1. Plunging in without first testing the waters on a small scale.

2. Under pricing or overpricing the goods or services.

3. Underestimating how much time it will take to build a market.

4. Starting with too little capital.

5. Starting with too much capital and being careless about how to spend it.

6. Going into the business with too little or no knowledge about it or without learning anything about the industry or the market.

7. Borrowing money without planning just how and when to pay it back.

8. Attempting do too much business with too little capital.

9. Not allowing for setbacks and unexpected expenses.

10. Buying too much on credit.

11. Extending credit too freely.

12. Expanding credit too rapidly.

13. Falling to keep complete, accurate records, so that the owners drift into trouble rapidly.

14. Carrying habits of personal extravagance into business.

15. Not understanding business cycles.

16. Forgetting about taxes, insurance, and other costs of doing business.

17. Mistaking the freedom of being in business for oneself for the liberty to work or not, according to whim.

What did you think about this post? Do you want to add some personal experiences to this? Make sure that you avoid these common mistakes as much as possible.

The Team Charter

Successful teams have five things in place:

1. A clear sense of purpose
2. Well-understood norms of behavior
3. Measurable success indicators
4. Clear roles and responsibilities
5. Operating rules

These are often incorporated into a team charter – a single document in which all five elements are written down. Use this checklist to ensure that you’ve established all five elements on your team. Using a qualified facilitator will help everyone take part and ensure team buy-in for each element of the charter.

Team Purpose

The first part of the meeting should be devoted to answering these questions:

• Why was this team put together in the first place?
• What is the fundamental purpose or mission of the team?
• What are the goals of the team?
• What else does the team want to achieve?
• What will the team be called?

Team Norms

Team norms are the behaviors expected of each member of the team. Identifying them explicitly is critical to making the team function effectively.

• What are the values of the team? (Ask team members to identify the behaviors they would consider essential to team success.)
• How will we make decisions? (Recommended tool: “Decision making types”)
• How will the team members support and interact with one another?
• What will our meeting ground rules be? (Recommended tool: “Ground rules for productive conversations.”)

Success Indicators

Next we want to look at how the team will measure its success. Ask the following questions:

• What outcomes does the team want to achieve?
• How will the team know it is successful? (What measurements will it use?)
• How will it evaluate the progress it is making?
• How will the team recognize one another and celebrate it successes?
• How will the team deal with poor performance?

Team Roles

Team roles should focus on decision making. Ask the following questions:

• What is the typical mode of decision making for this team?
• Who’s responsible for clarifying the decision-making roles of the team and of team members if we’re unclear?
• Is someone on the team responsible for managing each major decision?
• How much authority does the team have to make decisions by consensus?

Operating Rules

Operating rules should define the way the team manages its meetings. Ask the following questions:

• How often will the team meet?
• How long will the team meet?
• Who facilitates the meeting?
• What kind of agendas do we want? How will we build agendas?
• How will we evaluate our meetings/actions?
• What kind of meeting notes do we want?
• To whom are the notes distributed?
• When are the notes distributed?
• How else will we communicate after the meeting?
• How else will we manage our meetings?

Next Steps

• Write down the team’s commitments in a charter. Distribute the charter to every team member.
• Regularly review these commitments (at least twice a year). Ask the team: “Are we doing what we said we would?”
• Follow up in any areas where the team feels it needs to strengthen its commitments.

Article Source: LeadingatLight

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Resize your poster. Instead of doing it the usual way, print smaller versions of your poster printing. The smaller your dimensions, the cheaper it will be on your printing price.

Go for standard materials.

Switch to using the standard paper stock for your poster. Although you would want for your marketing tools to be durable so they can have a longer life, there are standard stocks that can resist minor damages without you having to shell out too much money. Using thicker and more complicated materials just adds to the overall price of your print job.

Go for spot color printing.

As you well know, colors in your poster mean your printer will use different inks. Inks mean costs. The more inks used, the higher your costs. So stick to spot color to save your money. Try to apply one or two colors to add life to your design. Or you can also choose to work on varying the shades of one color to create an effect of different hues in your poster.

Go for wholesale.

Or bulk orders. Be sure to have your printer produce a big number of your print collaterals as you can definitely save on costs this way. The more you order, the more likely that you can decrease the price of each piece of your marketing tool. So be sure to print at a time when you really need a huge amount so you can get a discount from your print provider.

