Simply Junior

When starting a small business venture, it pays off to be objective. You will need to capture your projections in a written format. These objectives are best captured in what is known as a business plan. This functions as your road map and furthermore, it helps you gauge, in the course of the venture, if you are still in the right track.

Making a business plan may be simple or difficult, depending on the nature and scope of operation of the enterprise. As you write it down, you get to capture your short term, medium term and long term goals. These goals are what help you determine whether the enterprise is realizing its dreams or not as it progresses. You also get to gauge the risks at hand and determine how to deal with them effectively.

On a larger scale, the plan helps you do a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This means that you can be able to identify where the venture is doing well, where it is failing or facing challenges, whether it has room for growth and improvement as well as whether it is likely to be at risk by operating in a given way. By so doing you will be able to determine the best course of action.

Writing a plan for your venture should be guided by a number of principles. The first one is that, it must adhere to a given outline, bearing in mind that there are many other enterprises out there coming up with such plans as well. You must also have the audience in mind. Is the plan for funding purposes or for partnership? The depth will be determined by the audience.

Nearly 1.5 Million people have taken advantage of the $8,000 tax rebate since it’s conception in January 2009. The tax credit has been available to all first time home buyers. The first time home buyer is defined as anyone who has now owned their own home for three consecutive years. Oh, one more criteria for eligibility… It must be for your primary residence which is unfortunate for investors. The credit is in the form of a tax rebate for 10% of the purchase price of the home, up to a total of $8,000. One of the great benefits of the tax rebate is that is FULLY refundable to the buyer. For instance if the first time home buyer owed no taxes on their taxes, then the first time home buyer can amend their tax return and capture the full $8,000.

The tax rebate has helped improve the national home sales. The current tax rebate is set to expire on November 30, 2009. This means that the purchase must be fully closed and completed in order to qualify. It typically takes approximately 30 days to close on a home transaction with conventional bank financing. The point is that in order to be confident your purchase will qualify you should plan to be under contract to purchase your home by November 1, 2009. If you are trying to capture the $8,000 tax rebate and have not yet put your home under contract or you dont qualify for conventional financing then you need to consider finding an alternate approach. One alternate approach is to find seller financing. If the seller is providing the financing and you do not need to wait the typical 30 days for bank financing, then you can still close by December 1, 2009 without many challenges.

What about the possibility of extending the rebate past December 1, 2009? There are currently several bills in Congress that would allow the extension. Each of the bills in Congress provide alternate solutions toward the extension. Of course there is a lot of politics involved in completing the extension, from all poitical parties. Here is a brief summary of the extensions:

S1230: Senator Johnny Isakson introduced Senate Bill 1230 in June. The Bill proposes a tax credit up to $15,000 that can be split over 2 year for everyone who purchases a home for their personal residence.

HR 2619: This one proposes to extend the existing $8,000 tax credit to July 1, 2010 and adds provisions for a tax credit of up to $3,000 for homeowners who refinance. This would certainly create a ton of refinances. Is this part of the recent mortgage issue? Many Americans seem to use their home equity as an ATM machine, pulling it out and spending it. I guess that would potentially help spur the ecomony in the short term.

HR 2801 – Similar to S1230 but it extends benefits to January 1, 2011.

Several key politicians are publicly making comments about getting the extension approved by early November. Those making positive comments include Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. They are hoping to extend the rebate along with unemployment benefits at the same time.

One thing for sure is our current Government is committed to spending an unlimited amount to try and stimulate our economy. Our Leaders appear to be committed to short term gains at the expense of future generations. That said, extending the first time home buyer credit will certainly help encourage American’s to own their own home.

Many people in dead end jobs constantly dream of owning a small business. Few people actually end up realizing their dreams. This is because most of the times you really want to start your own business but you let obstacles convince you that you can’t make it. What people do not realize is that having the idea is not enough, you have to be willing to take a chance. Besides this, you have to believe that your idea will change the consumer world.

When you procrastinate, your idea will either fade or be snatched up by someone else. There will always be challenges in whatever you try and do. For example you may have adequate capital, but no knowledge of how to operate the business. So when you finally feel that you are ready to run your own business, you have to be ready to make many sacrifices. Your time no longer belongs to you. You have to input as much of it as possible so that you can be in a position to know the basic workings of the business. You have to be there full time for the business to take off and for you to see your dream turn into a reality.

