All posts in July 2018

The Pros And Cons Of Medium And Large Business Coaching Firms

By blogger on

Business coaching is essentially about making a meaningful difference to a business by helping business owners to achieve their goals and overcome their weaknesses. It is all about polishing their skills and helping them understand their own potential. Business coaching is something that can be practically applied to any industry and at any level of employment. This growing need for business coaching is responsible for making coaching industry as big and competitive as it is today. Business coaching provides excellent career opportunities to those who believe that teaching is their forte and who have profound understanding of the sensitive business needs of diverse businesses.

While some people prefer to set up their own coaching practice, others choose to become a part of well-established boutique (medium sized coaching service providers) or a large business coaching firm, to impart their coaching skills to business communities. Just like a solo business coaching practice, medium and large business coaching firms also have their own set of pros and cons. If you are an expert business coach and are planning to provide coaching services through a medium or large business coaching firm, make sure that you quickly go through the pros and cons mentioned below:

Pros

Working with reputed business coaching firms has several benefits and can be a rewarding career prospect for many. When you work solo, there is a danger of professional isolation that may stop you from learning new skills that are required for survival in this highly competitive coaching market. However, when you work with moderate sized or large firms, you are a part of a highly motivated coaching culture and you are constantly updated about the latest developments in your field. The firm as a whole adapts to the changing demands of diverse businesses and develops new strategies to address these demands.

As a result, you will always learn new survival strategies to sustain fierce competition and stay ahead, in spite of the growing challenges. Being associated with a large organization, your market value is higher. In addition, teamwork enhances your productivity as well as creativity, contrary to solo practice where you have to rely only on your ideas and efforts. Large firms usually have a broad network and a list of influential clients providing excellent growth opportunities for deserving candidates. Clients, especially big companies prefer to hire the services of established firms, as they are usually very professional and maintain confidentiality about business information.

Cons

Some clients feel that large firms may not provide personalized services that solo coaches offer. When working for boutiques or large firms, you wont get the freedom to implement your ideas and may often have to seek prior approval from your seniors before going ahead with a business strategy. Being a part of a large team of professionals, your ideas and strategies may be replaced by those of others, leading to lack of morale and low performance. There is also a strong chance that your performance may not be noticed and you may get lost in the crowd.

How To Select The Best Residual Income Business Opportunity

By blogger on

A lot of people are actively looking for a lucrative residual income business opportunity, but they make critical mistakes. Heres how you can avoid those costly errors. The 3 key main factors to consider are:

1) the amount of monthly income generated
2) the amount of resources required to create that stream of residual income
3) the duration of the income, including whether or not the amount of income increases or decreases over time.

Most people make the error of, first, being introduced to a company and then, second, trying to see if it is a good residual income business opportunity. They fall into the proverbial trap of not being able to see the forest for the trees. They find the tree first, without knowing what kind of forest it is in. A better approach is to identify the ideal forest first, and then look for the best tree in that forest, second. Giant Sequoias are much much taller than pine trees, but you wouldnt see that if you only look in pine forests.

The kind of forest to look in for the absolute best residual income business opportunity is NOT that of the employee or the self employed. This includes traditional work-from-home businesses. In addition, some people think that network marketing is a good forest to look in, but there is so much competition in network marketing, both in selling products and in recruiting a downline, that the return on your efforts is almost guaranteed to be low. That is how micro-economics works: high competition = low margins of return. If you are looking for the absolute best residual income business opportunity, the proper forest to look in is that of the investor.

As an investor, you are able to leverage other peoples time and other peoples money, while retaining control. You dont have to sell any products or services in the midst of fierce competition. The amount of income created is directly related to the rate of return you are able to generate. You can even hire high-performing professional traders to do the active investing for you, on a pay for performance basis, so that you dont have learn how to become a full-time trader yourself. The amount of personal resources involved can be minimal, especially if you are using other peoples money. The most valuable resource is specialized knowledge, which can be learned, from the right source. And the duration of income can be multi-generational, recession proof, and increasing every year, due to the power of compounding returns.

One excellent, yet relatively unknown source for gaining the specialized knowledge, and careful guidance on how to apply it correctly, is The Financial Freedom Foundation. They are a non-profit organization dedicated to showing people how to become financially independent. With the resources they provide, you can grow your own personal forest of Giant Sequoia sized money trees with $100 dollar bills coming off of each branch, for you to use at your convenience. Theyll show you how to create up to $100K residual income within 12 months, and give you the knowledge of how to grow that to over $1M per year, within 5 to 10 years all this using other peoples time, talents, and money. That is the absolute best residual income business opportunity around. They even have a FREE REPORT that you can download from their website, to get an inside peek as to how you can do it yourself.

