Your Guide to Profit and Loss Projections when you are

  • Posted on May 13, 2011 at 9:26 am

Your Guide to Profit and Loss Projections when you are in Business for Yourself

It is difficult to know how much money your business will earn in coming years. Therefore, you need a plan of action, and a way to figure out what your profits and losses could be. When you are just starting out, you would want to consult a professional who can help you determine what your profits will be in this current state you are in. That person can also help you decide what investments to make now and which ones to wait on.

In addition, if you have a business that has been around for a few years or even longer you will be able to project more clearly how much money you will make in a year. However, if you want to expand your operation projecting your income could become a bit of a challenge. Expansion is another aspect of business a professional can help you with.

One useful tool in projecting business profits and losses is the business plan. These are very easy to create and you can find formats to follow, sometimes for free through local volunteer business development centers. Included in your business plan will be your income goals and what you would have to do to reach those goals.

This document would also include any plans for expansion, as well as a list of working capital, and ways to obtain more. Your business plan will also help lay out your plan for creating revenue by the products or services you plan to promote, and will contain an effective advertising campaign as well.

Not only will having a business plan constructed to outline your business goals but you can hire a financial advisor. Sometimes these advisors are also called consultants. That persons job would be to help you control your spending, and they will help you keep in line with your projected budget for the up coming year.

Financial advisors will also help you make wise investments for future business expansion and increased profit. The key is to find an advisor that you would trust and one who will not steal your profits. Along with that, you will need to be able to afford to hire them. However, usually that is no worry, because you can usually hire them on demand, such as for tax season or end-of-the-month cost analysis.

The more professional help you find to help you start up your business the better. These professionals will help you project and plan for future profit and loss and help you make the best financial decisions for your business.

Usually businesses that want to prepare for the future will create annual reports of the previous years income records. These are usually indicated by charts and grafts within a document and an analysis of each source of revenue.

Businesses who want to project a higher amount of income and less loss in coming years will also cut their losses on ineffective advertising methods. For instance, if they have no record of having any hits on a certain website ads they may consider changing or removing that ad. Also, in order to increase sales for the following year they may want to analyze the content of their ads and one that reaches their customers more.

Businesses who want to succeed with less loss and higher profit can also consider the services that they sell and brainstorm ways to improve them. They can also consider new services or products that they can sell which will increase revenue for them as well. Not only that, but they can consider discontinuing products and services, and even employees that are considered more of a liability than an asset.

Analyzing projected income and losses will help you plan better for the future. If you need help with cost and revenue analysis you can find professionals who can assist you in this matter. Most of these professionals even have websites that you can visit which offer help.

Many sole proprietorships and small companies have become successful large corporations. That is because they have carefully analyzed their budgets and planned for the following years. Those that carefully analyze their business year after year are the ones who are in business for thirty, fifty, or hundreds of years.

Another aspect of projecting profits and losses is to keep up with changing times. Many times a business will end up folding, even after decades of serving millions of satisfied customers, is because they are unable to compete with other advanced operations.

If you are in business you can never be too sure about the security of your income. New inventions are being processed daily, and some of these could affect the profit margin of your business. You need to make sure you have adequate staffing and equipment in order to continue to create the best of the best.

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Write on your business card

  • Posted on May 6, 2011 at 9:26 am

Like the majority of sales people, I visit a huge number of clients and prospects every month, some end up buying some do not, but every single one of them has my business card. I attend business breakfasts, seminars and other networking event in my search for new contacts and ultimately new business, each person I meet also gets a business card.

One day a few years ago I realised that I not only hand out a huge number of cards, but I also receive a fair few myself. I decided to go back through some of the older ones to see if I could find some new prospects. As I started to sift through them I began to realise that most peoples cards are actually meaningless in isolation. Unless you work for one of the few companies whos name actually reflects what you do, you may as well be writing your telephone number on a piece of paper and forgetting to add your name.

ABC Company
Mr Bob Jones
General Manager
Telephone number
Mobile number
Fax number
Email address
Website

Without going online and looking at every single website I have no idea what the companies do!

