) subsidised agricultural exports. These policies have been damaging for foreign farmers, and made Europe’s food prices some of the highest in the world. European leaders were alarmed at the high cost of the CAP as early as 1967, but, despite this, radical reform began only in the 1990s.

The aim has been to break the link between subsidies and production, to diversify the rural economy and to respond to consumer demands for safe food, and high standards of animal welfare and environmental protection. There are some French arguments for saving the CAP which sound respectable. Jacques Delors, a former head of the European Commission, put it best when he said he would not sacrifice the French countryside on the altar of world trade. The beauty of France and the glories of its food and wine are indeed splendid, and help make the country the world’s most popular tourist destination.

But the idea that the CAP is all about helping rustic smallholders to keep making rare cheeses has very little to do with reality. In fact, 80% of the EU’s farm subsidies go to the 20% of the Union’s farmers with the biggest farms. Because EU subsidies are linked to production, they encourage ugly, intensive, industrial farming. The people the CAP helps most are big businessmen with vast fields of sugar beet in northern France or miles of bright-yellow oil-seed rape in southern England.

The key reform proposed by the European Commission is to cut the link between farm subsidies and production. The same amount of taxpayers’ money would continue to pour into the European countryside, but under the Commission’s proposals it would increasingly be directed towards environmental protection and rural development, and away from intensive farming.

Those who think farming is dead and that there is no money in it need to think again. The almost mass exodus from the countryside means that farms are now exchanging hands for relatively little money but, if run properly, could soon turn into goldmines under the new subsidy regime. Farms which concentrate early on goals that ordinary people genuinely support, such as beautifying the countryside, will do particularly well. This is because more money would be spent on these activities as the Commission caps the amount that the largest farms receive, so ending the anomaly of the wealthiest landholders, such as England’s Prince Charles, doing particularly well out of the CAP.

In addition, biofuels could provide a major income for Britain’s arable farmers. Even without demand for the ‘green’ fuel, recent falls in output – thanks to drought and low stocks – will keep prices high. Prices will rise by between 20% and 50% by 2016. Production in the US, which mainly uses domestic corn, is expected to jump by 50% in 2007 – and to double by 2016. Meanwhile in Brazil, currently the world’s fastest growing ethanol producer, biofuel output is set to hit 44bn litres over the next 10 years, 145% more than in 2006.

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