Does Starting Your Own Business Seem a Bit Daunting?

No Looking Back

The idea of starting your own business can be daunting. Especially if you have never done it before. It can seem like the "risky" thing to do.

But millions of people around the world have started their own home based business, and haven't looked back. And more and more people are realising that it's the smart way to go, especially in today's economy.

Times have changed. The Internet is here, and it's not going away -- but job security is.

But fear not, because...

Change is the thing that brings massive opportunity!

And the only thing that may be stopping you from taking advantage of that change is your past conditioning. Let me explain...

The Way Of The Past

A hundred plus years ago, your ancestors were entrepreneurs, not employees. They owned their own businesses. They enjoyed their own freedom and did not concern themselves with this thing called "job security."

Then along came the Industrial Age and the need for employees skyrocketed. Large industrial concerns promoted the need for "educational reform" in order to create more employees for a rapidly expanding industry.

So in stepped the government and took over the task of mass education, and adopted the Prussian system. A system designed to produce soldiers and employees -- people who would follow orders and do what they are told.

You can see how beneficial this kind of system is to the corporate world today.

And the corporate world has lured people in by offering "job security." But these days it is becoming very apparent that job security is a thing of the past. Not only may your job not be there in a couple of years, but your employer may not be.

Why Does It Matter?

"So what's the big deal about job security?" you may ask. Well...

Firstly, it isn't there anymore.
And secondly and more importantly, it comes at the expense of something very precious -- your freedom.

The price of security is freedom. And over time, people have been unwittingly trading their freedom for security.

(If you are battling to relate to this concept, think about a maximum security prison. The people there have the highest security, but no freedom.)

Today millions of people are risking having very little freedom, and little security.

So, clinging to "job security" may be costing you dearly: The life you really want to live.

And putting on the façade of driving a nice car, living in a nice home, wearing nice clothing, and doing all the nice middle-class things (all provided by credit) is not cutting it. No amount of "looking good" is going to give you or me true peace of mind. That means...

It's time to focus and "mind your own business" instead of someone else's (your employer's and your banker's).

Just like your ancestors, choose the path of freedom. Live a life of self-autonomy. Because it's worth it.

The only thing that stops us is fear. Not lack of ability. And we only fear the unknown.

So, if you have fear about starting your own business, it's because of your conditioning (education). Think about it...

You have probably spent years in a "Prussian" school system. You were taught that you have to have all the right answers or else all hell will break loose.

That may be great within the corridors of "formal education," but it's doesn't reflect reality.

How We Learn

Remember learning to ride a bike? Did you first spend months learning all the theory so that when you first got on you were sure not to fall off? To "not make a mistake?" I doubt it.

What happened is, you got on. Fell off. Learnt and made corrections. Got on. Fell off. Learnt and made corrections... And so on, until you were riding around everywhere on your back wheel!

That is how we are designed to learn. It's natural. The "formal education" way is what's unnatural in learning how to thrive in life.

We have been so conditioned to fear making mistakes. To get all the answers right. No wonder this paralyses us unless we can somehow overcome all this conditioning. Therefore, let's not attach too much significance to the word "failure." I once read a good quote that went, "Failure is an event, not a person."

So, do you need all the right answers? Bill Gates didn't. He brought a product to market, that brought value to the market, and the market embraced it in a big way. And Microsoft Windows is still not "perfect."

Henry Ford said, "Thank God for my customers. They buy my products before they are perfected."

And yep, you too have value to add! So stop waiting to be perfect and worrying about "getting it all right" and just start offering it! Believe it or not, but there are people who will relate to you and want what you can offer them.

Just Start

Start that business. It you don't, who else will? That's what I did, in spite of being "educated" otherwise.

Entrepreneurs know that they don't have to know all the right answers. They just need to know where to find the answers when necessary. Even very successful entrepreneurs are always learning. For them there is no such thing as being "educated" (past-tense). It is an ongoing process.