Likewise, all those people I had been diligently handing my business card too had every conceivable method of contacting me, written there in black and white, but no idea what I do! Its my job as a sales person to put my face about, make sure I am always contactable and remember as much as I can about all my prospects (with perhaps, a little help from my CRM). My prospects are also everyone elses prospects, they do not need to remember me, and so they need a little help.

I realised the solution is simple. WRITE ON YOUR BUSINESS CARDS!!!

Heres the scenario: The prospect gets back to the office one day and is told they need a new supplier for widgets, its his job to find one. He remembers speaking to a few suppliers at the seminar but cant remember exactly who, so he quickly flips through the cards collected, then, he comes across one, he cant remember the name or the face to match it, but, in nice clear writing it says Widgets, budget to high end Who gets invited in for a meeting?

I’m one of those people who guard my business cards at meetings. I don’t like meaningless cardboard connections (exchanging business cards without a purpose). I’m put off by someone who says, “Hello, my name is…. Here is my business card, can I have yours?” My suspicion is that I’m going to be put on someone’s junk mail list. However, by first striking a chord, you’ve accomplished something very important in your networking mission — you’ve found a reason to extend the relationship beyond the event at which you met.

Not all prospects you meet are going to fit your ideal client (or center of influence) profile. This is especially true for me, since I have a highly specialized niche. Focus your attention on those who meet your criteria. Jot down notes on the back of the card (the reason for the solid connection), and then you’ll have a conversation point in which to build your relationship at the next meeting or in your correspondence. Follow up quickly after the meeting by sending information you promised.

The Term “cardboard connection” was coined by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon authors of “Make Your Contacts Count” www.ContactsCount.com

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Where Business is a Pleasure

  • Posted on April 29, 2011 at 9:26 am

When you think of heading out to do some serious sightseeing in America, we often associate that with vacation times. And to be sure, those times are especially fun because you can be with family and friends and take in the heart stopping sights that are so unique to our great country.

But for many of us, traveling on business can be as much a part of our travel life as family vacation time is. Of course, on a business trip you have to be focused on the purpose of the business trip itself. But if your business takes you to some of the truly great parts of our country, its allowable for you to use that time you are serving your business well to enjoy the glory that God has put around us all over this great land.

Airplanes can provide some of the most spectacular ways to take in sights from the vantage point of the air. If you are flying over one of the spectacular mountain ranges of this country, you can gaze down and daydream about the pioneers who crossed those mountains to explore the country and spread its scope from coast to coast. If your imagination is active that day, you may speculate on where those roads down there lead and on how it would be to live in one of those remote towns you see scattered in the majestic but rustic mountain locations.

But the mountains are not the only sights of this country that can take your breath away when you fly over head. The sights of Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, of the shoreline of Chicago, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Atlantic Ocean off of Cape Cod, to name just a few, are even more stunning when seen from the air. You wont be able to see such things on every flight, but when they become visible, dont forget to close the laptop for a minute and take in these rare treats when they present themselves.

But the opportunities to catch a moment to take in a great sightseeing treat while on a business trip do not end when the plane lands. Many times conferences and big meetings are scheduled in some of the great cities of our country. So dont just hang around the hotel after the job is done. If you dont have business activities in the evening a cab ride through the city hitting the big attractions can be most enjoyable. Many cities have sights worth seeing that you never have to get out of your vehicle to enjoy. But taking some time to get out and walk in a memorial park, go to the best museum in town or take in the atmosphere in one of the ethnic neighborhoods can take a routine business trip and make it truly memorable.

You might also consider extending your stay in a particularly interesting part of the city or state you are going to go on business to give yourself the chance to get out and really jump into the local color or to give a great attraction or sight the time it deserves to really enjoy it. If you can afford to give yourself a whole Saturday just for sightseeing, you will come home from that business trip with an enhanced sense of accomplishment because you not only accomplished the goals of the trip, you enriched your life seeing one of the great and maybe spectacular sights that makes our country so unique.

