bgenest, Author at Barbara Genest

July 24, 2022

Tips to Getting Your Small Business Started

Getting your business started can be the most complicated, overwhelming, and essential part of your business. Not knowing what to do or ignoring what is required to succeed can make your path to success more difficult. It can also hinder it altogether as there are many things you need to understand in the first phase of the business to be successful. Without these key components, you will likely make a few mistakes or miss a couple of deadlines as you work to get back on track.

The following are a few tips to help get your small business started right:

Choose The Right Business Idea

If you want to get started right, you must choose the right business idea or model. Don’t start a business you don’t really care for because you have the wrong idea of what success will look like or be like. In other words, if you don’t like doing the work now, you won’t like doing it later when you have the revenue either. So it would be best if you enjoyed the work to keep it functioning long term.

Understand Your Target Audience

Get to know your target audience as much as possible right away, and don’t ever stop. Your target audience is vital to the overall success of your business as they are the ones that provide you the resources to grow. If you don’t understand them they will likely move on. As a result, you make it more difficult to find and retain new customers. Remember, it is natural to change, and your target audience will too, which is why you must keep up with the relationship and communication.

Create The Right Social Media Accounts

Be sure to open and use the social media accounts your target audience uses the most. Certain age groups, places around the world, and niches use different platforms, so it is important to take notice of the ones they use first or at least to support them. For example, if you want to create YouTube videos but know most of your audience uses Instagram, you can edit the video to share teaser videos. Then, when they see the teaser video on Instagram, they are likely to go to YouTube to see the more extended version.

Understand The Required Resources and Finances

Educate yourself regarding business finance. This includes paying yourself, what it costs to create content, accounting systems, other tools, and so much more. A poor grasp of finances is one of the most common reasons businesses fail, which is why you should set it up correctly and find the appropriate funding first before you get started.

Complete a Business Plan

A business that skips a business plan is sure to fail. This is because a business plan helps to ensure your business idea is viable and profitable in the long term. It helps to identify each marketing strategy and how you can stand out against your competition. Plans are essential to making sure you deliver everything you need to run and grow a successful business now and in the future.

Don’t let the lack of proper information prevent you from being a successful entrepreneur. Be sure to follow and implement each of these tips to get your business started right. Many people fail due to a poor start, but you can be sure your path to entrepreneurship is successful with these tips.

Why Every Business Needs a Business Plan

July 24, 2022

Five Steps to Registering Your Small Business

While it’s common advice to wait until you start generating money to register your business, this can lead to many mistakes and consequences down the road. Once you have a business idea, it is always best to get it registered to protect yourself and solidify your commitment to becoming an entrepreneur. In addition, waiting to register can prevent you from doing the necessary work required to be successful. For example, you need to have a business license to purchase insurance.

Here are the five steps to follow to register your small business:

Step One: Find a Business Location

First, you must determine where you want your business to reside, even if it’s virtual. This will help determine what fees you need to pay and where to register your business. Each state has different requirements, fees, licenses, and permits to start, so be sure to do your research.

Step Two: Determine Legal Structure

Sole proprietorship, corporation, limited liability corporation, or a partnership are the different legal structures. As an entrepreneur, it is common to start as a sole proprietor, registering as a limited liability corporation. To be legal, most sole proprietorships only need to submit a DBA or “doing business as” name within the state.

Step Three: Choose and Register Business Name

Before legally operating under your business name, you must register it within your state and county. Your state and county website will have information and step-by-step instructions on registering your business name correctly. You can only do business under your legal name until you register your business name.

Step Four: Get an EIN or Federal Tax ID

Now, register for an EIN. You can look at this website here to see if your business requires an EIN or employer identification number. If not, you simply use your social security number as your federal tax ID. Those who run a partnership or limited liability corporation must register for an EIN.

Step Five: Apply Licenses and Permits

Finally, you must apply for local licenses and permits required for your business or industry. Your county government website will be the best resource in figuring out this information. You can also contact your local business and professional regulations department for more information.

When you are ready to register your business, follow these steps. Remember, each state has its own rules, regulations, and requirements that you must follow along with the federal ones. Look for your county website to find more information on what is required to register your business. All it takes is registering your business name and paying fees for many states.

