Tag Archives for " starting a business "

Praise for Pick from the Passion Tree – Empowering Young Entrepreneurs to Start a Business

passion tree_I am very excited to share with you some of the wonderful comments I have received for my new book, Pick from the Passion Tree – Empowering Young Entrepreneurs to Start a Business.

This book was born during an Ultimate Blog Challenge last year and it is scheduled to go to the printer this coming week and I will begin promotion shortly.  The book will be available only on my website for a while and then on Clickbank.  I might also list it with some of the larger book sellers, however, I will not list it on Kindle again.  I was not happy with the Kindle experience and the fact that you cannot do any other thing with your book while it’s on Kindle for 90 days.  The free days were a huge success, but there were no Kindle sales after that.  I did much better on my own.

Without further ado, here are the wonderful things being said about the book.

Julia is the sweetest person I know with an amazing heart and a fierce dedication to young people having the opportunity to live their dreams.  This book she has written empowers young people to get into the right mindset about becoming entrepreneurs and starting their own business.  Every young person in high school should have a copy of this book so they can have choices about their future and the opportunity to have the lifestyle they dream of.   

Rich German, Epic Coach Academy, Author, Monetize Your Passion, follow your hear and create life’s ultimate win-win-win

The world is changing at an unprecedented rate.  The old adage of “get a good education, get a good job and you’ll be set for life” no longer exists.  The time is now to chart your own path and start your own business that will set the world on fire.  Julia Neiman’s, Pick from the Passion Tree, provides some great information to get you thinking and moving in the right direction.

Bob Proctor, best-selling author, You Were Born Rich

What I like about Julia is that she marches to her own drum.  She doesn’t tell young people what to think or what to do, she empowers them to think for themselves and hands them all their own drums.  I love that she is empowering young people to become entrepreneurs.

Adam Urbanski, The Millionaire Mentor

Julia Neiman is on a mission to make dreams come true! Her powerful book for teens and young adults is chock-full of provocative questions, inspiring stories, uplifting quotes, and most importantly—action steps. In this easy-to-digest and enjoyable-to-read book, Julia takes potential young entrepreneurs on a journey from picking their passions to promoting their products. Her holistic and thorough approach is a must-read for any young person who is considering starting a business. (Heck, a budding entrepreneur of any age will love it!)

Sherry Richert Belul, founder of Simply Celebrate and former editor for Nickelodeon’s ParentsConnect.

Entrepreneurs may think big, but they know that small focused simple shifts and daily actions are what make them successful. The step by step approach of Julia Neiman’s, Pick From The Passion Tree creates an easy to read and easy to follow path for the young entrepreneur. Julia has a way of challenging young people to think big while guiding them with questions that will empower them to make decisions as they set off towards their own success.

Alisa Ugalde, Entrepreneur, Claim Your Clients.com.

In today’s fast pace and information overload it’s enough to give anyone a serious case of overwhelm and procrastination.  Julia helps you get your breakthrough by giving you a thorough overview, plus totally breaks it down to the basic level.  The core statement which really brought it home for me was, “When you’re searching for your passion, it’s important to pursue things that you enjoy for one reason…to find your passion, you need to dedicate yourself to a cause”.  I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially teens and young adults who need to “work out what’s important in their lives, follow their passion and set out on the entrepreneurial path, today!”

Keith LeBlanc RPh.  Social Media Strategy Consultant

One of the challenges of the next decade is how we’re going to create enough jobs -especially for young people. Recession or no recession, the nature of work is changing, workforces are shrinking in the major companies, new patterns are emerging.

The most important is the growth of self-employment and new start-ups.  Already numbers in the US and across Europe are at record highs, and that’s where most of the growth in the employment market is coming from.  Some commentators predict that half the US workforce could be employed in micro-businesses by 2020.

It’s for them that Julia Neiman has written her book, Pick From the Passion Tree – Empowering Young Entrepreneurs to Start a Business.  She challenges young people to work out what’s important in their lives, follow their passion and set out on the entrepreneurial path … today!

Alan Miles, Human Resources Consultant, Achievement Management Specialist

 

Only 33 hours left to be eligible for the VIP Upgrade at The Youth Empowerment Telesummit.  Take advantage NOW, before the prices increase dramatically!  Own this amazing content filled series that will provide you with practical, easy to implement strategies to engage the tweens, teens and young adults in your life to improve communication, build trust, and empower them with life skills.

