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What Motivates You In Your Business?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | What Motivates You In Your Business?What motivates you in your business? What do you strive to accomplish? Answers to these pivotal questions reflect the character and personality of the business owner. As a woman of Asian ethnicity, an immigrant, in a highly competitive, male-dominated printing and publishing field, my answers rose to the surface after receiving discriminatory and stereotypical mistreatment while on the job. Instead of defeat and victimization leaching and sucking the life out of me, I chose to rise above. Discrimination motivated me and I pushed harder, worked tirelessly, looked past boundaries, dug into my creativity, and became a top salesperson in the first company, and opened a business in the printing/publishing field with my specific niche some years later.

I left that traditional printing company to start my own printing business TSE Worldwide Press, Inc., and in that process, realized as an entrepreneur I had to reinvent myself. My beginning in printing coffee-table style books of the highest quality caliber stood above my competitors in the field. My ability for meticulous precision, to spot issues and correct them quickly and before printing, gave me the business edge.

Entrepreneurship excites and invigorates me. As a graphic artist, to create products and services with ingenuity starting from zero to completion thrills me and makes me more than satisfied to have left the “traditional” behind. The ability to take a client’s dream, an image in their heads, and fashion it into a completed product while solving problems along the way, makes my life work fulfilling! I knew I had struck gold when my products sold out repeatedly, and my customers kept reordering. Their feedback crucially contributes to my achievements. Customer feedback should be carefully listened to and learned from. This may make or break your business.

However wonderful operating my business may be, there are times in which I am left wondering what had I done wrong. Jumping feet first into this opportunity, I felt like I would drown. The fear of the unknown, lack of experience, lack of strength caused problems at the beginning. I suffered huge losses from not knowing how to handle dishonest customers. The difficult realization that “honest” customers turned into “dishonest” customers, those who took advantage of my naivetés and trustworthiness, eventually toughened me up. I learned to listen to my gut, which would warn me, and to advisers, friends, family, business associates who gave input into my life. I constructed guidelines, terms, procedures to protect my company and myself, and became increasingly selective of customers. I also made the same choices for hiring employees. Not only did these steps accelerate my business, they accelerated my personal growth. In addition, I learned to stop and take a break, and implement self-care. The temptation to overwork increases as passion increases, but soon you find yourself burnt out. Solve the question, where do I want to go? Find a mentor or two who will guide and give input into your life. On my website, I include tips for new business professionals looking for guidance.

Today, my definition of success focuses on helping others succeed. The joy I receive when my happy, satisfied, and financially successful customers see their dream project become reality compares to no other. Furthermore, it is extremely rewarding when my staff members and employees excel under my mentorship. Corporately, as a group, we contribute a section of our revenue to charity in giving back to the community which supports us. These define success for me.

My advice to new entrepreneurs: find a passion, a trade, that you genuinely enjoy and that does not feel like work. Think of something that you absolutely love to do and make a product out of it. Ask for input about your ideas from family, friends, people who know you well in business and as acquaintances, to obtain an objective perspective. If you are a female entrepreneur, take any negativity and obstacles thrown at you and use them as opportunities to improve yourself. Those who doubt you now will one day respect and trust you. If they do not in the future, put them aside for they are not worth your time or energy.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Sarah Y. TseSarah Y. Tse is founder and CEO of United Yearbook Company and co-founder and CEO of TSE Worldwide Press. Her new book is 7 Years on the Front Line : True Stories and Tough Lessons about a Small Business that You Won’t Learn in a Classroom.

For more information, please visit www.sarahytse.com or www.tseworldwidepress.com.

How Selling Online Can Save Businesses Post-COVID

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, How Selling Online Can Save Businesses Post-COVIDIn a post-COVID world, we’ll all be looking at buying and selling very differently. The ongoing global health crisis has really shown businesses that can pivot to new ways of working will be the businesses that survive, and those that don’t will be the businesses that fail.