July 24, 2022

Four Small Business Ideas to Start as a New Entrepreneur

Wanting to be an entrepreneur and having control of your own life is the desire of many. However, it can be hard to know what businesses even to start. Thankfully, with the internet, social media, and other technology, there are many different business ideas you can get started easily from your home with little to zero start-up costs.

Here are four small business ideas to start as a new entrepreneur:

Mindfulness and Meditation Coach

Just about everyone suffers from anxiety and is looking for ways to find instant relief. If you have a passion for calming anxiety or enjoy making people feel relaxed, becoming a meditation and mindfulness coach may be an excellent path for you. Start this idea with a blog, YouTube channel sharing videos, and peaceful meditations on Insight timer.

Digital Marketing Consultant

Do you enjoy content marketing and know exactly what it takes to market a business online? Then starting a digital marketing consulting company is a profitable option for you. Starting a blog and opening an Instagram and LinkedIn account will likely be the best places to start within this industry.

Personal Finance Coach

Many people need help with personal finances through one-on-one coaching, online courses, ebooks, or YouTube videos. However, the most traditional way to start this business idea is by creating a blog and sharing your best strategies to avoid debit, build credit, plan for retirement, and so much more. If you have tips on increasing your income or making money online, those are other strategies that can help build your personal finance blog.

Online Dropshipping Store

Another popular option is to start an online dropshipping store through Shopify. You can succeed within the dropshipping niche if you know how to market just about any product online. The idea is to find a company that will store, package, and ship your items on your behalf, so you don’t have to. This model can be more expensive than traditional online stores but can make it easier for entrepreneurs to own their own product business.

If you’re unsure which business to pursue as an entrepreneur, then take the time to research each of these ideas. Understand what it takes to get the work done and compare it to the life you want to live. Then give each of these ideas a test run. Just because you provide them with a try doesn’t mean you have to commit, nor does it mean you are a failure. Learning is part of the entrepreneurship journey and helps you discover and create the right business idea.

July 24, 2022July 24, 2022

Four Important Tips on How to Pick the Right Business Idea for You

If you want to ensure you are on the right track to becoming a successful entrepreneur, you need to pick a profitable business idea that aligns the best with you. If you don’t understand or care about the concept you are trying to pursue, you will more likely create products that don’t provide value or are of poor quality as you lack the desire to research or improve your skills.

The following are four essential tips to keep in mind when picking the right business idea for you:

Recognize the Life You Really Want to Live

In other words, if it takes a twenty-four-seven commitment and the life is not what you can envision doing for the rest of your life, then you might want to reevaluate the business idea. Be sure you can handle the work required to achieve the revenue instead of what the revenue might allow you to do.

The fact is, you won’t have those rewards when you first get started. Therefore, you must be able to handle the work to achieve it. If you don’t enjoy the work, you likely won’t enjoy the business even if it generates your desired income. So take the time to break down the work you want to do for the rest of your life to ensure the business idea you pick matches.

Focus on Your Skills and Experiences

What skills and information do you correctly possess that can be shared and be valuable to others. Remember, you don’t need perfection or expertise to share, so don’t let that slow you down if you have some knowledge and a strong passion for it. The more you understand and enjoy the business you create, the more successful you will likely be.

The Time Management Techniques to Learn as a New Entrepreneur

Test Before Making a Commitment

Believe it or not, commitment to an idea is not required to get started. It does not make you a failure just because you decide something isn’t right for you. In fact, most entrepreneurs go through many different ideas before one finally makes sense to them.

The world has so many different opportunities that it would be impossible to know without trying first. However, you can’t focus on what you get in return when trying this method. You must only focus on the work and what is required of you. This is only to determine if you enjoy the work and can handle it in the long run. You can’t let revenue be the ultimate factor. While you want a profitable business idea, that doesn’t mean you should reach for the one that makes the most money, especially if you don’t enjoy it.

Visualize the Final Outcome

Visualization is a powerful tool that can help determine obstacles, challenges, or things that may get in your way of success. As you come up with ideas, imagine your target audience, what products you will create, and the overall lifestyle you can live to accomplish it.

Starting with the wrong business idea does not mean you will not be a successful entrepreneur one day. However, it can make it hard to find the motivation and resources to continue down this path. Starting with a business idea you genuinely want to pursue and ignoring the many “get rich quick” business schemes is the only way to be sure you do what is required to succeed. A successful business takes consistent and daily work to see rewards. Through passion and care of your idea, you know you will get the work done to see them.

