Business Corner

As a business owner, you would want to reach as many potential customers as you can. This will help you ensure that you achieve your bottom line effectively. However, it is not always easy communicating with people. There are some who won’t understand your message easily, and others who will repel your message. If you want to make sure that people read your message, you have to make sure you make use of the right marketing material.

The biggest question now is which material you should use. You can basically use any material you desire as long as it is appropriate to your business and your need. One good material to invest in is the poster. Poster printing is among the low cost materials that you can invest in that will help you get your message to your target audience. It’s not a new material so you can easily create it on your own.

Over the years, posters have gone through changes and improvements. With the advancements in technology, it is now easy to create high quality and unique custom posters. Of course, the design of your material will still depend on your business. The design elements you incorporate will depend on the message you want to convey to your customers and prospects. For instance, the color you choose has to express your business image impressively. You have plenty of choices in colors. It is best if you understand the meaning behind each color first. This way you can effectively pick the color more appropriate to your material.

If you intend to incorporate images on your design, you can either choose one big image or put two or three small images. Make sure you don’t overcrowd you design with too many images otherwise your message will only get too confusing. It is essential that the image you use reflects best your message and business identity.  Read more... (549 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)

Do you find that some of your best creative ideas are ones where you just wing it? I have also had some real creative stinkers because I failed to make some sort of a plan. It is these not-so-brilliant outcomes that I want to discuss.

What would be no-big-deal from anyone else’s point of view seems to be huge to my Blockhead; my all-knowing-bossy-expert-on-all-things-Diana internal-critic is named Blockhead and is alive and well, thank you very much.

I’m guessing you have a Blockhead too who loves to confront your small and not so small disappointments such as:

• Not doing what you said you’d do
• Not starting or completing a project like you’d planned
• A project not turning out like you’d hoped

This list could go on and on.

It takes an amazing amount of energy to live with disappointment, guilt, regret, self-recrimination, and grief that it is no wonder we don’t do our art or resist doing what we love. If you have to run the gauntlet of these feelings before you can resume your work, how can you expect to physically and mentally make yourself move forward?

I say, we need a daily forgiveness ritual.

• Goofed off yesterday? Forgive yourself!
• Left the cap off the tube of paint? Let it go!
• Didn’t finish your e-book? Grant yourself a pardon! (You deserve to live!)

Do you know that sound of the needle being pulled across a record to stop the music?I can hear it right now as the thought of forgiveness brings my idea to a screeching halt.

Blockhead says: “You are letting yourself off the hook. You are tolerating bad behavior. You’ll never create anything if you don’t hold yourself accountable.”  Read more... (495 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

When meeting with a bride to discuss your wedding planning services, she may mention to you that she has met with another planner who offers the same services at a cheaper price. This is not unusual, bridal magazines and do-it-yourself wedding planning books suggest brides comparison shop and negotiate with wedding vendors to get lower rates. Your task is to get the bride focused on the benefits of your high-quality professional services and away from price comparisons.

Here are the Do’s and Don’ts of answering questions from brides who are comparison shopping:

DO’s

Do stay calm
Today everyone wants to negotiate to get a good deal so don’t feel defensive or intimidated.

Do have a discussion with the bride
Services can appear to be the same but, in reality, can differ from wedding planner to wedding planner. Suggest to the bride that she tell you about her wedding vision so you can determine the services she needs before you can discuss pricing.

Do make sure you always talk about the benefits of your services
Wedding planners often have websites that list services without their benefits or information about the planner’s expertise in executing those services. As a result, a lot of planners look the same to a bride. Make sure you emphasize your benefits and highlight your unique abilities on your website and in your marketing materials so brides are clear about how you are different.

DON’Ts

Don’t automatically lower your rates
No matter how much you want a client, don’t drop your prices just because someone asks you to do so. You deserve to be paid what you are worth. Besides, dropping them immediately will make it seem like your prices were indeed inflated. Get the bride away from a price discussion and into a discussion about the services she needs and the benefits of hiring you.  Read more... (455 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Just imagine writing a short book once and being able to sell it over and over again. Could this money-making phenomena really be true.

