What Do You Want from Your Small Business? (Setting Long Term Goals for your company)
First, i have to apologize, i accidentally deleted all the comments from my short list of readers that we want to grow. I”M SORRY! Please continue to add comments, i’m still working my way around this platform.
So, on to my story. Last year, my aunt Mary Jo, who has a doctorate in International Diplomacy contacted me and told me that she needed a website, logo, biz card, etc, etc. I knew that she had been traveling non-stop with tons of business, so i asked her? Why?
“Well, i don’t know, someone told me i should have one.” I asked her, “Where do you want your business to be in 5 years? Do you want employees? do you want massive growth? Are you having a hard time finding business?”
She told me that she has tons of business, and doesn’t want any employees or to have an “office”, as she works from home. So, i told her that a website wouldn’t be necessary, but i can get her a cheap logo from LogoSnap.com (only $39) and i’d take care of her business cards for her, from BargainPrinting.com - which are like $35. I probably saved her close to a thousand dollars, and more importantly, the pain and time of having to create something unneccessarily. So, what’s my point? My point is to create your short term objectives and goals based on your long term goals, and DO NOT be pressured by what others expect from you. It’s ok to be a small business that pays the bills and gives you flexibility. It’s ok to work from home part time.
So, my recommendation to any SOHO or startup is to think about where you want your business to end up. If you want to be the next Michael Dell, and end up being a huge corporation, they you’ll know what’s expected of you when it comes to the type of corporation/llc you set up, what type of marketing materials you ultimately need to have, infrastructure you are moving towards, financing, type of employees, etc. And, if you want to have a successful local flower shop with hopes of providing services to the likes of Star Jones on her wedding, then go for it. 
Something else to consider is, will you want to sell your business someday? Well, then you better have VERY clean books and document everything. If not? Then you don’t have to sweat over your books and the EBITDA - you’ll be concerned about cash flow.
Here’s what you need to do:
1) Sit with your wife/business partner and discuss where you want this business to be in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years to include: Financial goals, number of employees, products/services you want to offer, level of service, number of stores, profitability. These should absolutely correlate with what you want at home. If you are a family person, and don’t want to work 15 hour days, don’t shoot to be the next Microsoft.
2)Determine your exit strategy (ie, if you want to die as the owner, that’s a strategy, and ok, but at some stage, life or death, you will no longer be working for this company).
3) Make a list of what decisions you need to make in order to help you get to this point (ie, type of corporation, business relationships, types of employees, building, marketing materials, etc.).
4) Have fun…owning your own business should be fun. If it’s not fun (most of the time)- then you are making some bad decisions or need to make some hard decisions in order make changes.
SOHO Blog adds a new Blogger
Hello everyone. I’m Joe Witte, a new writer/blogger for SOHOBlog.org. I’m looking forward to posting a new article weekly (at least, hopefully). We’ll see if my 4 and 1 year old daughters will give me some time to continue to provide insightful, interesting and sometimes controversial and hopefully funny articles for my cyber friends to review and comment on.
I’m current a partner at Logo Design Guru, which is a small business branding company specilizing in custom logo design, web design, brochures and SEO. We’ve been in business for 5 years and are generating well in to 7 figures. We are an International company that has seen our share of bumps and bruises, and we’ve learned a lot along the way.
I also started ITN (Internet Travel Network) which is now www.TravelAdNetwork.com and sold that around 4.5 years ago. Additionally, i developed and sold CentricSource.com, an offshore consulting company, which we sold in early 2007. I graduated from PSU with a degree in Marketing, and am an Army Veteran, having served in Iraq in 2005.
I also write for Epoch Times (http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/business/avoiding-the-bad-employee-1712.html) , and have been featured in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, and a various paper or too. I’m a pretty regular guy, go to work, spend time with family, like to play tennis, work on the lawn, watch football, and build our business by taking care of employees and customers as best we can.
I look forward to sharing more!
Tips to Get Traffic to your Blog – Don’t Miss It!
If you check my last month’s posts, you will find an article “How Blogs can do Big Wonders for Small Business”. The message of that post was conveyed effectively but when one of my friends Marie, an uprising blogger with some exceptional posts on her blog asked me for an advice on how to get more traffic on a blog, I thought of posting this article with traffic driving tips for blogs.
Just check these points and do let me know if these tips are helpful anyhow.
- Post keyword oriented posts every day with plenty of fresh and unique content.
- Increase traffic to your blog by linking other people’s work and you will most likely get these bloggers put a link on their site back to yours without even having to ask.
- Add relevant links in your blog to trade and get your links on important places.
- Submit your blog to traditional search engines…Google, Yahoo, MSN.
- Try to be the first to come up with a unique topic and encourage others to blog the same topic with your link.
- Give reasonable advices to your readers and share your experiences with them so they may keep on coming to you in future.
- Make your posts short and interesting, so that the reader doesn’t gets bored.
- Criticize the posts by your fellow bloggers, this will invite them to reply with links directing to your blog.
- Do place relevant images along, to make the post attractive and inviting.
- Highlight your best posts on your blog to make the trip more exciting for your new readers..
- Write about hot happenings going around to make your blog look updated.
- Give credit to those who inspired you to write a post.
- Make chains of your post, if you receive an overwhelming response on any of your post, try coming up with another part of it.
- Post on weekdays, more people are surfing or browsing net.
- Cover the resourceful topics, which haven’t been discussed more on internet.
- Just don’t add sweet comments about your blog, have the guts to place negative views of your readers. This will reflect your genuinety and create controversy.
- Visit other people’s blogs and try commenting on their posts but be tactful about it; some bloggers get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.
- Include polls and quizs on your blog so people visit you more often to answer a new question every week.
- Last but not least, be patient, increasing traffic to your blog is easy but it takes some time. Set your small business up for success and keep adding value to your blog on a daily basis and your bank account will grow with the traffic.
Try to interact with your readers by replying to their comments; this will bring them a feeling of friendliness.
Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, but do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!
If you know any other good tips, it will be an honor for me if you share them here.