We’ve all seen the news stories, and we’re all concerned about the impending financial crisis that is likely to hit the country, so what can we do to mitigate the fallout?

The secret to success will be to move business as online as possible, and if you sell products, then selling online will be vital to ensuring that you can weather the storm that is coming.

When brands don’t sell online, it can cost them millions. Take British clothes retailer Primark; for example, due to having no online selling presence, they lost approximately £284 million. In contrast, the British public was unable to visit the store during the lockdown. Still, interestingly, Primark’s complete avoidance of the online marketplace has left a gap that others will happily fill.

Primark clothing soon turned up on Amazon through resellers and at a premium too!

Fill the Gap

As an entrepreneur, you can only look at that story with dark amusement, but you must also see the benefit here, you can sell almost anything on Amazon and use it to turn a profit, but how exactly can you do this?

The best way to get into selling on Amazon is to use a professional Amazon marketing agency like Nuanced Media. Trying to navigate the Amazon seller sphere all on your own will be time-consuming, confusing. It will probably lead to you not achieving your goal of financial freedom and possibly financial independence with an Amazon store.

Starting Your Financial Freedom Journey

Marketing agencies like Nuanced0020Media understand how the platform works -for buyers and for sellers- and they will guide you through the process of creating your account, setting up your store and what to sell, and how much for.

Do you want to sell your own branded products (Private Label), or are you happy to find products you love at wholesale prices and sell them on for retail prices? The latter is probably the most popular option on Amazon, especially for businesses looking to get into online selling, and allows buyers to buy products they know and love, but pay you instead of another one of the bigger online sellers!

NathanIves.com Digital Products Platform Online Training Program


Gaining financial freedom from your job or work can be really empowering, and for companies that are concerned about taking the hit for the Coronavirus outbreak, pivoting the business model of selling online can be an absolute career saver for many small businesses.

It’s easy to get set up on Amazon, and you’ll be backed by their customer help team who are fantastic. One of the biggest bonuses of using the Amazon platform is that it’s so widely used by shoppers all over the world, so you could be connecting to anyone from anywhere!

About the Author

Ryan Flannagan is the Founder & CEO of NuancedMedia, an international eCommerce marketing agency specializing in Amazon. Nuanced has sold $100s of Millions online and Ryan has built a client base representing a total revenue of over 1.5 billion dollars. Ryan is a published author and has been quoted by a number of media sources such as BuzzFeed and Modern Retail. To connect with Ryan, check out @Ryanflannagan on Twitter or via Linkedin.

Building A Team Without Taking On Employees

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Building A Team Without Taking On Employees

Getting to the stage when your business is ready to start building a team can be a great achievement. Not only will you have already proven yourself and the concept that your company is built upon, but you will also be getting to the point that you can feel secure in your business. Of course, though, taking on employees is extremely expensive, often taking up the vast majority of a small company’s resources. This doesn’t have to be the case in the modern world, though, and this post is going to be showing you how to overcome this sort of issue with a business of your own.

Freelancers

Freelance work has been increasing in popularity over the last couple of decades. With the web enabling people to work at home and look for opportunities outside of newspapers and job adverts, it’s become easier than ever to take on a team that you don’t have to directly employ. Tools like Snupit make it incredibly easy to find freelance employees without having to spend weeks searching for them. Thousands of workers are on sites like this, making it much easier than you might expect to find freelance workers that won’t come with the cost of hiring someone.

Remote Employees

While permanent employment is an expensive game for businesses, looking at the idea of remote employees can be a good way to save some money. You will still have to pay to hire them, including things like pensions and health benefits, but you won’t have to fork out the costs of additional office space. People are getting more and more used to working at home, making it a great time to start looking for employees that can work from their own place. As time goes on, this sort of work routine is only going to get more popular, especially if companies continue to push for it.

