Four Steps to Entrepreneurship

Becoming an Entrepreneur: Four Steps to Entrepreneurship


As more and more people start or consider starting their own business, it is important that they understand the core steps that are required to launch successful ventures. These steps include spotting, assessing, selecting and executing upon opportunities.

Spotting Opportunities:
The first step to entrepreneurship is identifying opportunities. The entrepreneur must be able to spot an unmet need. Oftentimes this need is seen through an inefficiency in the market - something that doesn't work quite the way the entrepreneur would like it to. As a result, the entrepreneur figures out a potential solution and the opportunity is born.

Assessing Opportunities:
Many entrepreneurs keep a journal that details the myriad of opportunities they come across each day. While it takes a creative skill set to identify opportunities, it takes an analytical skill set to assess them. Each opportunity should be assessed to, among others, determine its likelihood of success and the financial and human resources required to execute upon it.

Why Become an Entrepreneur?

Why Become an Entrepreneur?

What leads a person to strike out on his own and start a business? Perhaps a person has been laid off once or more. Sometimes a person is frustrated with his or her current job and doesn't see any better career prospects on the horizon. Sometimes a person realizes that his or her job is in jeopardy. A firm may be contemplating cutbacks that could end a job or limit career or salary prospects. Perhaps a person already has been passed over for promotion. Perhaps a person sees no opportunities in existing businesses for someone with his or her interests and skills.

Some people are actually repulsed by the idea of working for someone else. They object to a system where reward is often based on seniority rather than accomplishment, or where they have to conform to a corporate culture.

One Industry Solves its Healthcare Crisis--Will Yours?

By: Carol Tice
 
With national healthcare reform  a done deal, it's interesting to see how some industries are moving to solve the problem now instead of waiting until 2014. Last week, the restaurant industry made its bold move--the National Restaurant Association announced a partnership with United Health Group that will allow independent, small-restaurant owners to offer their workers affordable health insurance.

Obviously, we'll have to wait and see if restaurant owners bite on this offer. But 13 million people in the industry currently have no coverage, and the Restaurant Health Care Alliance, as the initiative has been dubbed, could ensure as many as six million of them, Nation's Restaurant News reports. It could be a game-changer for the whole restaurant industry, vaulting it out of the ranks of industries with the lowest rates of insured workers offering this benefit.

Motivating Gen X, Gen Y Workers

A primer on how to get the most out of younger employees
By David Javitch

Traditional approaches to motivating employees have hit a snag; they don't seem to apply to the contemporary generation of employees, called Generation X and Generation Y (or Millenials).

Who Are the Generation Xers?Most writers agree that these approximately 50 million people were born between the mid 1960s and 1980--the offspring of the famous baby boomers. Many grew up as "latch key" kids, home alone after school while both of their parents worked, and/or they were raised by a single parent.

They saw their parents married to the workplace, often devoting long hours to factories, the office or on the road. Their parents sacrificed time at home with their families. In the economic downturn of the 1980s, many of these hard workers lost their jobs.

The result? The Gen X or Y kids learned to become more pragmatic and were often disillusioned with the lack of work/life balance in their home. In addition, they often looked askance at the lack of loyalty by employers to their employees.

Motivating Gen XersSo how does this information translate into working with and motivating this group of employees? Smart employers will need to recognize those characteristics mentioned above and provide some of the following:

1. Room to grow. Offer Gen X employees clear statements of goals, but allow them reasonable latitude on how to achieve those goals. Build on their interest in gaining new skills and knowledge by providing opportunities to grow on the job. Gen Xers tend to have a "work hard, play hard" mentality.
2. Opportunities to make choices. Since this generation has become accustomed to "fending for themselves," provide options--options for task selection, options for challenges, options to formulate new processes, and options to develop creative yet appropriate conclusions. You also want to allow them the freedom to use their own resourcefulness and creativity to achieve success.
3. Mentoring. Strong, relationship-oriented mentorships are a great value for young employees. Be careful not to micro-manage them or suggest rigid guidelines for completing projects. Spend time with them and offer clear and frequent feedback on their progress.
   