U-bet-cha! One of the easiest ways to make money from home is by writing eBooks and selling them online. Once you have written your eBook, there is no limit to how many times you can sell it.

Because you don’t need to print your book, there are very few costs associated with publishing an eBook. You will need a program to convert it into a digital program, but those can be found for free. If you don’t have any graphic design talent, you might want to hire a designer to create a cover for you. But that isn’t really necessary either. All you need is some good information to share with your readers.

So, you say you couldn’t possibly write an eBook? Maybe you never did pass english in school and since then you’ve been afraid to let anyone read what you write. I have good news for you… writing for the internet is a lot different from the kind of writing you did in school.

When you’re writing for the internet, you just have to write like you talk. As if you’re sitting down with a friend, or someone who’s really interested in your topic. Then write/type exactly what you would normally say, only the more detail the better. Another great program to assist you in writing your book is Dragon Naturally Speaking. With Dragon there is no writing, and no typing. So if you’re like me and have good information but cannot spell good, Dragon will have you writing like a pro.  Read more... (542 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

If you are in the process of applying for different jobs, you can use a professional CV template to create effective resumes. Most often, you would have a standard set of information to which you would make minor modifications to fine-tune the resume for each particular job. At times like this, it makes sense to use a CV template to create slightly different versions of the resume suited to each particular job.

Here are 4 benefits of using a professional CV template:

1. Provides a Unique Look to your resume

Most candidates applying for jobs use free resume templates that they download from the Internet. Although they would be able to create a neat-looking resume with a template, their resumes would look almost identical to most other resumes made with similar design aids. However, when you use a professional CV template, your resumes will not only look professional, but also unique and eye-catching.

2. Creates a professional-looking resume

Your resume is the very first impression your recruiter gets about you. You need to ensure that the appearance of the resume makes a positive impact in their mind. When you use a well-designed CV template, your resume will have the same professional design and layout of the template. Even if you do not possess design skills, you will still be able to create a truly professional resume using a CV template.

3. Saves time

Creating a resume manually could be quite a time-consuming process. Moreover, when you are applying for a number of jobs, this could involve a lot of time and effort. You can use a CV template to considerably shorten the time it takes to create each resume. When you save more time, you can use it to focus more on the content of the CV and improving it to make a better impact on your prospective employers.  Read more... (454 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Marketing experts recommend using several marketing pieces in your marketing mix. If you intent to do online marketing, you might want to include traditional pieces as well. In doing so, you get better chance of reaching out to your existing and potential customers. Sure, you are familiar with social media, email marketing, and instant messaging, that’s why you have been easily adapted it to your marketing campaign. But among the traditional marketing collaterals, which should suit best with your business? Which should you invest in which will give you the best return on investment?

There are plenty of choices in traditional marketing pieces, but if you want a material that will subtly promote your brand to your target customers what you need is the brochure. Brochure printing is an easy job to do that will allow you to get in touch with your target customers without looking too pushy. It is designed to present an overview of your business to people to give them an idea on the products or services you offer.

A well designed brochure should bring you sales and inquiries, but if you haven’t got any call for quite a while after distributing your material, there could be something wrong with it. Perhaps you need to change or improve it so it will pull the result that you want. To help you do that, here are key pointers you can follow:

1) Look at your competitions. Check out the brochure of your competitions. This will help you come up with brochure templates that will look different from them. You can create a message, design, and look that will make you stand out and be more noticeable to your target audience.  Read more... (569 words, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

There are plenty of ways you can raise your creativity levels. However the one way that everyone forgets is one of the most simple. Reading. I am a voracious reader (most creative people are) reading on average a book and a half a day. For me it is a habit I developed when I was very young. I believe that this habit has vastly increased my creativity and turned me into the “ideas person” I am today.

Why do I believe this?

When you begin reading regardless of whether it is fiction or nonfiction you are automatically using your imagination turning the words into pictures and other things. You are training your imagination to visualise, smell, feel and to grasp new ideas. Reading is like a workout for your mind! For me reading has also taught me to focus and more importantly it is one of the best ways I know to induce the flow state. The flow state is where everything becomes effortless and automatic and you are totally immersed. I tend to get into a rythym with my reading in terms of breathing and turning pages and these two things induce the flow state which is ideal for creativity. The flow state also increases you receptivity which in this case is important.