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What Are the 7 Proven Principles of Business Success?

  • Posted on April 22, 2011 at 9:26 am

The 7 Proven Principles to Business Success will overcome whatever limitation you have. Think of it as a recipe for success in business. All you have to do is first of all learn what the 7 principles are, and then apply them, in order. When you follow this recipe all of your challenges will fade away.

Why do you own a business? Isn’t it because you want a LIFESTYLE? You didn’t intend to work long hours, be stressed, have little time off and be hassled with staff and customers did you?

Isn’t it time you made some changes for the better? After all, if you want to change some things in your life, you have to change some things in your life. If you’re ready for a change here’s the magic recipe you need to follow…

Principle 1: Work on yourself to understand people.
Business is all about people isn’t it? You have them as customers, you employ them, but few people have realised the absolute key to success is understanding people at a much, much higher level. You sales and marketing skills are determined by what you know about people. Your leadership skills with your staff to get them to perform as well as you do is determined by your knowledge on people.

So what’s the best way to learn about other people? Easy, learn about yourself! You’re a people and the more you learn about yourself the more you automatically learn about other people.

Principle 2: Learn business success principles.
There are so many principles to business success, but I’ll emphasise just a few. One is, you’re in business to make a profit, not just turnover. Turnover is a job, whereas profit gives you a LIFESTYLE. Your aim should be to increase your net profit percentage of turnover, as this allows you to grow and pay yourself whatever you desire.

Net Profit percentage comes from improving everything you do, not just doing more of what you already do. How you answer the phone, how you greet people face to face, how you write your ads, improving your communication and leadership with your staff. All of these are areas to improve.

Another principle of business success is cash flow. Cash flow means having the cash in your bank account that should be in your bank account. If customers cost you money before you get any back, that’s negative cash flow, if you get cash before you incur a cost that’s positive cash flow. The better you get at getting money up front with deposits and getting people to pay on time the better your cash flow.

Principle 3: Set goals and have a plan to achieve them. Until you set a goal you don’t have a reason WHY you will improve your business, therefore the HOW doesn’t matter. People have to know why, before how. You’ll want to know how to grow your business once you have set a written goal.

When you have a goal its time to look at the relevant strategies for your business. I know of over 300 strategies, but most people can only think of about a dozen. Strategies are like tools. If you go to build a house with just a hammer, a saw and nails you will be building it for a long time. Business is the same. When people don’t know what strategies are available or suitable to them how can they effectively grow their business?

A Business Growth Plan is simply the order of implementation of those strategies beginning with the highest priority strategy. When you have documented goals for 3, 6, 9, 12 and 24 months with a list of strategies in order you have a Business Growth Plan that makes growing your business EASY!

Principle 4: Turn your staff into a TEAM.
Unfortunately business owners are trying to do it all on their own. They often don’t train their team regularly with team meetings or one on one allocated time every week. I believe you have one role as a business owner, to be a great teacher! Your aim should be to teach everyone in your business how to do everything you currently do, better than you do! And what does that then make you? Obselete! When business owners think no one can do my job as good as me, they are digging a big hole for themselves they will never get out of. Then they wonder why they are stressed, tired, work long hours and this happens more and more as the business grows. TEAM stands for Training Everyone Achieves More!

Principle 5: Build foundations for growth.
If you want to build your business to provide a great lifestyle you need to put foundations in, just like building any building. If you don’t intend to really increase your profits then you don’t need foundations. If you want to seriously increase your net profit percentage (even without increasing turnover) you must have strong foundations. When they build a skyscraper they don’t build up, they dig a big hole down.

The foundations in business are 2 things. First, having documented systems. A system is just a best way of doing something that everyone knows and uses that has been identified and written down. It helps consistency and efficiency and as you grow people are accountable to the systems, not to you the owner. That means you save time checking on everyone. Systems only work when you have worked with your staff to turn them into a TEAM.

Secondly, measuring everything is part of building foundations. If you haven’t measured your Key Performance Indicators how will you improve on them? Increasing Net Profit percentage of turnover comes from improving everything you currently do, remember?