July 24, 2022July 24, 2022

Finding a Profitable Niche: Building Your Online Business

Finding a niche for your business to focus on is a great way to create a reliable and consistent income stream. It also makes marketing and learning about your target audience easier. A niche defines a specific group or subset audience within a larger group or topic. For example, instead of clothing, think graphic T-shirts or leggings. These are a few examples of profitable niches within the fashion industry. As you can see, breaking down your business into a specific niche makes it easier to define your target audience and better solve their problem.

Here are a few tips on how to find a profitable niche for your online business:

Start with What You Truly Enjoy

The more you enjoy the work you do, the more it will reflect in the products, services, or content you provide to your target audience. Starting a business only because you think it’s the most profitable is not the best idea. Starting a business is work. Often it requires work without much reward. If you don’t enjoy it, you likely won’t stay long enough to see the reward.

Look for Relevant Social Media Hashtags

A great way to determine if the niche you picked is profitable is to take advantage of social media hashtags. Searching by hashtags can provide information on whether or not it is being used or searched. If you can’t find a hashtag, it is likely not something people search for or will be an excellent avenue for you to introduce to people. As a new entrepreneur, it is always best to use hashtags with a small to medium use as more significant hashtags will have much stronger competition.

Five Strategies to Ignoring Naysayers as a New Entrepreneur

For example, on Instagram, if you search the hashtag “cupcakes,” it will should how many posts have been generated; roughly thirty-one million. The hashtag “#buttercreamcupcakes” has been used about two hundred and seventy-one thousand times. On this platform, as a new entrepreneur, it would be better to use the second hashtag to have a better chance at staying at the top and getting noticed. However, this information shows you how popular a cupcake niche can be for a recipe blogger.

Look Toward Demand

In other words, what are people looking for? A few ways to figure this out are using Answer The Public and Google Trends. These tools provide information on what keywords are being searched for the most by people worldwide. These tools can help you discover new trends and can help to strengthen your marketing strategies.

Overall, there are many different ways to discover profitable niches within your industry. Using the tools your customers use daily is always an excellent place to start, as they are the key to understanding what products or services you need to create. Figuring out what they are searching for or need is your key to finding the right niche within your industry.

July 9, 2022

Six Stress Management Tips for Entrepreneurs

Stress is a common con to becoming an entrepreneur. New stress arises as creating a valuable and profitable product is now up to you. The mistakes you make and the actions you forget to take are your responsibility. However, there are many things you can do to destress to enjoy the entrepreneur journey better.

Here are six stress management tips to learn as a new entrepreneur:

Make Time for Fun and Time with Loved Ones

Just because you are a business owner doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make time for loved ones and friends. Spending time with people you care about away from the business is a great way to unwind and forget about business stress. Letting go of this stress is vital to your health and your business’s health.

Have a Proper Business Plan and Follow It

A common culprit of stress is a lack of direction, accurate information, and business goals. Filling in your business plan ultimately can help to relieve this stress. As you go through each section, you will learn you really have what it takes to grow a viable business idea.

Information You Need to Know for Your Business Plan

Learn How, When, and Where to Delegate

While many people make it sound possible, doing all the work yourself will only lead you to burnout in the long run. You can’t do everything it takes to grow a business, especially when you scale it and do more. So while delegating may cost money, it can be a substantial cost to prevent burnout and stress from destroying your business.

Focus On Your Entrepreneurial Goals

Instead of focusing on the stress, focus on what truly matters instead—your love for the business and the need to accomplish all your goals. Simply doing the work and completing each of your daily, weekly, and monthly goals can provide you the stress relief you need to keep going.

Don’t Forget About Proper Self-Care

Everyone requires their own self-care routine to feel confident, happy, and healthy. Without your health and happiness, you can’t expect to run a successful business. Your mental health can easily reflect in your products and communication. Always schedule a time to do the self-care routine you need to feel your best and never feel guilty. If this means you need an hour to sit in the bath every night, schedule it and enjoy it, and don’t allow yourself to skip it. You deserve it and need it, and so does your business.

