Becoming Your Boss Part II

   Hey guys, how was your week? Have you started working on your ideas? Remember No one can stop you unless you allow them. As promise here is the second part of my last week post to get your business up in no time.  In the last post I talked about ‘turning your problems into money’ read this story I bumped into last week

Lucinda’s family founded Lyons – Britain’s first food ‘empire’ – and ran it for the best part of 70 years. Although Lucinda shares her parents’ flair for cooking, she took a degree in Physiology, which provided her with a scientific understanding of the human body.
At six months old, Angus, Lucinda’s eldest son was diagnosed with severe allergies to dairy products and eggs. On attempting to cater for his dietary requirements she would discover that her second son, Robin was a diagnosed coeliac. Opportunity and acclaim gave Lucinda the impetus to write a second book, ‘How to Cook for Food Allergies’. The book illustrates how to substitute the five main allergens with allergy-free ingredients in 100 of the nation’s favourite dishes.
On embarking on the slow process of searching for substitutes she learnt just how dense and heavy the gluten-free bread alternatives were; so decided to do something about it. After hundreds of attempts, 4 years and a broken oven Genius was born.

Step 4: Spend wisely- Money matter, this is one of the reasons why ideas are not even born in the first place, people believe that money is the key to start up, I totally disagree. Have seen business that kicked off on large capital but failed under months. The key here is discipline; if you can be faithful in small then more will come. My point is start with what you have, to get what you want. Look at your financial plan, look at how much you have as raw cash but don’t stop there, because that will discourage you  unless you have millions somewhere, remember that properties(including intellectual), friends and family are also resources to make use of, activate all. However, my key point is, be effective to use what you have. As a starter, especially small man business, I always recommend freelancers, where you pay people per job, this way you don’t make your expenses way higher than revenue in your first few months.

Step 5: Don’t give up- why am I saying don’t give up? Your success is not attached to any other thing than your perseverance.  It is not going to be easy, sometimes we plan for client and when implementing, it feels like there is never going to be success, but what I realized over time, is that you only fail, when you give up. Keep pushing and if you need encouragement am always here. Feel free to contact me

 Written by D'Lion

Becoming a BOSS in 5 major steps

  OK guys, I hate to read, which means I should not write long as well. I will try to make this as straight forward as possible, any question contact me.

After working with a lot of brands & entrepreneurs, I picked 5 major steps to their success but it didn’t end there, I also picked  some errors, so I decided to sandwich it for you, to understand things I do when setting up businesses for my clients. 

Step 1: CREATE VALUE-(Marketing 101) there is no point selling or marketing anything that has no value to people. The major purpose of any business or brand (celebrities in this case) is to make life better for a group of people (target market) and yet make profit, Value is the financial worth. That is, your profit or cash in-flow is attached to the value you provide. So first step, ask yourself, what value does my idea or talent create? The easiest way to create value is to look at yourself in terms of problems you face in your daily or seasonal life. Instead of trying to come up with an idea from nowhere, focus on a problem that you have yourself. Is there something missing from your day to day activities, or could something be improved upon with a new product or service? This is a great place to start.

Step 2: CREATE A PLAN- this is one of the reasons business or content fails. Even though 'content is king' but without a plan, failure is close by. There is a proverb that says ‘he who fails to plan, plan to fail’ so you can’t avoid to plan. In the business world there is a lot of planning guide such as business plan, marketing plan, and financial plan and so on but for a small business, you can put all into one Business plan. I remember my first business plan, it did me bad than good because after writing the plan, I was like ‘I can’t achieve all this especially the finance part’ the truth is this, your plan has to be realistic but shouldn’t scare you, it should be a guide map showing starting and ending point. Learn from a monitor, that when you don’t have a map, you actually don’t know where you are at some point, then you will never know if you are going ahead or backward. Get a plan not to scare you but to give you a guide.

Step 3: KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET- here is deeper than, my target market is ‘18 -34’, NO!!! You need to know the WHO, WHERE, WHAT and HOW about your target market. This can be developed through your business plan, it will help you streamline. If you take a good look at yourself, you will know what best means of ads you like, how pricing can move you to love a brand and so, now picture this for your target market. This will help you to be time and resources efficient. Remember at the end of the day, people outside your target market might still be your customer that is why you review plan from time to time. 

OK I will stop here for  now, got work to do. I promise to post the last two steps and give out some free templates I used in setting up brands and businesses next week on this blog. To get our post directly to your box, please put your email address in our newsletter form by your right.

Tips on what you should not do

1.      Hiring the wrong people

If you run a small firm, it’s crucial to have the right people working for you. If you make the mistake of hiring someone who’s bad at the job, or just not as good as you’d expected, then it can drag your small business down, and also drive you mad! Before you employ anyone, write a good job description and a list of what you’re looking for in your ideal candidate to help you make the right choice.

2.      Not having a marketing plan

It doesn’t matter how good you or your products are if you don’t have a good strategy for how to sell those to customers. You need to do your homework even before you put up the ‘open for business’ sign: research your market, know who your competitors are and how they operate, work out who are your target customers and which are the right ways to reach them.

written by Lamo D'lion