So You Want To Go Online With a Business

Today’s article is by guest blogger:

Kaye Dennan of Home Business Success Ideas

If you are an internet surfer you go online and within minutes you find answers to your search. The first ten listings for your search term come on the front page of Google (although I appreciate there are other search engines you may use) and the sites on the first page are not necessarily the best, but they are the best ones recognized by the search engines. If you look at the top of the Google page you will see that there can literally be millions of pages covering the search term that you have used.

So what you have to do to get your site recognized is find keywords (search terms your customers will use) that are not so common so that your site will be easily found on the web.

Let me assure you that there are plenty of clients out there for everybody and if you try to get page ranking with the more popular keywords it will be years before you get to the front page. But if you use the less common search terms you will be found by more than enough customers to keep you busy.

In saying that, you will have to be patient. The internet has billions of written, videos and graphic items being posted every single day so it may take up to 3 months before you will get to the front page for your chosen keyword.

Getting to the front page is not just about using the right keywords but also marketing your site using that keyword.

 How Does This Affect You

It affects you in the way that when you build a website you need to be able to get your pages up into the first 10 search terms so that you will get the clicks from potential clients.

Without optimizing your website with keywords to take advantage of the search terms you are really wasting your time building a website in the first place. If page placement is not important to you then this exercise is not so critical.

So let me tell you how to make sure that your website or at least some of its pages are going to get front page ranking.

 Pretty Is Not Always Best

I know many people who have paid thousands of dollars to have the ‘prettiest’ website made by skilled technical people, but there has been no keyword research and these website owners are wondering why their website which they paid thousands of dollars for is not being found on the internet.

Google and other search engines do not care about ‘pretty’ they care about content.

The Very First Steps To Building A Successful Website

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the importance of doing your keyword search first. It is absolutely critical to the success of your website and your business, even when deciding on your business name.

Keyword research will ensure that you find the best keywords for your business, not only for online marketing but offline as well.  These words should be the focus when you are deciding on a business name and also on a domain name (the name of your website, e.g. http://julianeiman.com   In Julia’s case she is well recognized in her industry so she can get away with using her own name for her website.

But if you do not personally have a well recognized name in the field that you wish to pursue then you need to choose a name which will find bring you clients when people use these search terms.

So How Do You Find Quality Keywords

One of the simplest ways is to go into the Google keyword tool.

Here is how to fill this form out:

    • Go to the ‘word or phrase’ box and type in the best word that describes your business
    • In the left-hand column tick the ‘broad match’ box
    • Make sure the locations box (in gray) says ‘All’
    • Then fill in the captcha word box.  (In the screen shot below I have already filled in the captcha word box and been taken through to the next step.)
    • Scroll down and you will see a list of keywords of which some of them will be suitable to use for your business.
    • You can download these keywords in a csv file to your computer.

At this point you are looking for keywords that have a quality score.

Find keywords that have a Global Monthly Search of 500+ preferably over 1000. Then go into Google search and see if the pages come up to under 30,000.

It is tempting to go for the higher number in search terms but if you do you have so much competition that you will find that your website just does not get ranked and your potential customers just do not find you.

Here is an example of two keywords. The first you might think of is “tomato blight” but when you do your searches you will come up with over 120,000 pages but if you use the keyword “tomato blight treatment”, which is a much more defined keyword you still have a good monthly search volume of 1,600 and only 30,800 competitive pages. So by defining your main keyword “tomato blight” even further you will get quicker and better rankings in the search engines.

So if you were going to have a website about tomato blight you could if it was available have tomatoblighttreatment.com (I don’t know if this is a domain name or not) with your the tag line saying “Stop Tomato Blight From Ruining Your Tomato Crop”

Another Consideration

One point that I have not brought up is the fact that you may only be interested in local contacts. Say for example, your business is to visit people in their homes and eradicate tomato blight then might use your local town, area or county as part of the name and this will definitely help in that instance.

Finally

Put the time into your keyword research as it is the most important part of a successful website. Don’t rush in to setting up your website or choosing your business name and domain name until you have done this keyword research because it is such an important part of your business success.

Make sure you follow the links on this page because it was not possible to cover all the information you need in this one article. Good luck.

Kaye Dennan is an author of many ebooks but her passion is helping people set up and market home businesses.  For this specific purpose Kaye has set up http://homebusinesssuccessideas.com and has shared tips for people wishing to start all types of home businesses and who want to market online and offline.