Say ‘No’ to instant printing.

If you have not noticed it yet, printing any sales literature gets more expensive if you want it done earlier than the usual turnaround of your print provider. They would have to do a quick job, which means they would have people working on your print order 24 hours, not to mention the overhead costs. So they would definitely charge you for that. Have your materials printed way ahead of your marketing schedule to avoid rush orders. You not only make it easier for you to work on your budget, it would also give less pressure to your provider if they can have their usual time to prepare to print your order.

Try these techniques now and see a big difference in your printing costs.

Credit: This article was authored by janice. For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Poster Printing

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Earlier in twitter, group following was not possible. On the basis of users’ feedback, twitter has launched new features “Twitter List”. It enables group relationships beyond following each other. Anyone can create and publish twitter lists, so if you have a new idea for one, just click “New list” in the sidebar of your Twitter account. Add accounts to a list using the “Lists” drop drown on a twitter profile page.

Twitter list has some incredible benefits for small businesses in how they can organize or otherwise endorse people they follow. There are no best practices for using Twitter Lists. However, we will share some great ideas to spark your imagination.

Twitter lists can be private or public and small businesses can follow any lists without resulting in an influx of people they follow. Twitter helps you to notice and noticing others in this competitive business environment. Twitter has a very fair and equal platform for everyone to connect to their desired audience or customer and engage.

Instead of becoming obsessed with the number of followers you have amassed pay attention to the lists you are enrolled on and see which associates you have attracted. We know few companies encourage employees to Tweet. This would be a healthy why to highlight and endorse one’s association with the company. Does your business make use of VIPs or similar stars that could be a street team for your brand? Draw attention to them and they will highlight you.

Associate yourself with industry associations or peers. On Twitter, it’s collaboration not competition. What are you using twitter lists for? Share it in your blogs or comments! There has to be someone in your company who is great on twitting. Showing humbleness and embracing talent on twitter is a great service for your audience to help grow your audience.

There are more ways for small businesses could benefit from Twitter Lists. To know more about how twitter can be benefited for your organization read an e-book on “Twitter Marketing”.

Credit: This article was authored by Ryan Mutt.

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Turn your IT expertise into a business

Transforming your information technology expertise into a successful and ongoing business can be a great way to make use of these skills and to take control of your financial destiny. It is such a common path that the membership group the Independent Computer Consultants Association (ICCA) exists to support the work of these small business owners and freelancers.

Choose Your Market

A first key step is to decide whether you will serve a business or consumer market. The choice influences who your competition will be (i.e. global IT consulting firms vs Best Buy’s Geek Squad), where and how you should be marketing, and in what areas you need to hone your expertise. You won’t find many computer consultants who try to work with both markets, simply because there are such different needs in each customer group that costs will rise and profit decrease as you try to serve both.

Use the Best, Cost-Saving IT You Can

An important method which should be both a money-saver and feather in your cap for marketing, is for you and your business to take advantage of the latest and best options in IT to make your work more efficient. For example, visits to clients sites will be necessary at times (to develop relationships, to see the hardware situation yourself, etc.) but often you should be making use of remote login systems to offer technical support and auditing of client computers. Logmein and Gotomypc are low-cost or free examples, and remote login should cut down on the extreme waste of travel expenses and time.

Another resource is the use of virtual offices and virtual receptionists. Rather than renting out a business office, you can make use of your own office, internet-ready cafes, or any location with a connection and cell phone signal. Virtual office services give you a business address, the potential to rent office or meeting space on an as-needed basis, and even locations in multiple cities to allow a traveling lifestyle. Virtual receptionists can give customers and potential customers calling in a better experience than speaking to voicemail, and at a much lower cost than a full-time, dedicated receptionist.

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This may seem to be too good to be true at first, and you may not easy accept what we share with you here; because we’re all conditioned accept the status quo.  The banking industry truly doesn’t want you to know our method. They would rather that you pay your mortgage payments over a long period of time, so they can maximize their profit, at your expense.

In this article, we’re going to spill the beans, and reveal some of the secrets the banking industry has been keeping from us far too long!

If you want to pay off your mortgage as fast as possible, it benefits you a great deal to find a way to put extra funds toward the outstanding balance as soon as possible.  But to do this doesn’t mean you have to spend more than you already spend per month.  It’s actually the method of payment that will save you the most money!  And we’re talking about huge savings!