Ways To Finance Your Vending Machine Business

By blogger on

When starting a business, theres that one big wall that block your way, and thats your startup money. Without money to fund your business, there will be no business at all. So how and where can you get money? Read on to get some ideas on where you can find funding sources for your vending business:

Home Equity Loan
Most people immediately think of getting a standard business loan when thinking of financing a home business or business startup. While this may be appropriate, do not fail to consider using your home as a bank.

Small Business Administration Loan
Banks administer this loan and are more favorable to this type than a standard bank loan because they are only liable for 15% of what they loan (the government carries the other 85%). There are a number of types of documentation required with this loan, but it is certainly worth the trouble if you are willing to follow the process.

Standard Bank Financing
This financial source is probably the most difficult, yet not impossible with good credit and some net worth. Banks typically do not look favorably at vending machine loans and consider them risky because they are not considered a fixed asset.

Invest Your Tax Return Money
For a lot of people, April 15th is bonus time every year as they receive tax returns with earned income credit and deductions for kids. You can use this to slowly build your vending business. Its a great, safer way to build your business.

Family Loan
In some cases, a family member may be favorable to loaning you the money for starting your home-based business. While there may be relationship risks to this setup, it needs to be considered as an alternative to standard business financing. Some family members would rather invest in your business vision and draw a little interest rather than lending it to a bank at 2-3%.

Sell Items You Dont Need
If you badly need to create an income steam, opt for this least popular fund source. How about downsizing your car and investing the money in machines? Why not have a huge yard sale to raise $500-$1000? Why dont you downsize your home and invest your profits in the business? All of us have some money around us in our life that we could put to work.

Lease Purchasing
An option to getting into the vending business is to make an offer to buy an established vending route by lease-purchasing. You agree to lease the route from the seller with an option to buy at the end of the lease period. You invest your profits from the lease period into the purchase of the business or you can continue leasing for the cash flow you are receiving. Remember to get legal help in setting up any contractual agreement like this.

Owner Financing
Not that always easy to find but dont let it stop your from asking the seller of a vending route for it, especially if you have some money to put down.

Identifying Your Business Team Member’s Personality Colors

By blogger on

Being a business team leader can be a very daunting task. Almost always you will find that your team consists of very diverse individuals. As a team leader it is your responsibility to motivate your team members towards a common goal. This can be very difficult when your team members each have their very own strengths, weaknesses and conflicts. In this article we will discuss how to recognize the four main personality types by color so that you can better understand the needs of your team members on an individual basis.

As a leader you will quickly notice how well your team works together once you have identified the individual strengths of each team member. Also, by recognizing each individual’s strengths you will know which task they will naturally excel in. This will lead to better delegation on your part which will ultimately build a stronger, more efficient, stream lined team. You will also find that you are able to communicate better once you recognize each team member’s needs, work ethics and values. Your team members will notice the change in how you are leading them and in turn be even more motivated to reach their goals.

Below is a short overview of the four main personality colors Orange, Blue, Gold and Green. Each color will be listed with the working styles, personality types and values attributed to it.

The Orange personality works well with other people in a healthy team work environment encouraging competition and camaraderie. They are very creative and highly energetic and do well with action oriented tasks. They love having the freedom to use their skills and show off their abilities. An Orange personality does have a difficult time dealing with too much structure or management. They tend to feel blocked and have a difficult time functioning if they feel they are being micro-managed. Time consuming and prolonged administrative tasks can difficult for the Orange where they may feel impatient and bored.

The Blue personality is a very social type. They love making friends and having a strong social network is very important to them. This makes them very good at building relationships with clients, customers, coworkers and employers. The Blue personality can be very sensitive to conflicts or strong competition but will thrive in any positive, service orientated atmosphere.

The Gold personality is a very serious individual and is so with their work responsibilities. They like to be part of a successful and productive team where they can continually contribute. They love receiving rewards, incentives and positive recognition. The Gold personality tends to need a great deal of structure where time lines should be enforced and expectations made very clear. They look to their leaders for constant reassurance on how well they are doing.

A Green personality lacks in people skills. They love facts, data, research, and anything analytical. You will find that they are almost always seen as an expert in whatever interests them. Most of those interests will be complex systems, data analysis, statistics, or design. The Green personality’s weakness can be the lack of follow through and tend to be quite rude in some social scenes.

By recognizing the personality colors of each of your team members you will have the ability to meld your team into a well coordinated, unified group. Your leadership skills will shine as you delegate tasks to each team member according to their strengths and expertise. Remember, a well harmonized team is a team made for nothing but success.

Carrie Krishnek

Rosy Business 5 Top Secrets To A Successful Business

By blogger on

Much has been written about the attainment of rosy status for businesses, however many business related personnel have never heard the business management consultants phrase of rosy business.

In its basic format, this phrase is consultancy jargon for a newly developed business, or one which has been trading for typically less than 3 years. A business which has obviously survived the very high percentage of failed businesses rate, and has attained some level of business growth.

