Conquering Fear To Start Your Own Business ...

In just 3 minutes, marketing expert Seth Godin explains why we are programmed to fear failure ... and that the only person stopping you from starting your own business is YOU ...

Selling Is About Human Connection ...

Keynote speaker number three at the Southampton Business Show was 'Selling for Dummies' author and business growth guru Ben Kench. 

The thing I found the most interesting about his approach to getting more business, was that it focused much more on getting 'out there', nurturing relationships, interacting with people face to face, putting energy into actively marketing your business offline, as well as online.  

He talked a lot about your energy representing you and that is it your energy and your passion that people will buy in to. He said "selling is about human connection". You don't always get that online !

He also said that if you want your business to grow more, you've got to make room for it ...

It is important to be laser focused and to say no to things that are not the best use of your time.  Delegate jobs that you don't need to do, or are not your strengths or just drain you.

And invest time in your existing clients - that is where most of your referrals will come from.

Check out his business growth programme at www.thebusinessbooster.co.uk

Wear The 'Failure Scars' With Pride

So many great speakers at the Southampton Business Show last week.  If you are starting up in business, or want to grow your business, I think it's really important to look to others who are already doing what you want to do.  If you can get a mentor - fantastic - but at the very least grab every opportunity to get inspiration from those who have made the journey, made the mistakes, worked through the tough bits and are now willing to share their stories, tips, advice and experience. 

Brad Burton walked out of his job £25,000 in debt.  He started up a marketing business, but had to deliver pizzas at night to keep the business afloat.  Nine years on he is the founder and Managing Director of 4Networking, an award winning author of three business books and a sought-after motivational speaker.

The keys bits of advice he shared with us were : 

• Work at 100% - most of us are actually operating at around 50% 
• Believe in yourself 100% 
• Insufficient funds when starting a business is OK ... insufficient desire is NOT !!
• Your past does not define you, don't keep living that story
• Making mistakes is fine and, ultimately, they are what will enable you to be successful, so ....  
• Wear the scars with pride, and
• Keep focused on your destination - both in life and in business 

Make today a great day !

Think Running A Business Is Tough ? Imagine Losing Your Eyesight Whilst Setting Up Your First Company ....

I attended the Southampton Business Show yesterday - and what an inspiring (and informative) day it was.  I managed to get along to 8 of the 10 talks ... and had the pleasure of hearing inspirational entrepreneur Liz Jackson MBE share her extraordinary story from start-up to appearing on Channel 4's 'Secret Millionaire'.  She lost her eyesight whilst setting up her first company, Great Guns Marketing, but did not lose her vision to become a success in business and to make a difference.  

She said that "achieving big dreams means stepping outside the comfort zone, doing things you haven't done before, to get results you haven't got before !

She also said it is important to start every day with your glass half full.  She starts every single morning by thanking God for all the wonderful things she has in her life.  

And her three top tips for entrepreneurs were : 

DON'T RELY ON LUCK - there is no such thing !  Concentrate on what you can do and what you have - not on what you can't do and don't have.

GRAB OPPORTUNITIES - and don't let go.  Don't quit.  Learn from your mistakes and grow. Sometimes it will be painful, it is not for the faint hearted. 

DON'T BE A 'NEARLY' PERSON - and she told a story of a man at a networking meeting who said to her "me & the wife nearly bought a boat last year and sailed around the world".  "But" she said "he didn't.  He didn't buy a boat. He didn't sail around the world. And one year later he's still telling people about something he DIDN'T do" ! 

Make sure you start every day with a glass half full, and make today a great day ...

Four Things Women Should Consider Before Starting A Business

By Lisa Nicole Bell

Starting a business can be daunting. I’ve often said that if you want to know what you’re made of, there are three ways to find out: have a child, write a book or start a business.

For women in particular, there are special issues to consider before taking the plunge. Here are four key things that every woman should do and consider before she starts a business.

Define Success for Yourself

The comparison trap presents massive temptation in business. With social media, press and events, you may find yourself jealous of the traction and attention other people are getting in business. You have to define what success looks like for you. Maybe you want to be able to pick your kids up from school every day or maybe your business idea is massive and will take many years to build.

Remember that your business should fit into your vision for your life, not the other way around. Before you begin your company, think about whether you’re truly interested in living the life of an entrepreneur and what fits into your vision of success.