 

One very important skill or attribute of being an entrepreneur is the ability to get stuff done.  Not everyone is organized and some might require a system to help them figure out what needs to be done.  Whether you are an entrepreneur, a student or a homemaker, The Get Stuff Done Tool is that system to help you manage your time.

Time is the one thing that we all have the same amount of every day.  Time, when lost or wasted, can never be replaced.  Don’t waste your time or anyone else’s. The Get Stuff Done Tool is still available as a free download.  Leave your name and email address in the box with the red arrow at the top-right hand side of the page and get the free download now.

Have you obtained your copy of 31 Powerful Lessons: Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset?  Click here and get your copy now.

 

Create Your Product Funnel: Building Relationships with Your Clients/Customers

A product funnel is essential for monetizing your clients and customers.  It’s a process whereby you attract people to your webpage and build relationships.  If they like and trust you, they will come back and pay for your more expensive products.

It works like this:

You create something they can get at your webpage for free, also known as a “freemium.”  You promote whatever that is on social media, on other people’s blogs, and anywhere else you can find to mention it.  People who want to get that free product come to your site, enter their name and email in your registration box and receive the free product via the autoresponder you set up as one of your business systems (we’ll get to this in a future article).

Your freemium can be a report, a checklist, a survey, a video, an audio, an ebook, you can even give away someone else’s work that you have rights to or ask them to participate in a poll.  Be creative and make it relative to your business because you are trying to create a buzz about yourself and capture people’s names and email addresses.

You may want to create a second free product as an introduction to a new product or low priced program you are preparing to release.  That could be a report, a PDF tool that relates to your new product, a teleseminar or webinar.

When you have prospects in your funnel, you need to find ways to give them more valuable content at increasingly higher prices as they go through the funnel.

Once you’ve sent them some really great content they’ll trust that you do in fact know what you’re talking about, and if you have related products that you are selling, you can make an offer to them.  If they buy… great!  Send them onto another list that is for buyers and start promoting more products that will further enhance their lives.  If they are not buyers, simply continue to offer free information and improve their lives regardless.  The ultimate goal is simply to ensure that you are enriching the lives of those people who have trusted you with their name and email address.

The first product you ask people to pay for should be a low priced item such as an ebook, an audio book, a teleseminar or webinar.  The price range should be between $10 – $50.

The second product or program you create should be within the $50 – $200 price range.  Again, it can be a webinar, teleseminar, telesummit, home study program or anything else that fits your business and addresses your customers’/clients’ issues and needs.

By this time, your community has come to trust you or they wouldn’t still be around.  The fourth level price range should be $200 – $500.  You might offer a boot camp for $347, and the fifth level might offer your one-on-one services for $500.

Get the picture?  By the way, when you offer your products and services at different price points, you are lowering the financial and emotional risk for your prospects. You are essentially making it impossible for them not to buy from you!

What’s in your  product funnel?

The Get Stuff Done Tool is still available as a free download.  Leave your name and email address in the box with the red arrow at the top-right hand side of the page and get the free download now.

Have you obtained your copy of 31 Powerful Lessons: Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset?  Click here and get your copy now.

 

 

Build a Business – The Basics

By now you should understand that building a business is not an easy task. There are many things you need to consider, many questions you need to answer, many things you need to do and know to organize and maintain a successful business.

While money matters to some degree when starting a business (depending on the type of business), the rule of law is important in our society as well.  You will need to be legally prepared to start your business.  That means knowing what business licenses are required by your city, county and state.  It includes deciding on whether your business will be a solo enterprise, a joint venture, a limited partnership, or other structure.  If you are hiring employees or contractors, you will need to have an employer identification number from the IRS and register your business in your state.

Just when you think you have all the information you can handle, there’s always more.

Do you think that because your business is small you are at a disadvantage? Actually, it’s an advantage!  Because you’re small, you are flexible, and you can quickly adapt to market changes.  Here are some startup elements you need to consider before you can launch a successful small business.

Organize it.

    • How will your business get things done?
    • Who does what?
    • What is the structure of your business?
    • How are tasks divided?

Manage your money.

    • Where will your money come from?
    • How will it come in and out of your business?
    • Will you invest back into your business?
    • How much cash do you need to operate and pay expenses?
    • What profit do you expect?

Create your image.