I could write a book on measuring, its so important, I can’t emphasise it enough. When you’ve measured all your KPI’s you’re ready for…

Principle 6: Implement EFFECTIVE Sales and Marketing.
Everyone in business is already doing sales and marketing but how effective is it? You know when you have effective sales and marketing, here’s how: you won’t get so many price shoppers as your marketing already has “sold” them on buying from you. Your marketing is so effective you only have to run it a third as much because you can’t handle the increase in customers it brings you. And you’ll know your sales and marketing is effective because you put your prices up 20% and also increase your conversion with the price rise!

People in business don’t take responsibility for their sales and marketing and as a result they don’t get the results they desire. If you learn sales and marketing by paying a professional for a few months it will be the best investment you ever make. Once you learn the principles of success you can then add to them yourself, but often you need an expert to get you started.

Principles 7: Manage the business.
Unfortunately businesses aren’t managed at all well. You can tell by these examples… decisions aren’t based on numbers, there aren’t documented systems, regular weekly team meetings aren’t happening nor is weekly one on one team training.

Management is all of the above; it’s making decisions on numbers. e.g. you measure how many customers you serve in a week for each team member and measure the number of new customers each week and then work out your team can service 5 customers each per week. That means if your marketing can produce 5 new customers and if you’re at maximum service capacity you need to be thinking about getting a new team member very soon.

This is what management is, training your team weekly, documenting systems, measuring numbers, making decisions on numbers, setting goals and helping your team to achieve their own.

When you dedicate time to learn and then follow all 7 Principles, in the order above anything is possible. I’ve had clients increase their monthly turnover by 1,000% in just 5 months when the business wasn’t growing at all and the owners did it with ease and grace, no stress at all!

What’s your growth potential? Are you realizing it yet? If you’re not growing at 50%-100% a year you’re possibly not growing as fast as you could!

Continue reading What Are the 7 Proven Principles of Business Success?

Want To Start Your Own Business In 2006? Get Into

  • Posted on April 15, 2011 at 9:26 am

Want To Start Your Own Business In 2006? Get Into The Travel Industry

While the economy has been good to some people, it has been less than stellar for others. Many people are feeling squeezed between high energy prices and jobs that are always cutting back.

NOW may be exactly the right time to start your own home-based business. Unlike a traditional brick and mortar business, you don’t need to borrow thousands to get your home-based business started. You won’t need to rent an office, hire employees, or even pay much tax.

The next question is, what kind of business should I get into? Let me suggest you take a good, hard look at the travel industry. It’s simply the largest business in the world, accounting for more than 5 TRILLIION in sales each year — and growing by a whopping 25% annually.

Now it doesn’t take a CPA to know you can make a great home-based income even you just get the crumbs off that 5 Trillion table. And new developments in the travel industry are making that easier than ever.

Vast groups of vacationers are joining together to create unprecedented bargaining power. Airlines, hotels, resorts, and golf courses are always in hot competition with each other. When a large association of vacationers shows interest, these vacation companies offer their best deals.

The association will say “We’ll tell our members to buy from you — IF you’ll give us your best deal.” A luxury hotel, for example, will often let members stay for just 200 to 400 PER WEEK.

Combine those super low travel rates with the vast number of people who are vacation these days, then mix in all the cold weather we’ve been seeing nationwide, and you’ve got a stampede of new prospects to tropical vacation destinations.

Base your new home-based business on that huge trend and you’ll earn some serious cash in 2006.

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Top 7 Business Website Mistakes

  • Posted on April 8, 2011 at 9:26 am

The website boom of the early 21st century showed us that the business world was indeed ready to enter in world of the internet. However, times have changed, and many of the websites have not changed with it. Here are a few mistakes that website make in todays internet culture.

1)Infrequent updates- To have a website that gains the most business, you must have the best, most up to date website possible. If a visitor feels that you do not properly maintain and update you website, then chances are they will leave and find a similar business that does.