Where do the extra payments come from?
Even a little extra money paid in the beginning pays huge dividends in the long run; because the huge interest charges early in the loan really cause whirlpools in the bottom line!  Most home buyers aren’t aware that they can easily lower their interest cost, and apply a lot more to the principal instead.  Far too many home buyers fail to make the simple corrections!  Although once we see the significance of paying down the principal, and follow our proven method, they get on track to pay off their mortgage very early; often in as little as 8 1/2 years.

Front-Loaded Interest: A Big Reason You Haven’t Been Able To Pay Off Your Mortgage Quickly

If you take a look at your mortgage amortization table, you’ll discover something very interesting. I’ll just lay out the facts for you here, using the example of a $150,000 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6% APR.

In the first year of your mortgage, you pay $10,791.96 (12 monthly payments at $899.33), and a whopping $8,949.89 of that goes to the bank for interest, NOT the principal.

That’s a whopping 82.93% of your payments that went to interest… flushed down the toilet, and into the banks’ pockets. That’s your hard-earned money going bye-bye, since it doesn’t pay off your loan at all!

Of your first year payments, only 17.07 % applies toward the real problem – the principal, that stands in your way of paying off your loan.

The sad thing is, even though you paid $10,791.98 on your $150,000 mortgage, the principal still stands at $148,157.98.

That means that the equity you’d have in your home would be $1,842.02. You “invest” $10,791.98, and get back only $1,842.02. (That’s an effective interest rate of over 500% in that first year.)  To come up with that number, we must understand that we paid close to $11,000.00 to end up with a measly $1,842.00 in equity.  Yikes!  The effective interest charged by the bank reducing the bottom line to such a dismal level is astoundingly high!

This is a prime example of how your bank front-loads the interest during the first years of your mortgage. And to make it worse, most people sell, or refinance, within the first 5 years of their mortgage, making the front-loading even worse for the borrower.  It helps them squeeze every dollar out of you when you start all over again.

In fact, the only way that a 6% interest is ever 6%, is if the borrower actually stays with the mortgage for the full term (30 years, in our example). Only a very small fraction of homeowners actually do this. If you sell or refinance at any time before the maturity of your mortgage, the effective interest rate you end up paying is usually much more than 6%.

So, How Do We Pay Off Our Mortgage Quicker?

It’s simple. Turn the tables on the bank!  We’ve shown you how they front-load the interest. Now you know what thousands of people who are already paying off their mortgages early have learned: find a way to pay a larger portion of each payment toward the actual debt.  Oh yes, it’s easy to do!

But there’s another problem.

The banks have ways of keeping this information from you. They’re just not going to share any secrets, because it would hurt their bottom line.  So they they’ve laid out a minefield to make it very difficult for the home-buyer to reverse damaging trend of front-loading.

But take our word for it: there is a way, – a method – to legally, and easily, maneuver through this minefield, and pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time. Thousands of home buyers have learned what you can learn with us, and are already doing something about it!.

Mortgage acceleration–true mortgage acceleration–is the key to success!

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To make sure that your projects communicate effectively, we have described here…

How to Create a Communications Plan

Using the latest Communications project management template released today, we have described how to create a bullet-proof Communications Plan for projects. We have provided a snapshot of this template here by listing the 10 steps you need to take to create a Communications Plan for your project.

Step 1: Situation Analysis
The first step to take when creating a Communications Plan is to perform a Situation Analysis. This is a fancy term for researching your existing communications environment.

Review the performance of all communications within your project and identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Then identify any lessons learned from past communications exercises, so that the same mistakes made in the past are not repeated here.

Step 2: Communications Objectives
Great. So you know what your communications strengths are and where you need to improve. You are now ready to set out your communications objectives.

List the top three objectives that you want to achieve from your project communications. For instance, you might want to inform stakeholders of the project progress, boost management buy-in or improve your team productivity.

Step 3: Communications Guidelines
Then set out your communications guidelines for controlling communications within your project. For example, you may decide that:

√ All messages will be distributed through pre-defined channels
√ All critical communications will be pre-approved by management
√ All communications will be tailored, based on stakeholder needs

Step 4: Target Audience
Now define exactly who it is that your team will formally communicate with. Remember, formal communications are a method for controlling the messages sent out by your team. They promote a single consistent view of your project to a specified audience so that “everyone has the same version of the truth”.