Consider Family and Kids

Women are usually the primary caregivers to children and ill family members. If you’re starting a business, think about what the time commitment and uncertainty may mean for those around you. You might have to delay having another baby or you may decide to move to a city where you have more support for your existing family structure. Some of the stress that comes with being a working woman and working mother can be alleviated with careful planning and forethought.

Prepare Your Mind for Battle

Starting a business is trial by fire. You’ll be tested, stretched, and challenged in unimaginable ways, but the reward is very much worth it. Taking proper care of your mind, body, and spirit becomes increasingly important when you’re responsible for the direction and success of a company and team 

Choose Your Team Carefully

When I started working on my latest venture, I sat down and made a list of things I wanted in a partner. Having worked with a wide range of personalities throughout my career, I learned the hard way that teams have to be complementary in order to be functional. As a woman, I don’t want to be perceived as difficult to work with, but there sometimes just isn’t a way to set a boundary without making someone upset. Be prepared to make decisions that other people may not like. Most importantly, I wanted a partner who had a great attitude, a strong work ethic, and a flexible approach to problem solving. These are traits I share, and they’re traits that make for strong co-founders.

The more clear you are about what’s important to you personally and professionally, the easier it will be to start and run a successful company. Make the tough decisions now so you can have peace of mind later.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2014/04/29/four-things-women-should-consider-before-starting-a-business/

4 Reasons Why Working For Someone Else Won't Get You Rich !

A lot of people have big dreams of running their own business and being their own boss, especially in this economy where small businesses are flourishing. Do you have an idea for a business, store, or service you’d like to start? I’ve had many ideas, but something always keeps me from acting on them. Usually, it’s initial capital. I always feel like I need to bide my time working at my current job, saving up as much as I can, then try to launch my own business once I have my savings built up.

This seems like a practical approach, right? So why am I still not working for myself? Because I’m not taking risks. To get rich, I have to be my own boss. And to be my own boss, I have to take a risk, put myself out there, and make my money work for me.

Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to start a software company. He was in school, learning technology without a definite study or career plan, until his friend wanted to open a business with him. So Bill became a partner in a company; then… well, you know the rest. You know what happened because he became one of the richest, most successful people in the world, all because he took a risk. He left one of the best universities in the world to start a business, and look how that paid off!

So here are 4 reasons why working for someone else won't make you rich ...

1. You become too comfortable to take risks.

My main problem is that I have a job, which means I have income. I can pay my bills. I have a little left at the end of each month to put into savings. It’s comfortable! I don’t need to change anything. Which means I haven’t. You have to push yourself to make a change in a comfortable lifestyle. If I lost my job, I’d have no choice but to kick-start my dream in order to have a job and income! So do something to shake up your life, and see how one change can push you to take charge and change everything.

2. You’re building someone else’s assets.

When you’re working for someone else, you’re helping them. This is well and good if you believe in the cause and just want to get by in life; but if you want to get rich, you’re only hurting yourself. You’re spending at least forty hours a week focusing on someone else. What about you, and what you want to do? Imagine if you have 40 free hours to work on something for yourself. It’s a lot of time, right? Once you get out of your comfortable career rut, you’ll have those forty hours to dedicate to yourself and your own assets. Everything you put into yourself and your business will come right back to you. The money you spend for the business can be deducted from your taxes, and any income is yours alone!

3. Time is more valuable than money.

Money is something you can save, something you can get more of (if you know how). But time is fleeting. You’ll never be able to make up time you’ve already spent. And, as we just mentioned, when you spend time working for someone else, you’re not able to use that for yourself. Sure, you’re making money while you work, but what if you finish your duties before lunch? You’re wasting the other hours of the day doing nothing, just to get that paycheck. Or, if you’re on salary, you might be working way more than forty hours, and not getting paid what you’re worth. The company you work for is in charge of your time. They dictate your schedule, they tell you when you can leave early or have to stay late, and they tell you if you can take vacation time. When you work for yourself, you might have to work harder, but you’re working for yourself, in charge of your own time.

4. You grow too focused on saving for a rainy day.

Saving is smart. We’ve all learned that, and it makes sense. But saving money isn’t helping you make money. Skipping Starbucks and making coffee at home might save you 5 bucks, but did it earn you 5 bucks? If it did, I want your coffee maker! You’re making a fixed income, and just putting money aside. Invest your money in your business, instead! Or if you’re not ready yet, invest in the stock market to watch your money grow.