2) JavaScript pop ups- A JavaScript pop up is a notification window that opens when you visit a website that states and message and has an ok button at the end. This was extremely popular during the website boom, but quickly become a no-no, mainly because people over used it. Not only would they ad the pop up to the main page of their website, but they would also add one to each and every sub page. Typically these pop ups did not contain any information that would be viewed as important to the viewer. This was annoying then, and is much more annoying now, since newer computer system also have a noise that goes with the popup. If you have a message that MUST display to the user before they can go further on your website, then a JavaScript pop up may still be a good option, but I strongly caution you to not overuse it, if you use it at all.

3) Heavy graphics- You have to remember that a percentage of your visitors will be on a dialup connection, which means they will have trouble downloading your website if you have a large number of graphics on your website. Unless your website is in flash, I would try to avoid using any type of animated graphic, since they typically have large file sizes.

4) Using heavy, high contracting colors- This was another thing that was popular during the internet boom that quickly become unpopular due to overuse. It was once believed that high contracting colors would grab the users attention. While this is true, it also has a negative effect since it would hurt the user eyes, and sway them away from the website.

5) Clutter up pages- If your website seems be cluttered visitors will be less likely to view further into your website, especially if they think they will have to weed out the information they need from the information that is useless to them. You do not want to have too much information on each page, and you never want more then one topic on each. A good navigation system will eliminate any problem you have.

6) Lack of a navigation system- many websites created during the internet boom lacked one of the most important parts of a website. One a visitor clicked on a page they were taken to a new page without a way to return or access additional pages within the website. A navigation system insures that the visitor will be able to view your entire website. A good navigation will take the visitor back to the page that they originally come from, to the main page, and to the other major parts of the website. Additionally, the navigation (typically near the bottom of the page) should have links to things such as website polices and term and conditions.

7) Overusing Advertising- This is actually a fairly new problem with website, especially since Google started their Adsense program. Many website have more ads then information on the page. A visitor does not want to have to weed though the ads to find the content that they are looking for. The irony of the situation is: A visitor is more likely to click on an advertisement link if they do not feel that they are being bombarded by them. This is defiantly a situation where the saying less is more is true.

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The Importance of a Knowledgeable Restaurant Equipment Supplier to Your

  • Posted on April 1, 2011 at 9:26 am

The Importance of a Knowledgeable Restaurant Equipment Supplier to Your Business

It was early on a Friday night, and already the front of the house was packed. My kitchen looked like a beehive, and as usual, my whole staff was working furiously to keep everybody happy. It’s a necessity both they and I have come to live with as a result of our setup. You see, our kitchen is entirely too small for the amount of business we get. Because of my location, which I wouldn’t give up for the world, there’s not a lot I can do about it.

Anyway, things were running as smoothly as they ever do, when one of my main refrigeration units went down. One of my line cooks came from the back and informed that we were going to lose a lot of steaks if we didn’t act fast.

Since we have no room, we formulated a plan to get the meat into one of the bar coolers until we could figure out what to do. While some of my staff was working on that, I made a call to a repair service, since I didn’t think I would be able to reach my equipment supplier on a Friday night. They told me the next time they could come by to take a look would be on Monday. In desperation, I called my restaurant equipment supplier. Luckily, he was still in the office.

I explained what had happened and he thought about it for a minute. After grilling me (no pun intended) for a while on the preventive maintenance measures I had taken with the unit, we got on the subject of coils. It seems this particular unit has a sheet of metal between two sets of coils on the rear of the unit, leaving the rear coils exposed while hiding the interior set. The manufacturer put the thin sheet of metal between the coils to act as a heat transference device, as the heat produced between two sets of coils on a commercial refrigeration unit can be pretty intense. The sheet would absorb heat from both sets of coils and help to dissipate it, since it had more surface area.

The bottom line is that we had been cleaning the exterior set of coils, but not the interior set. My restaurant equipment supplier mentioned that this was an unorthodox (yet effective) setup for the back of a cooler, so he wasn’t surprised we weren’t aware of the interior coils. He told how to remove the metal sheet and suggested I clean the interior coils to see if that might be the problem.

