Small Business Success Strategies

Mistakes That Can Flat Line Your Small Business Sales

People are talking about a recession and that means fear is in the air. Well, if you want your small or solo business or practice to flourish anyway, make sure you're not making any of these common mistakes.

Mistake 1 - Focusing on only one or two profit strategies

If you only have sales and profit coming into your business from one source--say advertising for example--you're leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

Read Janis entire article Mistakes That Can Flat Line Your Small Business Sales

Janis Pettit, our official Small Business Strategy Coach Expert

5 Core Skill Sets for Coaching Business Success

Have you ever felt that you need more knowledge, training or credentials to be highly valuable to your coaching clients? While every coach has some areas to develop, don’t make the mistake of discounting the many skills you already bring to the table. That goes for business skills as well. No matter how new you are to coaching, you’re no novice in life, work and communication skills.

It’s time to recognize and leverage your strengths, and consciously build a few core skills to help you thrive in your coaching business.

Read Rhonda's entire article 5 Core Skill Sets for Coaching Business Success

Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Expert

Three Tips For Making the Most Money With Stay Home Jobs

Working in the home is often the best choice for many people.  For some individuals, working at home is their only choice.  Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to make the best choices when they work out of their homes and their income often reflects the mistakes they make.  The following are three tips to help you learn how to make the most money from your stay home jobs:

1.  To make the most money from stay home jobs, you must continuously look for better paying work.  Being satisfied with your pay is not going to help you.  Why would you want to work eight hours a day when you could earn the same pay when working only six hours?  Schedule the time you need to look for work everyday.  Unless you make it a habit, you will never increase your earnings.  For a lot of people, looking for new work is always the first item on their agenda.

Read Stone's entire article Three Tips For Making the Most Money With Stay Home Jobs

Stone Evans, our official Home Business Expert

Laundry SMARTcuts ™

Organizing ways to save time and energy on your laundry can give you back lots of business and family time.

By reader request, here are my systems in a nutshell.

I wash by the person not by the colors (as mom and grand mom did). Put a basket in floor of each person’s closet. Wash kid clothes, towel and bed linen in one weekly load. I do a separate load for Mom and Dad’s sheets plus towels. We have a special place for each person to hang wet towels (color coding is smart here) so we use 1 per week each.

At the age of 7, I work with my kids to teach them to do their laundry. By the 8th birthday the kids were responsible for doing their own laundry on their assigned day. You may want to try the new Purex one sheets for the kids’ use.

Read Debbye's entire article Laundry SMARTcuts ™

Debbye Cannon, our official BusinessMom Mentor Expert

Self Employed Business Marketing Plan: 4 Tips to Fine-Tune Your Niche Marketing

Before you can have clients, you need to have prospects -- that's what marketing is all about. If your marketing isn't attracting the kind of people you'd like to be working with, it's like pushing a rope -- you are trying to sell them something they don't need, and they are looking for something you don't offer. A little fine-tuning of your marketing plan can make the difference between a solo business that lurches and stalls, and a business that runs smoothly and is fun to operate.

Your Four-Point Marketing Tune-Up Checklist:

Understand the difference between your Target Market and your Niche. A target market has distinguishing demographic characteristics; for example, recently widowed working women under 50.

Read Terri's entire article Self Employed Business Marketing Plan: 4 Tips to Fine-Tune Your Niche Marketing

Terri Zwierzynski, our official Solo-Entrepreneur Expert

What Keeps You Up at Night? You May be Worrying About All the Wrong Things

In my last newsletter I finally broke the news that I was hard at work putting together all the elements of something intended to help you change course faster than you could likely ever do on your own. One of the inspirations for my new "fast track a dream" project came from a question put to me by a reporter for USA Today's entrepreneur section. What he wanted to know was, "What keeps a small business owner like you up at night?"

The article came out a few weeks later. Not surprisingly it focused on concerns of people who own dry cleaning shops, car dealerships, ad agencies and other traditional brick and mortar businesses. What kept these small business owners up at night were things like rising fuel prices, employee turnover, the cost of employee health care coverage, and a potential jump in the minimum wage. Frankly I never expected my answer to be included in the article because at this stage of my business the kind of things I angst about are atypical to say the least.

Read Valerie's entire article What Keeps You Up at Night? You May be Worrying About All the Wrong Things

Valerie Young, our official Career Change Expert

How to Make Money Online By Marketing via Answering Questions

Did you realize thousands of folks search in the form of a question each and every month? Learn how to make money online by capitalizing on answering the questions pertaining to your web site theme, driving thousand of unique visitors to your site.

First you will need to find a highly searched question which is relevant to your sites content.

Some examples of highly searched questions:

How to lose weight

How to paint

Read Bruce's entire article How to Make Money Online By Marketing via Answering Questions

Bruce Galle, our official Getting Started Online Expert

Truck Driving Jobs - The Top 30 Jobs of the Future

Truck driving jobs are always plentiful due to the constant driver turn over rate that now stands at 128 percent for over the road drivers. The average yearly income for truck drivers is $35,000 to $45,000 for company drivers, and $95,000 to $130,000 for owner operators, depending on where you live. Currently, as a local driver, working five days per week and home every night, I enjoy a driving job grossing $50,200 per year.

Every two years the US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases their list for the top 30 fastest growing job opportunities. Just released, this list shows the best career choices projected to the year 2016. Truck driving didn't make the list, but how does truck driving jobs salaries compare with these 30 fastest growing jobs for the future?

Read Allen's entire article Truck Driving Jobs - The Top 30 Jobs of the Future

Allen Smith, our official Trucking/Truck Driver Training Expert

Personally I've been using a life or business coach almost consistently since 1997--before it was "cool" to have a coach! Hiring a coach/mentor has always helped me focus laser like on what I've wanted to achieve and helped me reach it. I can certainly work without a coach or mentor; however, I can't reach my goals as fast without using one. For me time equals money and I want to save time by reaching my goals as fast as possible.

The world is changing daily. It's impossible to keep up with everything you must know to grow your business. Using a mentor or coach is a GREAT WAY to make sure you get the information, structure, accountability and support you need for your business to grow fast!

Read Sharon's entire article Is it Time for a Business Coach?

Sharon Quarmby, our official Lead Generation Expert

Social Networking Tip: Be Anything But Boring

During a recent consultation with a client, we took a good look at her Facebook profile and her blog. This successful woman entrepreneur wasn't really into social networking, so she delegated out most of her tasks to her team. She mistakenly thought that she could reap the benefits of Web 2.0 marketing without actually having to show up and interact.

Together we looked at her pages, and immediately were struck by the sheer dullness of everything. Nothing sounded like her, nothing felt like her, and overall it was generic and tedious.

Read Nancy's entire article Social Networking Tip: Be Anything But Boring

Nancy Marmolejo, our official Visibility Expert