Top Secret: Get Your E-mail Opened

When it comes to e-mail marketing, it's all about the subject line. Make the most of yours.  

source by: www.entrepreneur.com

As the economy continues along its unsteady path, many small-business owners have been asking me what they can do to keep their businesses financially healthy over the coming months.

I recommend you start by leveraging the tools you already have, and making sure you're using them as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Take your e-mail marketing, for instance. When you stay in touch with your regular customers and subscribers--and send them valuable information--they'll view you as a credible resource, an expert in your field, and most important, someone who's watching out for their best interests.

And they'll reward you with their loyalty (and continued purchases).

But first you have to get those e-mails opened.

With floods of e-mail arriving every hour, most people are ruthless about deleting anything they even suspect won't interest them. Not only that, they're also just as likely to report unwanted e-mails as spam as they are to delete them. So if you're not writing compelling subject lines that get the e-mails opened, all your hard work is lost.

How to jump in the World Entrepreneur

Are you willing and want to jump in the business world, now or later? The answer must be willing and wants. It seems the answer was enough to force you to start thinking about these phenomena. 

If you are working on others, it is good if you are considering to continue his career to the top. But as a worker, you also must be retired. 

If you follow the pattern and flow of normal retirement and natural, then know that when you retire, you are also basically retired from all employers, not just from your current employer. Moreover, if the pattern of "normal" and "natural" is closely related to the productive age. 

It would be quite difficult for you, after retirement at age 30, 40, or even 50 years, finding an employer who will hire you. And very likely, you'll get bored with myself once again work for someone else. 

What is certain is that, you certainly do not want to die immediately after retirement. Time is your age may still be 10, 20, or even 50 years as well. 

So, like it or not, want not want to, you should also start thinking about the jump in the entrepreneur world, either as soon as possible, or soon after you retire. 

I then tried to think a little deeper, and here is what I can find about the types of entrepreneurs who started the world's entrepreneurship.

Top Ten Tips: How To Keep Your Job In Today's Economy

From Chris Kalaboukis
source from http://entrepreneurs.about.com

If you've got a job working for someone else, and want to keep that job, here are ten essential techniques which you absolutely must follow in order to keep your job today:

1. Don't Excel
If you excel at your job, you'll get noticed. Your co-workers will notice that you are doing well and start talking to the boss about it. They'll gang up on you to try and take you down. They'll look for some evidence which poses you in some negative light, and use it as an excuse to get rid of you. Any excuse works in this climate. So don't excel. Excellence makes you different, and "difference" is a negative. Don't be different.

2. Don't Do Poorly
Don't let yourself slack off in any way either. They will use any excuse in a change in your job habits in order to red circle your position. Don't give them any kind of excuse. However, make sure that you also always follow rule one: don't do any more or less that what is expected of you, if you do you'll stick out, and that's the last thing you need right now. Keep on steaming at that exact same clip; don't vary your speed in any way.

The Entrepreneur's Dictionary of Humor

source from www.powerstream.com

A is for Alligator Farm. Why should Aunt Annie have all the fun? There are thousands of cowboys in Utah needing alligator boots, and no gatorculture in a 2000 mile radius. A great opportunity for someone who likes to work with state government. After all, if the state can stock Strawberry Reservoir with salmon, why can't you stock Utah Lake with lizards? And harvesting would be just about as easy as trolling with a poodle!
B is for banker. There is a pervasive myth that bankers can only say "no." In reality bankers are an important part of the entrepreneur's world and often say "yes." A simple experiment will prove the myth a lie. Just go in to your local loan officer and ask him if he thinks raising alligators in Utah Lake is loony. If he is too shy to say "yes" you will still be able to clearly read the "yes" behind his big friendly smile.