All persons are hypnotised from infancy by the culture in which they grow up. The prime task of adult life is dehypnotisation, enlightenment. -- Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold

So go for it. Do something bigger and more meaningful with your life.

If you don't make a difference in the world, you will be more inclined to just complain about the problems in the world. And that has never helped anybody.

It has never been easier or cheaper to start a home based business. It can even be done part-time. All thanks to the Internet.

And being non-technical doesn't have to stop you either. Technology has brought with it its own solutions to its shortcomings. It doesn't matter if you're a Generation-Y or a Pre-baby-boomer.

With the advent of the Internet and Web 2.0, and all the coaching available out there for starting a successful home business, there is practically no risk.

The risk is in sitting there watching the "old economy" melt before your eyes.

And job security is part of that old economy.

Rather make your own security -- like your ancestors did.

Because you can...

Reference:
About the Author:
Tony Kennard is a work-at-home entrepreneur. He promotes the idea of financial freedom and self-autonomy through personal business ownership.He teaches Attraction Marketing as the best method to attract people to your business (traditional or MLM), and have it flourish.

Starting Your Own Business - Discover 7 Profitable Methods to Energize the Start of Your Business.

Nowadays people are learning the value and freedom of starting their own business. You can create enthusiasm and excitement for starting a business by promoting the success of your own business to beginning entrepreneurs. Keep reading to discover 7 profitable methods to energize starting your own business.

1. Before you decide to start your own business, make sure you check and see that there is a market with money willing to pay for products you create for that market. This is a sure way to run a successful business.

2. Make sure you feel supported in the business that you operate. However you can get that support either by going to the library or by attending networking meetings or talking with other business colleagues, make sure you feel supported in your business.

3. It makes a lot of sense to hire a business coach. By using quality business coaching services, you can customize business applications to your business.

4. Learn from your mistakes and feel comfortable about making mistakes. Making mistakes is part of the way that you learn how to succeed.

5. Focus on acting professional in your business. When you focus on acting professional, people will know that you know quality business. It will be very appealing to them and help you get customers.

6. Treat yourself and your many customers respectfully. They will appreciate that and see that you are the preferred businessperson they choose to do business with.

7. Provide superior customer service. This will help you improve profits because customer service is king in business.

Start a Business - The 4 Latest Popular Ways to Accelerate Starting a Business.

With your business expertise, now is a great time for you to increase your profits by helping people learn how to start a business and run that business successfully. Continue reading to learn the latest 4 popular ways to accelerate starting a business.

1. Take advantage of the many business resources available to help you start a business. You can hire a business coach and that makes a lot of sense. That way you can customize the training to your business. Go to the library, do online research, visit the Small Business Administration, and perhaps even the business department in your local college.

2. Check to make sure that there is a market for your business before you start creating products and developing services. You're looking for people who are looking for answers to a very pressing problem. You can look on the Internet and see what problems people are experiencing. You might want to focus on people who are still employed because we know they already have money to invest in a business of their own.

3. Remember the reason that you go into business is to serve a market. Use your expertise in a particular niche to enjoy serving that market by solving the problems of that market.

4. In your sales technique develop a short, friendly and efficient way of encouraging people to improve their lives. After all, that is what they are doing in starting their business. You are asking people to improve their lives by doing something differently from their current way of doing things.

Hiring your man Friday.

Hiring your man Friday.

This is what we call in the business “a good problem to have”. The hiring and on-boarding of professional talent is a classic growing pains-type of problem that is faced by every entrepreneur. 

From my work in Silicon Valley, I have observed that startups in any industry go through three distinct phases of organisational growth characterised by very different needs. Stage One is all about innovation — creating that “killer product”. In this stage the strategy focuses on speed to market and the emphasis is on creating a culture of innovation by hiring and nurturing creative talent and product development skills, in an organisation that is relatively unconstrained by formal structure and roles. 