When you own your business, all the decisions that you make lie squarely on your shoulders. So you have to be ready and take the necessary risks with the best intention for your business in mind. There are tough decisions to be made especially when it comes to hiring and firing employees, ranking of bills etc.

You also have to know how you will market your products or services. If you are faced with massive debts you will have to be sure that the decision you make can save your small business from shutting down.

I regularly interview small and solo business owners who call my coaching company looking for help. After getting a sense of what their business is all about, what their biggest goals are, and what lifestyle they are trying to create, I ask them what their biggest challenges are.

Nine times out of ten, it’s getting more clients and the problem is marketing. Most work very hard at trying to get one client at a time. They try many different small business marketing methods that they’ve heard about or which they’ve seen their competitors use. In other words, a little of this and a little of that. The results are inevitably mediocre. It’s easy to get discouraged when you know you have a great skill or talent to offer the world and yet no one is listening to what you have to say.

The mistake made by the majority of early stage small or solo businesses, and even some who have been around for years, is to do what I call “shot in the dark marketing”. This is like playing darts with a blindfold on and being convinced that you’ll hit the bull’s eye. You may occasionally do so, but you’ll do it rarely. The same is true if you are an entrepreneur who has not mastered marketing.

I bet you’re great at what you do. But, are you also great at building and running a business? These are two separate and distinct skill sets and both are crucial to your success. When it comes to small business marketing, the real truth is that people who are marketing masters can make money even with mediocre products, yet many people with excellent products and services fail because they haven’t mastered marketing. If no one knows you exist how can you expect to get lots of clients and make a great income?

Here are some tips on what you need to think about in order to begin to master marketing:

Do Research

It’s a mistake to decide what you want to sell, create a product and then try to find some people who need it and are willing to pay you for it. Instead use the Internet to find out what people are searching for within your area of expertise and to research what and how your top competitors are selling. Also figure out where your prospects congregate online or offline so you know where you can reach them with your marketing.

Create a Marketing Design

This is a detailed plan that locks in what marketing activities you’ll pursue and how you’ll measure and track the results to know if those activities are working. Make a list of all the different ways you could generate leads both online and offline. Then pick only those that will focus on your target market. For example, join social media groups that attract your target market, mail marketing materials, postcards and brochures only to your target market. The same applies to print ads and sales calls. Don’t waste time on broad groups of people, but on the type of person who you know would buy your type of product or service.

Then pick three activities from the list and get started. You most definitely need at least one of them to include online marketing, either. That’s why I teach my online lead generation system. You can use a variety of methods such as article marketing, video marketing, blogging and social media to organically generate traffic. You can also use search engine optimization and pay per click advertising to generate search leads.

Follow Your Plan

Stick to your plan and see what works. Give it a bit of time, then focus tightly on what works and get rid of the rest. Don’t waste time, for example, going to networking meetings just because you like the people when you’re not connecting with potential clients or referral sources. Your time is limited so use it wisely.

Outsource

Why do $15 an hour tasks when you can outsource them and spend your time being the strategist and servicing clients? As soon as you outsource rote marketing tasks, you’ll find they get done more quickly and consistently and you’ll start generating a steady, reliable stream of qualified leads.

Follow Up

Once someone is on your mailing list or has called your company, have a follow up system ready to go into action so you don’t miss out on closing sales with people who are ready and willing to work with you!

Transform your small business marketing from lackluster to powerful!

In an industry like real estate, where being an agent is an unsalaried position and the business experiences so much turnover, which broker you choose to hang your license with becomes an important consideration for your career.

A vital part of your success will depend on your broker and your broker has a responsibility to support your growth and profitability, so that you will do well. Choosing the right broker involves more than supplying leads, or offering the best commission splits and lowest desk fees!

We encourage you to speak to our agents and see that our environment enables you to make real money! Realizing you made the best decision gives you peace of mind. It is important that a broker understands that it’s comforting to know you’ll have support when you need it, in addition to technology, and a market presence with a broker that the public wants to do business with!

For new agents, the industry poses many challenges. Almost 85 percent of new real estate agents “drop out” after less than one year in the business, and 15 percent of the remaining don’t renew their licenses. We want to make sure you’re not one of these statistics. Successful real estate agents are self-starters and go-getters. The beginning of a real estate career often involves lots of rejection. But it’s only temporary. As a real estate agent, you are more than a person who shows properties, you become a trusted advisor and your clients look to you for your knowledge and expertise. Buying a home is the most expensive (for most people) transaction of their lives.