Service Businesses

Service businesses make it possible to have the jobs that you would usually hire someone for covered by someone else. There are companies that can handle your marketing, web design, tech support, and a wealth of other services that you would usually have to hire a dedicated employee to handle. Not only does this make it cheaper to run your business, but it also gives you the chance to improve your productivity without having to hire more people to work for you. It’s always worth reading reviews before you choose to pay for something like this, with many companies offering very different levels of service.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of building a team without employees. This sort of process can be tricky, with many companies finding themselves struggling when they can’t afford employees but need to take on a team. Thankfully, though, the modern world has you covered.

Create A Business Strategy That Works

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Having a business strategy is more important now than it ever was before. As a small business you might find yourself in hot waters at the minute due to the current economic climate, and the fact that many small businesses haven’t survived the pandemic. When the world shut down and nobody was trading, business profits obviously plummeted and a lot of small businesses that were already on the brink have had to cease trading. So if you’re here reading this as a trading business then you’ve already done far better than many small businesses before you. Unless you’ve found some way to have a huge cash injection from somewhere you will no doubt be feeling the pressure to perform at the minute, especially if you’ve got staff employed under your belt. So, we’re going to try and help you create a business strategy that we think works during these current turbulent times.

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Article | Create A Business Strategy That WorksA Financial Plan

This is the most important one that you need to be thinking about. Your financial plan now will be far different to the one that it was at the start of the year. Our advice is to be a little more cutthroat with the cuts you make. It’s like with your personal spendings, you get used to the money you have to spend and it’s hard to change back from that. Business is no different, areas of your business are used to receiving a certain amount of money and it’s hard to change that. So one area we would suggest making cuts is with employees, if you need to. If times are really testing, you should consider joining the many businesses who have had to make their staff redundant. Although it’s such a hard thing to do, it’s the easiest way to save a lot of money for the year.

A Marketing Plan

The quickest way to get your business back on track is to sell sell sell, and the quickest way to do that is to get people thinking about your business again. One we think small businesses in particular seem to not focus on, is SEO. Everything is online at the minute and most people will Google your business, or keywords related to it, before they decide to work with you. But what if they can’t find you? Or what if competitors beat you in the search? That’s where SEO comes in. ECommerce SEO might be a little more expensive compared to some marketing methods, but it’s going to prove the most effective if you want to gain attention. So are simple marketing techniques such as billboard advertising. It’s the sort of in your face advertising that you need!

A Sales Plan

Finally, make sure that you have a solid sales plan. One idea might be to go through your directory of old clients or customers and get in touch with them. Just a courtesy phone call or email to see how they’re doing and to put your business back in their mind. You don’t have to push sales or make multiple calls, that’s when your business gains a bad reputation.

How To Start Your Own Online Business

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start Your Online Business|How To Start Your Own Online BusinessStarting your own online business does come with a lot of benefits. It allows you to make money remotely while setting the time that you work by yourself. You can also choose to face that particular niche that you are interested in, and it is cheap, so you do not need to have a very high startup cost.

While it may appear like a rave or following what’s a trend already. It can be both easy and challenging to start your own online business. You just have to make sure that you do the right things and take the right steps. That’s the way for you to be successful at it. So, how do you do this? What are the steps that you will take? This article contains tips from australian assignment help on how to start your own online business.

1. Find a business that can meet people’s needs

The most typical mistake that people make when they are starting an online business is to decide on the product first before they start looking for a market to sell to. But this is counterproductive.
For you to have a high possibility of success, you need to get a market first. That’s where you start. What you need to do is look for people in search of a solution to a particular problem but are not getting much success from it.

These are the kinds of research that you do first. And it is very easy to carry out this research on the internet.
You can find these people through different means. One of those is online forums. It is now becoming a usual practice for other people to go to online forums to ask questions disturbing them.

You can also use keyword research to find those things that people search for very frequently. However, you must be careful not to get into already stiff competition with other people.

Look out for your business’ potential competitors, go through their website. You can learn something from their site as well. This will include things like how they fill their demand. Afterward, you can use your knowledge to create the ideal product for the market needs that you’re trying to accomplish.