Stage Two is all about market penetration — creating as broad a footprint as possible for the product. In this stage, the strategy focuses on building awareness and creating sales channels, and the emphasis shifts to building a sales culture by hiring market developers and salespersons, and getting more sophisticated in terms of measuring and rewarding sales performance. 

Stage Three marks the “graduation” from startup to a viable business. It is entered when the company realises that it is has grown so quickly that things are getting out of control, and there is a risk of frittering away the gains it has achieved to competition that will quickly smell success and move in, sometimes with deeper pockets. The focus of this stage of growth is profit extraction. The strategy focuses on balancing the competing demands of effectiveness and efficiency — bringing costs and quality under control while maximising revenue. The secret to success in this critical third stage is recognising and managing the interrelatedness of the 3Ps of successful growth — professionalising, introduction of process, and profit extraction. 

Professionals bring expertise and experience with having “been there, done that”. The introduction of process brings greater predictability that is critical for better coordination in a growing business, and greater control over cost and quality. Finally, the emerging emphasis on profitability marks the transition from a wistful startup to a viable commercial business. Many startups fail because their leaders don’t recognise that their organisation and mindset regarding how they are structured, how roles are defined, who they hire, how they are rewarded, etc., needs to consciously make the shift from one stage of growth to the other. 

The introduction of the 3Ps of growth into a startup is always a very difficult challenge. Startups are often fired by visionary even missionary zeal, and a sense of intimacy, of being like family. That is exactly what is needed for success in Stages 1 and 2, but could also become the biggest stumbling block to success in Stage 3. The hiring and introduction of professionals will often become the lightning rod for drawing criticism from employees who are used to a “just do it” way of operating and see the professional as the one who “doesn’t get it”. The trigger for this ire is almost always the introduction of process — which is the ugly “P-word” in the world of entrepreneurs — and the increasing emphasis on cost or bottom-line considerations. 

The writer asks the question about red flags he/she should look for in a resume when hiring senior staff for the first time in a startup. The fact that he/she recognises this is going to be a challenge is a good sign. So how should we go about it? 

Success of senior staff plays out in three acts spread out over a year or so. Act One is the hiring of the right person. The entrepreneur should look for fit in terms of attitude, experience, and expertise in that order of priority. Attitude in terms of willingness to work in an environment that may be more rough and tumble than orderly. Experience of having worked in unstructured and rapidly changing situations, introducing process and discipline into it and dealing with/overcoming resistance. And expertise in the relevant functional area. There is nothing wrong with hiring someone with a big company background to work in a startup as long as they meet the selection criteria. On the other hand, selecting someone whose resume suggests a gap or lack of fit in one of the three ingredients attitude, experience, or expertise, could be risky. 

It is important, however, for the entrepreneur to recognise that success will depend not only on good hiring, but also on Acts Two and Three — on-boarding and on-going support. By definition, every startup feels different and operates differently. Any new hire that comes into senior positions will be seen and treated as an “outsider”. It will be important to anticipate this reaction and pave the way for a smooth on-boarding of the new senior hire because startups cannot afford disruptive internal conflict. Within months, as the professional starts introducing the business processes that he was hired to implement, waves of resistance are likely. This too can be managed with sufficient forethought and planning. These actions are not just important, they are critical to ensure the startup moves past its growing pains to becoming a viable business. 

Author Reference:

Rajan Srikanth 

President, Asia, 

Mercer Human Resource Consulting

HR - Hiring:- 10 Great Ways to Make Bad Hiring Decisions.

The underlying purpose was to demonstrate the point that many important decisions, especially hiring decisions, are based on invalid assumptions, false impressions, personal beliefs, and lack of objective data.

With this article as a starting point, let me offer some expert advice on how to make really bad hiring decisions:

1. Make Emotional Decisions and Justify them with Facts. 

Most interviewers make quick judgments about a candidate based on the four “A’s” – how attractive, articulate, assertive, and affable the candidate is. Candidates who pass the test are asked easier questions, with the interviewer looking for information to justify the positive impression. Contradictory and negative information is ignored. Candidates who don’t meet the appropriate first impression standard are assumed incompetent, with the interviewer asking tougher questions and seeking only information to prove their initial emotional judgment. Why waste your valuable time? Instead, just conduct a five-minute interview and forget collecting any facts. It won’t make any difference in your final decision, anyway.