My GM and I took the unit out back and removed the sheet and took a look at the inset coils. They were in bad shape, having never been cleaned before (or at least no as long as I owned them). To make a long story short, we cleaned them thoroughly and tried the unit again. Within five minutes, things were nice and frosty on the inside again. I called my equipment supplier back to thank him for his help. Of course, he told me to call him first before I use a repair service for out-of-warranty equipment, which I should have done in the first place.

Having a knowledgeable equipment supplier is of the utmost importance of my business. This particular Friday night, I was reminded of that in a big way.

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The Growing business of Sports Betting

  • Posted on March 25, 2011 at 9:26 am

“Is it fun or are we really corroding the sports and the sportsmen? Sports betting is growing in importance nowadays. There is no sport in the world today for which there is no gambling. The sports grounds have been converted to casinos and a sports game being played between two teams is now more like a poker game being played on a table at a casino. Although it appears fun and thrill to many, it may be handicapping the sportsmen and the people who are die hard fans of these sports. This many times creates lots of fuss over sports losses.

Like the other aspects of our lives, sports betting is also one very commonly done through the internet. You can always find reliable web sites on the World Wide Web which provide you e-solutions to put your hard earned money into sports betting. It is safer this way. You can trust the services of e-gold more while betting than you can trust an unknown bookie. The bookmakers thus have organized their work and come to a higher standard of providing services to people now. To involve more and more people form all parts of the world, the bookmakers now use pecunix or e-bullion as a resource of transferring money to and from online betting web sites. This is an arrangement that people trust. Liberty reserves is also one of the names which has a strong credibility. Those betting web sites which have their active relationship with any of these money transferring web sites are in a better position to get the attention of the people who are interested in betting.

Bookmaking may seem to be an unfair thing to many, but a lot of people enjoy it. With the common use of internet for this phenomenon, it has become a much organized way of enjoying the sports. There is a lot going on in the world of sports all the time. These web sites turn there attention towards the sport which is the most popular at any particular point in time. In this way not only people can enjoy their sports betting in a safer way, the web sites are also in a better position of doing business. There is no handicapping these web sites now. Making it easy, safe and private is what the web sites need to do. They also need to find the right sports on which people enjoy betting in a particular season. With these steps taken, there is a safe environment for those who are making the bets as well as for the web sites. ”

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The Pros and Cons of Gift Certificate Giving in the

  • Posted on March 18, 2011 at 9:26 am

The Pros and Cons of Gift Certificate Giving in the Business World

Giving gift certificates in the business world can be a bit tricky. Though there are literally thousands of retailers out there that offer these easy-to-give-gifts, there are both pros and cons to using them this holiday season.

The pros of using gift certificates for your business gifts include: theyre easy to buy, you can get a gift certificate for just about any store, and the price isnt fixed (you get to designate how much it will be).

Yes, gift cards might be the easiest gift to buy when shopping for those on your holiday list. You dont have to spend time thinking about what the person might like (more on this later). You dont have to be familiar with their hobbies or pastimes in order to buy them a gift. This is useful in giving business gifts because a lot of times you dont have the kind of relationship with someone that enables you to buy them a gift they would actually like.

These days most stores carry gift certificates. You can walk into just about any store and ask for a gift certificate and theyll have one for you. Some stores use a nice looking certificate but the new thing is gift cards. Some places will have different designs to choose from, which is always fun; the different designs kind of spice up the gift.

Gift certificates are also great because theyre not priced like other merchandise in the store. If you want to spend $10 on someone, then you can get a certificate for $10, its that simple. If you want to spend $100, you can do that too. Though most places let you choose the amount, some places have a fixed amount on the certificates; maybe they sell them in $10 increments. This really isnt a problem either.

Sometimes when buying a gift you find something that you really want to give the person but its out of the price range you are willing to pay. So you might decide to buy something else just to meet your budget. Or, you may break your budget and buy the item anyway. In the first scenario, the person receiving the gift would be getting something inexpensive rather than something they would really like. In the second, your pocket book is broke.