Step 5: Stakeholder Needs
Each target audience group will have their own needs. These stakeholders will require information that is specific to their role in the project. For instance, a Project Sponsor will need to be informed of high priority risks and issues, whereas a Quality Reviewer might need to be notified of the current status of project deliverables.

Step 6: Key Messages
Then list the key messages that need to be sent to each Stakeholder. Key messages may include project status, project issues, project risks, project deliverables or project resources.  The next step is to define how you will deliver each message to them, through a delivery channel.

Step 7: Delivery Channels
There are a huge variety of ways in which you can deliver your key messages to stakeholders (e.g. emails, articles, meetings, conferences). For each stakeholder, identify the channel that you will use to deliver your key messages.

Step 8: Communications Schedule
Now you are ready to create the schedule of communications events, activities and actions that are required to deliver the right messages to the right people at the right time throughout the project. Create a detailed schedule of events and for each item listed, specify the timeframes for completion and any dependencies on other events in the schedule.

Step 9: Communications Events
For each event listed in your schedule, describe it in depth. Make sure that you define the purpose of the event, how it will take place and when it should occur.

Step 10: Communications Matrix
And finally, once you have listed the events and described them in detail, you need to identify who will manage them and who will review their effectiveness. Create a Communications Matrix which lists for each event who is accountable for the event, who will take part and who will review its success.

Once you have taken these 10 steps, it is up to you to get your Communications Plan approved by your manager and then execute it to deliver communications efficiently across your project.

And just one last tip – to improve your communications you need honest feedback on your team’s performance. Implement feedback measures such as questionnaires, feedback forms and surveys to learn how to continually improve communications within your project team.

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If it isn’t a strength, get it off your plate. Maximize your time doing what you do best or activities that directly increase your revenue like marketing!

And the key to doing that is to overcome your objections to outsourcing.

“I can’t afford to hire someone.” — You can’t afford NOT to outsource things that you aren’t good at or don’t enjoy. How much time and energy are you spending on them? Measure the value by determining your hourly rate. Then compare what you’re “spending” to pay yourself to do tasks versus what it would cost to outsource them.

“Not doing it myself means I’m lazy.” — Let go of that Puritan work ethic. Lazy is defined as “having an aversion to work or effort,” which isn’t the same as being selective about how you spend your time.

“No one else will do it correctly.” — This one may seem true, but it’s also self defeating! Ask yourself, “What’s the positive intention of holding onto the belief that no one else can do something as good as I can?” Then address that positive intention in a way that doesn’t require you to be the one to take on every task.

~ Tip ~ The most profitable way to spend your time is on those activities that support your two businesses – marketing your services and delivering your services. Anthing else is passed on to someone else.

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Business development consultancy and business consultancy services linked to a business growth plan are a valuable asset to a growth business.

Business growth services are booming. Small business consultancy should always wherever possible be structured around achieving new business growth from as many free business growth services as possible.

Your business consultancy services agency should factor in issues like free online and offline marketing strategies into your business growth plan.

The very best and most profitable growth in business is achieved when a proven business management consultancy expert minimises your sales and marketing spend and maximises your bottom line profit margin.

By partnering with a business development consultancy agency a growth business should be transformed into a long term sustainable profitable concern. If you appoint the right business growth consulting individual or agency then you will often be presented with a partner that provides far more value than actual cost.

In times of economic hardship many business owners are finding it hard to contemplate never mind achieve new business growth. One of the first things that any business in trouble has to achieve is to get itself out of trouble.

Be wary of any business consultancy services agency that advocates spending your way out of trouble as this is often a recipe for disaster.

All growth in business should be carefully planned and should form the backbone of your business growth plan. This business growth plan should only be finalised after your business development consultancy representative has identified tips to ensure the long term sustainable growth mentioned previously.

If yours is a small business, then you are better seeking out the business growth services of a small business consultancy agency or individual business consultant. One of the very best, but least utilised business management consultancy secret tips is that of advertising from self promotion.

Think about the likes of Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Katie Price Jordan and you will see masters of the art of self promotion. Self promotion has many up-sides, not least that it is usually achieved free of charge. Any competent business growth consulting agency should be aware of the benefits of free self promotion advertising for a growth business.

Business Consultancy Services 4 Secret Tips To Turbo Charge New Business Growth # 1 Free Self Promotion

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that only A-List celebrities can achieve free self promotion advertising as there are strategies which can be implemented by even the smallest small business consultancy agency.