Do Not Seek Out Objective Data if it Contradicts Your Beliefs Or Ignore it if You Find Some. 

I remember meeting a very attractive and seemingly quite competent candidate for a VP HR spot, who gave a superficial answer to an HR strategy question. I had to fight with myself about whether to ask a challenging follow-up question which would prove she was unqualified on this important job criteria. After some soul searching, I asked the question, which she flubbed, and she was not presented. The point of this is that it’s very tough to eliminate a candidate you like, and even tougher to seek out positive information for candidates you don’t initially think would fit. So rather than get to the truth, go the easy route, and trust your gut feelings and first impressions.

2. Make Sure No One Knows the Real Job. 

The purpose of the interview is to determine competency and motivation to do the actual work required. If you don’t know what work the candidate is actually going to be doing it’s impossible to assess motivation. Competency, on the other hand, is pretty easy to figure out with just a rough understanding of job needs. Unfortunately, when you look at the underperformers in your company, you’ll discover most of them are quite competent to do the work, they just don’t find the work they’re doing very satisfying. These are the people that need to be over-managed and pushed to achieve average results. So to make sure you hire more of these people, go out of your way to not tell the person you’re hiring anything about the job until the day she starts. What a surprise that will be.

Use Skills-Based Job Descriptions to Find, Screen, and Assess Candidates. 

The best candidates tend to have a track record of achievement, comparable (but not identical) skills, and are quick-learners. This is how the best talent is promoted within an organization. Yet, when hiring from outside we use a criteria that eliminates these top performers from consideration, seeking only those candidates who have exactly the right skills doing exactly the same work. The only people who fit this criteria are average candidates. So keep up the average work. While you won’t get promoted, you will get hired.

3. Make Sure Your Ads are Hard to Find. 

When top people begin the job-hunting process they tend to seek out former associates, Google for jobs (e.g., “software sales jobs Dallas”), use social networking sites, or conduct some top-down industry research looking for the best industries and companies that meet their needs. If your jobs can’t be easily found by candidates using these techniques, you’ll never see the best people. To continue not seeing any good people make sure you continue to post your ads on the major boards, where the best people look last.

Write Boring Ads that Start with the Req Number. If your ads are found, make sure they’re so boring that they preclude a good person from even applying. You can do this by leading off with the req number, a dumb title, telling the person whether the job is full-time or not, and if you’ll pay for relocation. Then go into a boring description of the job. Then make sure you clearly state that the candidate must not apply unless the person possess a laundry list of skills and experiences that was lifted from some job description written a few years ago.

Make Sure that Interviewers are Untrained and Can Ask Any Questions They Want. 

Hiring mistakes are no big deal, so why not let anyone interview the candidate, ask any questions they want, and then ask them whether you should hire the person using whatever criteria they think appropriate. To make matters worse, only let untrained interviewers meet your candidates. This will certainly impress those top candidates you see regarding your company’s level of professionalism.

Add Up the Yes and No Votes. Here’s a sure-fire way to get the hiring decision wrong…let each untrained, biased, emotional, and superficial interviewer have a full yes/no vote on who should get hired. Then to even out these errors, give a no vote more power than a yes vote, give unprepared interviewers the same voting rights as prepared interviewers, and then add up the votes. To make sure this process works as described, do not challenge anyone’s assessment, just in case the person might get offended. This is more important than the right answer.

Force Candidates to Formally Apply before You Can Even Chat With Them. Top people, when they just enter into the job-hunting process, have lots of questions and are comparing different companies and situations. One good way to prevent seeing or hiring any of these people is to not let them just talk with a recruiter or hiring manager unless they formally apply first. Most won’t, but if you have some persistent person who still decides to apply anyway, make sure you have him complete a rigorous application process, submit a resume and a statement that everything stated is true. Of course, to make sure a good person doesn’t sneak through this bureaucratic blockade, be sure not to contact the person for a least a week. Collectively, this will show the person you mean business.