Yes, it’s hard to get something started, but you have to take the chance! And maybe it won’t take off immediately, but that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Be patient, let your business find its footing and and follow through on things that will help you grow. Don’t expect everything to happen all at once, and don’t get discouraged — you can do it!

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/money/4-reasons-why-working-for-someone-else-wont-get-you-rich.html

Dragons' Den: James Caan's Golden Rules For Success

What Are You Waiting For ...

Love this quote from Tony Gaskins ...

"If you don't build your dream ... someone will hire you - to help build theirs !"

How Jessica Alba Proved Her Doubters Wrong ...

Even movie stars have to stare down skeptics when they're launching a company and seeking funding. Here's how Jessica Alba persevered--and wound up with a company valued at nearly $1 billion.

When actress Jessica Alba first conceived her idea to launch a line of nontoxic household and baby products in 2008, skeptics tried to push her toward the same tried and true starlet formula: "Why not just be the face of a new perfume?" A few years later, she has a pretty good answer. The Honest Company is expected to pull in more than $150 million in revenue in 2014, has a reported $1 billion valuation, and is poised to go public. Take that, Hollywood.

Jessica says ... I founded The Honest Company on this idea: Everything that touches you and your family--everything in your home--needs to be nontoxic, needs to be effective and beautiful to look at, and needs to be affordable. I really wanted it to have an e-commerce model. What are the things that all parents need? Diapers and wipes, for sure. And then a mix of cleaning and personal care products. Wouldn't it be great if you could pick five things and get them delivered through a monthly subscription?

Everyone I approached was skeptical. There wasn't one person who said, "Yeah, that can happen." I heard "Just do one thing really well and then you can expand" a lot. But I wanted this to be a whole lifestyle brand. Everyone I talked with in Hollywood could not wrap their heads around the idea. Whenever I tried to sit down with them about it, they would just get this glazed look on their faces. Entertainment is a totally different business. It's like, how do you squeeze the most out of a person for five seconds, and then you move on to the next one. It's hard for people to take anyone seriously who's never done this before. They see you only as something else. But all that just gave me fire to move forward.

I approached this guy who built the top-selling accessories brand at Macy's. We're friends, and he was trying to help me figure out how to execute on this idea. But he built his brand off of one item and then expanded. He found traditional retail partners and then opened his own stores. He didn't understand how to build this thing from scratch. Friends want to help you, but they're also going to be the most critical. We launched with 17 products. Even my husband, Cash, thought the idea was too big.

It took me three years to find my business partners. You have to be brutally honest with yourself and understand your strengths and weaknesses. I'm not a business person--I'm a mom. I wasn't going to be coding. I wasn't going to be in the lab mixing potions. (Though I do test all the products on my kids!) I wasn't going to be the one doing the business model and running the operation. If I went in there and said, "Hey, I'm going to put together this business from scratch all by myself," I'm sure it would have been a lot more difficult to get VCs to take me seriously, but once you have the right partners, it isn't. Having the right partners also means having people you like. They're all people I wouldn't mind getting stuck with at an airport for five hours. We can hang and have a beer and chat it up, or stay silent together and be totally cool with that. That's really important.

Then the team sat down with a lot of people who weren't going to invest--friends like Tory Burch and Narciso Rodriguez, both of whom built successful businesses, and people from big tech companies and public companies--to test our pitch. They asked us great questions: What are you going to do when you run out of product? What if it's not delivered on time? How are you going to get people to your website? 

With them, it didn't matter that we weren't perfect in the way we pitched Honest. It was kind of like how comedians go out and do stand up in small clubs in different cities to test their material before they do their HBO special: All of that back-and-forth helped us refine our pitch. And it got a lot shorter--we got it down to a 10-minute pitch deck and a 15-minute question-and-answer session. So then we knew we could do it in a 30-minute meeting.

Almost every VC we talked to was on their first or second child and told me their wives were doing the same research that I was, trying to find a brand they could trust. We didn't try to find investors with young families. It just happened. But in retrospect, that would have been a good tactic!