Start with Gratitude and Positivity

Starting your day with positivity is a great way to relieve stress and ensure it goes in the right direction. Expressing gratitude is also known to release chemicals in the brain that help to make you feel better and happier. This means it can be an excellent tool to use if you need instant relief.

Be sure to give each of these stress management techniques a try if you are experiencing stress as an entrepreneur. Remember, it is normal to feel pressure, but don’t let it prevent you from being happy or prosperous.

July 9, 2022

How to Stay Motivated as an Entrepreneur

Being an entrepreneur comes with many highs and lows. No two days in business are the same. That’s what makes it so exciting. However, this is also why it can be hard to stay consistent and keep up the momentum. Most businesses don’t see profits or success without continuous daily work for three or more years. Unfortunately, this means many people give up before their work truly makes a difference.

The following are four ways to stay motivated as a new entrepreneur:

Adopt Proper Stress Management Techniques

A lack of motivation is usually due to stress. Adopting proper stress management techniques such as meditation, a healthy diet and exercise routine, and other self-care essentials is vital to finding the motivation you need to tackle your business goals. If you are too stressed, it can be easy to let a lack of motivation keep you from taking action.

Focus on Your Entrepreneurial Goals

Accomplishing your goals and focusing on the bigger is a simple way to increase your motivation. If you have your eye on the prize, you shouldn’t have any problem getting to work. As long as it is genuinely what you want in life, you won’t have trouble using your goals to find motivation.

Find a Supportive Community

Finding a community dealing with similar issues as yourself is another great way to find more motivation and support. In addition, joining a community can provide you with more tools and resources as you gain more perspectives and knowledge from the experience of others.

This can be done by searching for Facebook Groups or following similar people on Twitter. Take advantage of these groups by asking questions and sharing your own advice too. The more involved you are within your industry, the more likely you want to work on your business.

4 Tips For Success In Home Business

Ask For Feedback

Getting feedback is a great way to know if you are doing something correctly or not. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Even if your feedback is negative, you know where to improve and what to do. This can motivate you to do more and seek more knowledge to enhance your skills.

Don’t allow your lack of motivation to keep you from success as an entrepreneur. Instead, use these tips to push through the negativity and continue to take action daily to see the success you want and need. Remember, you don’t need to be comfortable to take action and do it. Sometimes motivation can be found by simply taking action anyways.

July 9, 2022

Four Ways to Stay Organized as an Entrepreneur

Staying organized is key to seeing success as an entrepreneur. Whether personal or professional, poor organization can reflect within your business. Poor organization can lead to missed deadlines, poor communication or customer service, and stress due to spending necessary time finding information or documents required to get the business going. To ensure that you can adequately communicate with your target audience and deliver consistent value, you need to learn how to stay organized.

Here are four ways to stay organized as an entrepreneur:

Don’t Rely on Yourself to Remember

Entrepreneurship requires you to wear many different hats. This means you should never expect to remember everything you need to do or get done. Instead, always write it down or use tools to help you remember. There is no point in using mental space when there are tools to help.

Utilize Project Management Tools

Project management tools like Kiss Flow Project can make many important business tasks easier while saving time and other resources. It can also help ensure each part of your project is finished and organized to maximize conversions or results.

How to Create Repeatable Workflows for Better Time Management

Start With a To-Do List

To-do lists are simple to do yet provide a decisive outcome. They can give you the direction, focus, and understanding you need to get each day done faster and with more quality. Before you end your day, always create a new to-do list for the next. This way, you can get right into your work and don’t need to take the time to remember what you have already finished.

Automate Right Away

Email, chat, social media, and other communication tools can easily get crowded, overwhelming, and disorganized. Automation can free you from stress and save you time doing repetitive and mundane tasks. For example, suppose you require a follow-up meeting after your clients purchase a product. In that case, you can use tools to trigger an automatic email after a certain time for the customer to schedule an appointment that best fits their schedule. This way, if they don’t have time to do the meeting, you won’t be spending time chasing down your clients. Furthermore, it provides more time for communication.

If you struggle with organization, then give each of these tips or techniques a try. The more organized you are, the easier it will be to understand your target audience. When you know them better, you will more efficiently deliver the products or services they need or want from you. Don’t let poor organization make your dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur out of reach. Use these techniques to realize your entrepreneur life today.