    • Marketing: How will your customers locate you and your business?
    • Do you know where your customers are? Have you designed a plant to find and maintain customers?
    • How will you keep track of your competitors?
    • Do you have a good strategy?

Legalize it!

    • How will the legal system affect your business?
    • How can you protect yourself and your business ideas?

Do you know your federal, state, and local tax laws?

 

 

Have you obtained your copy of 31 Powerful Lessons: Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset?  Click here and get your copy now.

The Get Stuff Done Tool is still available as a free download.  Leave your name and email address in the box with the red arrow at the top-right hand side of the page and get the free download now.

 

Why am I starting a business?

Question #3 on the Junior Achievement’s list of 20 questions to consider before starting your business is “Why am I starting a business?”  This is an essential question that you must be able to answer.  Your why is the motivating force behind your business and should guide all the other decisions you make.

Matt Hunckler, who blogs about business startups, said, “A good business is simply a tool to help you lead the life you want to live. And, done right, your business can be a way to leverage the change you want to see in the world.”

What’s your “why”?

Starting a business and making a go of it is hard work and requires that you sacrifice some other things in your life.  If you’re willing to make those sacrifices and you are committed to your dream, then you need to make sure you are building a business for the right reasons.

Paraphrasing Matt Hunckler again — To define why you’re starting a business is one of the most empowering things you can do.  Your why is what inspires you and the people on your dream team, it sparks action, and breathes purpose into everything you do.

You can find your why by asking yourself these four questions:

  • How and why do I want to change the world?
  • How does starting a business mesh with my personal values and beliefs?
  • How will that business help me live a more fulfilled and purposeful life?
  • Why do I want to run a business?

Does your business “why” align with your personal “why”?

Build your business in such a way that it empowers and inspires yourself and others.  Make sure that your business is authentic and in integrity with your beliefs and personal values.  Build it with systems and routines that motivate and sustain the effort needed to overcome all obstacles and to persevere.

So I ask you: Why does your business do what it does? What value do you provide? How do you (or will you) do that thing better than anyone else in the world? And why is that important—to you and to the world?

To purchase a copy of 31 Powerful Lessons: Empowering Teens and Yound Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset, click on the Resource Button above then look for Buy They Book in the pull down menu.

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What Products/Services Will My Business Provide?

This is the third question on the Junior Achievement’s list of 20 questions to answer before starting your business.  We are not going to talk about brick and mortar businesses in this article.  That is a very complicated topic and it is highly unlikely that those of you reading this book will either be considering that or be well served by any summary I could provide here.  We are focusing on service and online businesses.

The best way we can consider answers to this question is to look at a few examples.  We can start with the most obvious and quickest ways for a teenager to start a business, which is to have a service business within your community.

Yard Maintenance.  Will you just be mowing lawns or will you trim hedges and do weeding?  Will you water and spread grass seeds in season?  Will you plant and manage a garden and will that be just plants and flowers or include vegetables as well?  Will you sweep the driveway, rake the leaves, use a leaf blower?

A lot of this will depend on the equipment you have or that they have on hand to do the job with.  If you have money to purchase your own equipment in the beginning, you can offer more services.  As you begin to earn money, you can invest in more equipment and grow a very nice professional yard maintenance business.

Pet Sitting.  Will you be available to pet sit by staying overnight at your client’s home while they are out of town or will you take their pet to your home?  Will you just stop by at certain times of the day to feed, water and clean up?  If you take the pet home, you might need a puppy gate to contain the animal if the client doesn’t have one you can bring home with you.  Will you give the pet a bath before the owner returns home?  Or will you just be walking dogs for people while they are away for the day?

There are options that you need to consider and some of the services you offer, like taking the pet home or staying at the client’s house might depend on what your parents will allow.  If you have a car, you could take pets to the vet and the groomer for your clients.

So many decisions to make based on what is available to you and what your skills are.  There are other variables as well.  I live in a semi-rural area of ranches.  Our local journal has a classified section for teen workers.  The service businesses they provide include exercising horses, mucking stalls, grooming and feeding.  If a person has horses, they have all the equipment needed to do the job and you just have to show up and do the work.

In a future lesson we will take a look at more Service Based businesses that you can start and/or use to earn money to finance another business that requires more startup funds.

In Part II of this topic in tomorrow’s post we will look at the kinds of internet business models you can consider.

If you need help answering any of these questions, you should have the Get Stuff Done Tool.  It will help you get your thoughts organized.  Just leave your name and email in the sign in box on the upper right hand side of the page and get organized.