By the time we got into the room with VCs, it wasn't that hard of a sell. We went in with a real plan of attack, a strong process, and smart people. By that point we had talked to so many people, having them try to poke holes in the idea. Because that is exactly what the VCs are going to do. Inevitably, they're going to ask questions you can't answer. If you're writing down the 20th question to which you don't have an answer, that's a problem. You can say "I'll get back to you," but not more than five times.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201411/lindsay-blakely/how-jessica-alba-proved-her-doubters-were-wrong.html

10 Reasons You Should Start Your Own Blog ...

1. Blogging is Easy 

Yep. Blogging is actually really-really easy. The hardest part is setting it up but I’ve fully explained it on my homepage. If you are able to write emails, then you are also able to run a blog.

With WordPress, you don’t have to deal with any website creation or HTML that is time consuming and boring. The only thing you need to do is customize your blog with themes, add some cool plugins and write content. Once you get the grip of it, you will know exactly what to do.

2. Google Loves Blogs

When your blog is ready, Google crawls your pages and it will be listed on Google search. It means you will start receiving additional visitors from the search engines. Search engines even help to bring new people to your blog that can become your new friends or future business partners.

3. Blogging Makes You a Better Person

Having a blog will surely make you a better person. Why? Well, blogging obviously improves your writing skills as well as communication skills. You will start thinking more intentionally about who you are and who you want to become. Furthermore, when you send a job application, many employers look for employees who have blogs and write openly about their life and opinion. So it would be a definite “plus” for you.

4. Blogging Helps Other People

You can spread your information and knowledge through blogging. Heck, you can even help other people with specific problems. Let’s say you have blog about “mother care”. There are many women out there who are looking for help/solutions/ideas to raise their children. Your knowledge or advice could be essential and very helpful.

The same thing goes with any other blog topic. EVERY blog helps other people in their own way. I remember when I started to get emails saying “Thanks for providing such valuable information”. It was very heart-warming and I still remember the feeling!

5.  You Can Make Money with Blogging

You must have been heard or seen people who are making a lot of money by just blogging. Yes, it’s possible to monetize your blog. It takes time, but once you have enough readers you will start making some small, yet passive income. When time goes by, your traffic numbers will increase as well as the income. I’m not only talking about some few hundred dollars a month, many people earn their living from blogging.

I remember when I created my first blog that had almost 300 unique visitors per day at the end of the year. I spent many hours creating blog posts and adding new fresh content. I sold it for $2800 and it was my first money ever earned on the Internet or as an entrepreneur. In fact, I’m still very proud of it and that’s the point where things started for me.

6. Self-promotion and New Opportunities

When you have a blog you basically have a “tool” or a “channel” to promote yourself or make you look like an expert. You’ll be amazed how many people start to respect you and I know many cases when employers actually contact blog owner directly to offer working positions or joint venture opportunity. This will open you a lot of doors that you might have not been aware or  dreamed of.

7. Use Blogs To Stay in Touch

Active people tend to have less time to sit on Facebook or any other social “chat-room”. Again, blog can help you to keep in touch with your friends, colleagues and relatives. They can easily read everything about your activities, ideas and success through your blog. Be wise and use this as a communication tool.

8. You Can Make The World a Better Place

When you have a blog, you actually have a voice. This means you can spread out all the things you like or don’t like. And those things can help you to change the world.

You have probably seen some blog articles or posts that have gone viral through Twitter and/or Facebook. Once they do that, they will get a lot of attention. Here’s an example story how two young girls launched a blog post that helped to change their school conditions. For your information, they were only 9 and 13 at that time.

9. Blog Can Help To Grow Your Business

Does your company have a blog? If not, then you are missing a lot of it. Blogs can impart a lot of things about your company.

For example, your potential clients can read interesting stories about your company success, ideas, strategies and even new products that might turn them into regular paying customers. That’s a huge opportunity that lot a of small and big firms are not using.

10. Blogging Can Become Your Hobby

If you have too much free time and you are constantly browsing on the Web then you should really consider starting a blog.

You will soon get addicted to it (in a good way) and you will start learning a lot of things. So if you are bored right now then what are you waiting for? You will get a lot of good and new experiences, there is nothing to lose.

http://startbloggingonline.com/reasons-why-you-should-start-your-own-blog/

Dragons' Den : Duncan Bannatyne's Rules For Success