Typically in relation to business development, business consultancy firms and many an individual business consultant suggest that a rosy business generally finds itself positioned very firmly at the financial tipping point.

Most businesses blocked at the tipping point generally seek outsourced consultancy expertise to drive their business into exponential business growth.

Historically most businesses strive for rapid growth in sales and profitability and therefore continuously looks for business development and growth opportunities. With the availability of resources such as the Internet, the world has literally shrunk into a global village and businesses have a tremendous potential to market their products to the entire world.

However, in order to succeed, every business organization needs to ensure that business performance parameters which reflect the overall condition of the business are healthy or rosy in other words. Rosy business top 5 secrets to a successful business outlines this concept.

Many small and medium business enterprises today have an opportunity of working with large global business corporations which select their suppliers and business partners based on various business parameters which reflect the true picture of the business.

Being a rosy business is all about maintaining healthy business parameters like financials, employee satisfaction, quality certifications and quality performance, commitment to protection of environment, safety etc.

It is necessary that the business organization is capable of demonstrating its commitments and efforts on all these fronts to its client organizations. Only those businesses that demonstrate their ability and commitment to maintaining healthy business parameters and continuous improvements in all business areas will succeed in growing their businesses.

A large number of business organizations engage the services of business management consultants for strategic business consultancy improvement initiatives and also get their management teams to go through different business training courses to ensure their teams remain well updated.

Business consultancy firms provide vital inputs to business organizations in many different areas such as product and process quality improvement plans, lean manufacturing, lean supply chains and other important business functions. Many business consultancy firms place increased emphasis on continuous improvements and process reengineering which has helped many small and large business corporations improve their business parameters to the levels comparable with those of the top world class corporations.

Rosy Business Top 5 Secrets To A Successful Business #1 Business Vision

Most business consultancy firms and business management consultants suggest that without a business vision it is unlikely that the business would have achieved rosy status in the first place.

Irrespective of the prior business vision, it is wise to understand that if you have contracted an outsourced business consultant because you find your business is blocked at the financial tipping point, then you need proven business development and successful business management skills.

One of the first things a proven growth consultancy specialist will outline is that the original thinking which got your business to where it is today is unlikely to be the same thinking to grow your business beyond the financial tipping point. One aspect to be considered for your senior staff is the provision of business training courses.

Rosy Business Top 5 Secrets To A Successful Business #2 Business Growth

Any aspect of business development and business growth is a major undertaking and one which should only be implemented after serious research and consultancy advice from one of the proven business consultancy firms.

Not every business consultant is skilled in achieving business growth and the successful business management skills required to manage that growth.

Many professional business management consultants advocate that every member of the business team attend business training courses directly related to the business growth strategies planned for the business.

Rosy Business Top 5 Secrets To A Successful Business #3 Business Development

The provision of business training courses and the participation of every employee in the business, grants a bottom up, top down insight into the businesses new growth vision.

Business consultancy firms and business management consultants understand the difficulties of business development and the subsequent issues involved in successful business management.

Every business consultant providing business development consultancy knows that one of the most difficult aspects of taking a rosy business into a truly successful business is the change factor.

Many directors and employees find change very difficult to cope with. This is widely accepted in Business consultancy firms as taking people out of their comfort zone is always problematic.

Rosy Business Top 5 Secrets To A Successful Business #4 Business Training Courses

Many business owners wince when business consultancy firms or business management consultants recommend business training courses. A number of small to medium business managing directors feel there is no need for business training courses, because they have personally never attended any business related training programmes themselves.

This is often a huge barrier to business development and company growth for a business consultant who likely knows that approximately 97% of all small to medium size business managing directors have received no business, or no academic business management training.

Many of these MD’s feel threatened by the fact that their workforce may become more qualified than them. Consultancy may map out your strategic business growth plan, but without providing professional industry specific business training courses they may be unable to provide ongoing successful business management.

Rosy Business Top 5 Secrets To A Successful Business #5 Successful Business Management

It’s a fact that it is no use outsourcing the best business consultancy firms or contracting the finest business management consultants who deliver the most professional business training courses to kick start your business development if your business does not retain a proven business consultant to implement successful business management strategies to ensure long term sustainable business growth.

Although consultancy is a great help in achieving business growth beyond the financial tipping point it is no substitute for having a proven expert nurturing your successful business management.

Think of building the world’s greatest ever cruise liner, investing millions of pounds in the research, planning construction, fitting out and staffing the liner. Then stocking up on food and drink required for high fee paying customers, and then sourcing these customers.

And finally after years of hard work and millions and millions of pounds the harbour master pilots the ship out of the harbour and then hands over control to a captain who has never sailed a ship before. It’s clearly a plan that is pre-programmed for failure; in fact it’s almost one of Titanic proportions.