This is another reason that gift cards are so wonderful. You dont have to settle for anything less than what you wanted to buy, and you dont have to go broke. Giving a gift certificate will give the person the power to get something that they really want. And if its just a portion of the dollar amount that they need, thats great because its just that much less that theyll have to pay for their desired item.

On the flip side, there are also cons to using gift certificates for your business gifts. These include: theyre too easy to buy, they get lost easily, and many people end up never using them.

The fact that gift certificates are so easy to buy can look enticing to some gift givers (as stated in the pros section). But this very reason can make a gift receiver think that you didnt put any thought into it. So this one point can work as either a pro or a con, depending on the gift receiver. Some will think its important that you put some thought into the gift and personalized it and for others the mere fact that you thought of them will be enough.

Its a fact that gift certificates tend to get lost easily. People stuff them into dresser drawers or set them on the desk, and they are never to be seen again. This is a bummer because they never get the gift and your money has been thrown away. Hopefully, when you give a gift certificate, the person will be organized enough to put the certificate in a designated place in which it will not get lost.

Sadly some gift certificates simply never get used. Maybe the person doesnt really enjoy shopping or maybe they dont like the place where the certificate is from. Some people just forget about a gift certificate and never spend it.

When buying your gift certificates this holiday season remember to buy them at a store in which the receiver will definitely find something useful. This will motivate them to actually use the certificate and not misplace it or forget about it. Then your money is well spent and the person will think of you when they use the item they choose to buy.

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Starting a Snow Boarding Business

  • Posted on March 11, 2011 at 9:26 am

For a while I have been considering starting a snow boarding business and really do think it is something that will have a lot of potential. In my area there are two slopes near by and there is no local businesses that service us snow boarder’s needs. What I would like to do is start a snow boarding business that sells snow boarding clothing and snow boarding equipment and of course boards themselves. For years I have been trying to think of a business idea and I really feel that incorporating my love for snow boarding with my love for business would be a great idea. I done a degree in business however since achieving this degree I have yet to actually go out there and give it a try in the real world on my own. I am currently a business consultant for an accountancy firm, and although I enjoy my job my true desire is to go out and do it on my own, and for myself.

What I will need to do is get a business loan at first from the bank and buy a property and stock. I was thinking that one of the best ways to ensure that I get business is to position the shop as near to the slopes as I can possibly get. I was also thinking that I could reach agreements with the slopes under which they could effectively drive customers to my shop. In order to do this, I intend to organise a meeting with the managers of both slopes separately and decide on what they think is the best way that we can work together.

I now realise that the next step is going to be to put my business idea into writing and create a business plan. This is something that I do for my customers, and I am now going to have to go out their and do it for myself. I am also going to consider ways that I can market my business on the internet. From speaking with my clients I have noticed that very few actually achieve much success from their online marketing and there is a multitude of reasons why this is. The first thing that strikes me is that although they were willing to invest in a website they were completely unwilling to invest in online marketing. What I tell my customers is what I intend to do myself. I want to incorporate marketing online into my business plan and hopefully I can benefit from my attempts to gain business from a global audience. At the moment I am aware that there is a lot of competition online, however with a carefully articulated online marketing plan I am sure that there is success to be had online.

I am also hoping that in the coming weeks that I can meet with a supplier and hopefully get a better idea of the kind of profit margins that I can be looking towards. I have been told that in order to attain the best results I am going to have to meet minimum order requirements and then the supplier will give me the best prices. I see this as being a very realistic goal, as I am sure that I will be able to think of ways that I can meet the minimum order requirement. Firstly, I could collaborate with another supplier and we could buy in stock together. This is something that several of my clients do, and it results in cheaper rates that both of the buyers can benefit from.

So I have everything planned but I just have to go ahead and actually do it! The thing is that I am also going to have to try and stick with my job for as long as I possibly can. If I decide to leave my job too early then I will spend a period without a wage, however I should really inform management of my intentions.

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