Focus On Compensation and Skills Rather than Career Opportunities. Since the best people are more concerned with career growth, the opportunity to make an impact and want to know the broad details about the job before getting serious, we don’t want to give them any of this information. Who knows, somebody good might actually be interested in and qualified for one of our open jobs. Instead, to prevent this from happening, don’t discuss the job at all, first screen candidates only on their skills and then tell them what your comp range is. If there isn’t a fit here, don’t waste your time, just go on to another candidate. You certainly wouldn’t want to ask candidates about some of their major achievements first and see if any of your other openings better match their needs. They actually might be interested in one of these jobs, despite the comp range. Wouldn’t that mess things up?

You can see why these are my favorites rules for not hiring good people. What amazes me is that so many companies follow them and expect different results.

Don’t fire them, fire them up!!

Don’t fire them, fire them up!

Startup Hiring Checklist

RECRUITING IS MARKETING

More often than not, the best employees are the ones that find you, not the ones you go out and look for. The problem a lot of startups have is, how do I get more people to find me? Simple — think of it as a marketing exercise. Just as you would explain the product features to a potential customer, explain to a candidate what it's like to work for you (in real language, no HR platitudes thanks), what you look for in people and then make sure people find out about it. You can even post a Web page on life at your company. It's a small investment to make but an effective tool in getting a vast audience to read about the work experience under your roof.

TRUST YOUR TEAM

You’ve hired smart people already right? You think your team is the best on the planet. So put them in front of candidates! Don’t hide them in a back room. Too many people have their HR people do most of the interviewing. Let the candidates get to know the people they'll be working with, if they join your company.

YOU DON’T WIN WITH MONEY

Many entrepreneurs think that the simple way to hire a good team is to throw money at the problem. In choosing a place to work, people look at the company, the role, the people, the environment and the money. Pretty much in that order, but it's important to keep the balance among all the variables. As long as the money is competitive (and this is key), the other factors should decide the final outcome. Money doesn’t win people over, money prevents you from losing them. It gets you in the game. People value their time and while you might be able to ‘buy it’ with an outrageous salary, that’s a temporary measure. They’ll eventually realise that doing a boring job 10 hours a day for huge dollars isn’t the way they want to spend their life. It's not a way to build a company, it’s a short-term band aid strategy. You don’t win people with a lot of money and I’d say you don’t want to. People who chose a job purely on the larger salary are probably people you don’t want on your team anyway. That said, the corollary here is that you can definitely lose people with money. If you're not paying what the market is or your firm just pays really low salaries, people will go elsewhere. It's all about balance.

MAKE SPACE FOR SMART PEOPLE

Sometimes people come along who don’t fit into any existing role. You can consider hiring really smart people, even if you don’t have a defined role for them. At the same time, don’t be afraid to redirect a candidate if you feel they’re interviewing for the wrong job. If you have a roadmap for your company’s progress, you would have created titles and jobs that you would require in the next two or three years. Many smart people will fit into these roles, current or future, but others create the job profile for themselves. Have the flexibility to include both groups in your team.

TO HIRE OR NOT TO HIRE

The hire-or-don’t-hire decision is critical. Why is this decision so important? The damage a wrong choice can do to morale, to your product, to your company should never be overstated. It’s a little like poker, the most important and hardest skill to learn is when to fold a hand not when to bet. Not hiring a few good people is far better in the long term than hiring a few bad ones. Err on the side of caution.

NO KEYWORD HIRING

This mostly applies to software developers, but the principle is important for all. Don’t hire based on keywords in a resume. Too many companies look for “JMS”, “EJB 3” and “J2EE” and assume someone is a good developer. Look for people who are good at learning new technologies, rather than stacking up acronyms.