Whatever book you sit down to read you are basically taking in their ideas. Its very very rare that we come up with ideas without input from others whether we realise it or not. The ideas you read about will brew in your mind and combine with your own to come up with new ones. This will snowball and you will have even more ideas.  Read more... (546 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Many people assume that they can buy a business that is failing for a very cheap price and with a lot of hard work and luck, turn it into a profit making company. The failure rate for startup businesses is on average about 55 percent the last few years according to the Small Business Administration. The failure rate according to many business experts is more like 80 percent for those who decide that buying an established business with the hopes of turning it around and making a profit.

Why You Should Buy a Profitable Business

The obvious reason to buy a profitable business is that you as the owner will realize a positive cash flow from the very first day you take ownership. Owning a profitable business offers the owner a couple of things. First, a business making money usually has an established reputation worth its weight in gold. Second, sometimes you can find an owner who is willing to finance your deal on a profitable business.

How to Buy a Business Making Money

Before your sign the papers and buy what you hope is a profitable business you need to do some research.  Read more... (513 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

1. No matter how this business might be presented to you for sale, make sure that it has been making money for at least the last five years.

2. You shouldn’t buy a business that is netting under a $100,000 annually in pretax cash flow. Less than $100,000 in cash flow is just too small a business to be worth your time and energy.

3. Your research concerning finding a profitable company to buy should include knowing if they have a competitive advantage over their rivals. You need to verify that this money making business you are considering buying is offering something unique to their customers in their industry.

There are a lot of people who are interested in promoting their first ebook, but they are not really sure how to go about the process in a cost-effective manner. What follows are four ways that you can promote your ebook for free.

1) Give Away Review Copies To Professional Reviewers

There are a lot of people who are in the business of reviewing ebooks. In other words, they are sent copies of various ebooks and they then proceed to read through them and to post honest reviews that are relied upon by others to make decisions about what particular ebook they may choose to purchase next. It is to your benefit to get your ebook in the hands of as many influential reviewers as possible.

2) Create Your Own Press Release

Try creating your own press release and sending it out to various media outlets. This could ultimately result in a lot of free publicity for both you and your ebook. You may think that this is actually a very challenging situation given the fact that most media outlets receive a lot of press releases on a daily basis. While it is certainly true that there is no real easy way to get your foot in the door, it never hurts to use this strategy given the fact that it can ultimately be very successful if one of the media outlets that you choose to contact decides to create a story about you and your ebook.

3) Write Articles For Your Blog Where You Talk About Your ebook  Read more... (476 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

On a recent poll on workopolis.com, a whopping 70% of people who responded said they are actively looking for a new job. So what about you? Are you ready to make the big change and look for something that offers more potential, more money, or  more flexibility? You better get going because it looks like the competition is going to be fierce.

Have a goal. Do a self assessment, and figure out what you want to do. Rediscover who you are and the experience you bring to any potential position. Eliminate options that don’t best suit you.

Get focused and develop a plan of action. Be specific while you network for a job. Ask people you know if they can refer you, or refer someone to you. Brainstorm and ask a ton of questions. Be your own consultant. Try and spend 5 hours a day for 5 days a week being focused to achieve what you plan each week.

Sell yourself. The person who is most convincing will get the job. They far outweigh those with technical skills. Don’t be spew out data and bio information. Learn sell yourself to the interviewer. Unless they’re looking strictly for technical skills, interviewers will eliminate candidates on technicalities, not likability.

Watch your dress, language, and posture. Learn to slow down your speech, and use you language you’re confident in using. Men should wear a 2 button suit with no floral ties or beards. Women should wear small print on blouses, take it easy on the perfume, and wear a current hairstyle. Read the interviewer, lean in and be attentive on important points, and please… make eye contact.

While the competition may be tough, by following these few points will get you a leg up on other potential candidates, and get you the job you want, and not something you merely settle for.  Read more... (345 words, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)