July 9, 2022

The Time Management Techniques to Learn as a New Entrepreneur

The number one skill most successful entrepreneurs understand or take the time to perfect is time management. Proper time management skills are essential for entrepreneurs and business owners as you are now responsible for every part and decision required to run your business.

If you are constantly behind schedule, you won’t have the proper focus to create value for your target audience nor have the time to communicate correctly. This can lead to a poor understanding of your marketing and place within the industry altogether. This will ultimately make it harder to market your products and run your business successfully. Thankfully, just like any skill, you can do the work to improve it.

The following are important time management techniques to learn as a new entrepreneur:

Work in Batches and With Deadlines

Batch work is where you make sure the tasks you start with and work on during your productive hours are similar. This way, you are using your time more efficiently by not going back and forth and, for example, responding to emails while trying to upload blog posts to your WordPress website.

While these tasks may seem similar, you will likely waste a lot of time going back and forth from your email provider to your WordPress site. You can easily miss important details required to get your post noticed and the point of the emails you are responding to. Keeping these tasks separate to maximize your time and quality will work best.

Use Proper Tools and Technology

Technology is your friend regarding social media and other marketing strategies entrepreneurs need to make. Unfortunately, one person can’t do all the work. However, many tools like Zapier make it easy to automate important yet tedious and repetitive tasks.

Free and Low-Cost Automation Tools You Can Implement Today

Learn To Fight Off Procrastination

Procrastination can instantly kill many start-ups before they even get off the ground. If you don’t do the work, you can’t expect success. Furthermore, an inconsistent schedule or work delivery doesn’t help install the trust and creditability you need to build a solid and successful business.

Schedule Everything You Can

A schedule is an entrepreneur’s best friend as it can save you so much time and frustration. It is always a great way to keep you organized between your professional and personal life. Anything you do should be scheduled so you know exactly when and what needs to be done to achieve your goals. First, however, you must conduct a time audit of each task you do so you have a fundamental understanding of how long it takes. This way, you know you are not under or overscheduling your work. It won’t be a valuable tool if you constantly go over schedule.

With these time management techniques, you can be sure you are consistently delivering value to your target audience. In addition, proper time management techniques make running a business more manageable as you no longer have to race with the clock to get finished. The more efficient you are with your time, the better your business overall.

July 9, 2022

Six Tips on Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

Many people dream of becoming successful entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that entrepreneurs are born and not made. This is far from the truth. The contrast among successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs is knowledge and understanding of what is required to build and grow a profitable business. This means anyone can learn what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and take action to become one.

Here are six tips to becoming a successful entrepreneur:

Learn Your Target Audience and Industry as Much as Possible

The more you understand who you are marketing to, the better you can convert them into paying or loyal customers. This can easily be done by interacting with them on social media and asking for feedback after purchasing or using your products, services, or content.

Joining groups on Facebook or following similar Instagram or websites in your industry and being active within them is another way to get to know them. But, again, the less you focus on generating income, and the more you focus on your target audience and what they need, the easier it will be to generate it.

Challenge Yourself and Take More Risks

As you might have heard before, business is a risk. However, the risk does not always have to equal failure, nor does it require an all-or-nothing approach. Sharing new products and content is a risk too. The more risks you take, the better you understand your target audience. Everything you share will not be successful, but that doesn’t mean it can’t provide you with important information to get there.

Be Ready for Financial Challenges

Money is a key stress point of entrepreneurship, especially in the beginning. It will never be consistent, but that doesn’t mean you are not doing something right. It is natural for some periods to be more profitable than others, significantly depending on your niche. For example, if your business focuses on a certain holiday or industry that is more important during certain times, like taxes.

Always Find Ways to Learn More

Knowledge is power and the best thing to improve your chances of success as an entrepreneur. Knowledge improves your skills and allows you to better communicate with your target audience. New knowledge can then be transformed into better quality and more robust products for your customers.

Don’t Start without a Solid Plan

Plans keep you consistent and do not waste essential time and resources. Not only that, but having a plan ensures you have a viable business idea.

Take Consistent Action

There is not one single successful business that got where they are without action. Even wrong action can get you closer to success as it helps to improve your skills and understanding.

To be successful, you must follow and incorporate these tips as much as possible. Each of these tips provides you with the tools, resources, and knowledge you need to run and create a profitable business.

Be More Accountable and Consistent, Share Your Goals