2. Write a marketable sales copy

There are a number of proven formulas for sales copy that allows your visitors to go through the process from when they first arrived to when they make that first purchase. A proven method that you can use is one from authors at research paper writing service and here are some tips for it:

  • Include a compelling headline that will arouse their interest.
  • Talk about the problem that you or your product are going to solve.
  • Show that you are credible enough and able to solve this problem.
  • Once you get people to buy and use your products, include testimonials for them.
  • Explain the uses of the product and how the user will benefit from it.
  • Make an offer.
  • Include a reliable guarantee.
  • Create a sense of urgency
  • Ask them to make a purchase.

Your sales copy has to focus on showing them the unique way your service or product solves their problems or helps them live a better life. The real question to answer is the “what do I gain from it” question.

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start Your Online Business|How To Start Your Own Online Business3. Design your website

Once you have completed the most critical steps in determining your market and the product that solves their major problem(s), you have completed the hard part of starting your own online business. The next step is for you to create or design a website.

The thing with your website is that you have to make your web design as simple as possible. You also do not have all the time in the world to catch people’s attention. You only have about five seconds or even less. Some few tips are:

  • Use a white background with a plain font or two.
  • Make sure that your navigation is very simple and clear and is available on all pages.
  • Make use of video, audio, or other graphics that might help you strengthen your message or boost your content marketing.
  • Include an offer for website visitors to opt-in so that you will be able to get their email addresses.
  • Make sure that the buying process is as simple as ever and straightforward too. Potential customers should not get over the clicks during the checkout process.
  • Make sure that your website is user-friendly.

4. Drive potential customers to your website with search engine

One of the easiest ways to bring traffic to your new website is through pay per click advertising. There are some advantages that it has in driving traffic to your site.

Firstly, pay per click ads come up immediately on search pages, and secondly, you can test different keywords, headlines, selling approaches, and prices with PPC ads. It does not just bring you immediate traffic; you also use this advertising medium to find the keywords that can give you the best chances of conversion. Then you use them throughout the different content and webpages of your website. This will also help to increase your organic search engine ranking.

5. Establish a reputation for yourself as an expert

The internet is used to seek information. That’s what people do with it. So, give them that information for free and watch how you will get increased traffic and a better ranking on the search engines. What you need to do is to add your website’s link with every little information.

Give away your expert content for free. Create videos and articles and other forms of content that is useful to people. Then distribute this content through social media sites and online article directories. Also, include links to “send to a friend” on these critical content from your website. This will help you draw more traffic.

Make yourself into an active expert on social networking sites and other industry platforms where you can reach out to your target market. This will open you to new readers, and all the sites that make a post on your content or posts directly will add links to your website. Getting these links from the relevant websites is very important for search engines, and it will increase your ranking afterward.

6. Convert visitors to buyers by leveraging email marketing

By building an opt-in list, you are building an asset that is valuable to your online business. For every subscriber on that list, you already have their permission to send emails to them. This implies that:

  • You are sending something that they asked of you to them.
  • You are creating a relationship of a lifetime with them.
  • You can measure the response 100 percent.
  • You can enjoy a highly targeted marketing that is more effective and cheaper than radio, TV, or print.

Every of your website visitors that opt-in for your emails is a lead. And one of the most effective tools to follow them up is email marketing.

Conclusion

The internet world is always changing with trends coming and going. But the basic principles for starting and growing a successful business online have not changed and will not change anytime soon. So, if you are looking to start your own online business, these are the sequences that you should stick to. You can also carry out a quick review and check for steps that you might be neglecting or aren’t doing well.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Tiffany HarperTiffany Harper is a training guru who has been working in the corporate sector for over a decade now. She is a management graduate and loves to share her experience through blogs and articles. For her love of writing, she also provides freelance help to the cheap assignment help in Adelaide as a paper writing services review writer while working with top essay writing service.