What Kind of Business Do I Want?

 

Once you have decided that you are willing to do whatever it takes to build a business, you need to decide what kind of business you want.  Here are more questions to consider:

•Will you offer training, mow lawns, have a pool service, sell a product, write books, manufacture something?  What about a making cupcakes or salad dressing?  Running errands for your neighbors, handling their recycling?

•Will you require a storefront, an office, a warehouse or will you work online and have an internet business?

•Will you work alone or have employees?

There are three main forms of business:

Internet:   This is a business where your office is literally in your computer.  There are many things you do as a business on the internet.  You can sell products on Ebay or Etsy, you can sell your art or things you produce from your hobby, you can earn money blogging if you can writer, you can build a coaching or training business, be a virtual assistant, be a graphic designer, sell your books or recipes or even food items that come from you kitchen.

The thing to remember is that this takes time.  The average business takes two years to build on the internet from start up to beginning to earn money.  It is very unusual for someone to hit it big and make a ton of money right away.  Most of those stories are not true.

Also, having an internet business is not easy.  You are working alone a lot of the time, you have to be a self-starter, motivate yourself and have a lot of patience.

The benefits are that you can work on your schedule, you are your own boss, you can be really creative.  However, even these benefits have a down side.  Working alone can make you feel isolated, you aren’t accountable to anyone and unless you seek them out and ask for assistance, there is no one to help you and you might have to pay for whatever help you need.  There is also a large learning curve where new systems, social media sites and other things are a part of your business.

This is a business option you need to give a lot of thought to and brainstorm some options for working around these downsides and moving forward.

Service:  A service business would include mowing lawns, pet or housesitting, running errands, home care provider, pool service, house/office cleaner and any kind of construction or contractor business, even a lunch business run from a catering truck.  You must be aware of the sort of knowledge and skills that you need, what kind of equipment/tools will you need, and whether or not you need a more formal education and a certificate of license.  This will require some research on your part.

Brick and Mortar:  Within this category are retail stores, restaurants, and manufacturing.  Brick and mortar literally describes a business at some physical location.

There will be some cross overs within the categories, for example, if you have a construction business, you will likely have a physical location where you park your truck, store your tools and have a showroom to engage with clients.

Another option for business is to own a franchise.  This can be expensive because you have to pay the parent company for the franchise license.  Some businesses that are franchises include fast food businesses and service businesses like Molly Maids.  You have to sign a contract with the parent company, they will provide some training about the business and you need to agree to operate within their guidelines and maintain the level of quality they demand.  Owning a franchise isn’t for everyone and there is no guarantee of success even though the parent is a well-known business.  And it can be very expensive and require a loan and lines of credit.  Do you have a relationship with a bank?

So, as you can see, there are many questions to consider each step of the way to building an entrepreneurial business.  Are you still committed to doing what it takes to build your business.

Still haven’t requested the Get Stuff Done Tool?  What are waiting for, it’s free.  Just enter your name and email in the sign in box on the top right side of the page and get started organizing your business today.

Can You Just Jump Into Business?

Many people have a tendency to make things a lot harder on themselves than those things need to be.  Are you one of those people?

When I started my business, I just took my life and work experience and merged them, wrote some copy for my website and viola, I was in business.  Okay, there was a bit more involved, like creating visibility.  That was more time consuming than it was difficult.  The difficult part for me was learning how to do all the online technical stuff like getting a Word Press site up and running.  I’ve never actually been a tech person so there was  a steep learning curve.

Learn I did though.  I learned as I moved forward with my business, never letting the fact that I didn’t know how to do something stop me.  I got help.

I’m a big believer in just jumping off the cliff into the abyss of whatever it is I want to do.  It’s scary, but it’s really exhilarating, sort of like skydiving or belaying down the side of a mountain.  (The caption on the picture, in case it’s cut off, says To jump off a cliff, he jumped).

There are certainly different degrees of easy and difficulty in starting a business, depending on what type of business you want.  Turning your hobby into a business is relatively easy.  Here’s a three step plan for becoming  a professional photographer:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Really, that’s good advice.  A teacher in my life used to say that “it’s just as easy to act as if,” meaning that you should just act the part that you want to play as if it’s already a reality and it will become a reality a lot faster.

So hone up on your acting skills and jump off that cliff into whatever business you want.