Before you rush out on your self promotion tour it is wise to understand a few useful pointers. The most successful self promoters have two recognisable characteristics.

1: You Are Who You Associate With.

Ever heard the phrase, guilty by association? If so, then you know that super successful business people don’t associate with losers or negative business associates. You need to align yourself with business associates who are proactive and decisive decision makers.

Plan every day around meeting someone of influence who can make or introduce a positive difference to your growth in business. To achieve new business growth it is worth sitting down with your business development consultancy representative to identify who you can meet who can help you achieve your business goals and succeed with your business growth plan.

During your business management consultancy session try and ascertain if this person of influence is a business associate with high level contacts or a small business consultancy prospective client or customer.

Never choose the easy route of meeting with business people who are the easiest to access because they are often not the right people to assist you achieve a growth business. Think out of the box and reach out to business people who will help you fulfil your business goals.

2.    Demeanour And Style

Ensure you always portray a positive and memorable first impression with every business associate you meet with. Everyone you meet for the first time will take just 1 to 4 seconds to form a vivid and lasting first impression of you. You only get one chance to make a positive first impression so don’t blow it.

Business Consultancy Services 4 Secret Tips To Turbo Charge New Business Growth # 2 Free Offline Advertising

Every regional newspaper and magazine is screaming out for local interest news features and every business receiving business development consultancy support should capitalise on this free offline advertising medium.

Frequently business owners and directors make the mistake of approaching these publications to run a press release about how great their business is. The highest percentage of these press releases are pre-programmed for failure.

However if you link your business success story to something of local interest then the publication is much more likely to feature your story. If it does then it will ultimately support your business growth plan.

Small business consultancy agencies are particularly adept at achieving success with regional publications.

Business Consultancy Services 4 Secret Tips To Turbo Charge New Business Growth # 3 Free Online Advertising

There is currently no better way to achieve a cost effective growth in business than by capitalising on free online advertising.

Whenever your business management consultancy representative mentions you should pay for online sponsored advertising or pay per click as it’s known. Ask him/her about getting free online advertising by writing articles about your business and submitting them to all the major online search engines.

This form of free online marketing is called natural or organic search engine optimisation. Business growth consulting should be able to demonstrate to you how having a first page natural Google ranking can assist your business growth services.

Business Consultancy Services 4 Secret Tips To Turbo Charge New Business Growth # 4 Free Business Support

No UK business owner can deny we are in the midst of the longest recorded recession in business history.

Many business owners are suffering from this economic downturn including several business development consultancy and small business consultancy agencies who are also looking for theirs to become a a growth business.

Many business management consultancy directors are receptive to a discussion about engaging them at a reduced rate which is balanced out by a potential profit share based on the success of the growth in business.

In some cases your business growth plan may be exciting enough to tempt a business consultant to provide free business support for a share of your future profits attributable to their business growth consulting and  business growth services.

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This is a common way for entrepreneurs to feel at first. It is important to understand the mindset of funders who are reading your plan, how you can feel better about your projections, and how to present projections in a way that shows why you feel they are probable outcomes, even though the future is uncertain.

Funder Mindset

Funders do understand that all financial projections are uncertain, and will not lose all trust in you if your projections do not pan out. They are mostly interested in knowing what your targets are and how you can support these projections through reasonable and rational assumptions about the future.

In a sense, reading the financial projections is a way for funders to understand your thought process when it comes to predicting future outcomes. If your thought process seems sound to funders, they will understand if there are variances from the projections you state. If your thought process seems to have no logic, funders will not want to work with you, regardless of how impressive the returns you project are.

Creating More Reasonable Projections

You can move toward creating more reasonable projections by basing your numbers in documented research. Costs are often much easier to research than revenues. You can make calls, do online research, and speak to others in the industry about both the startup costs and operating costs of a business. To project ahead over the next five years, you can rely on the average inflation rate (unless you are in a country where this rate is not at all steady).

Revenue projections should be based on a sense of the market size and how many potential customers your marketing will reach. Then use reasonable conversion rates based at least partly on research for how those customers reached will convert into paying customers.

Presenting Projections Well

Finally, explain the assumptions and research behind your financial projections in notes within the plan. Rather than hiding this thinking, make it transparent. Even if it is logical, funders may still find reasons to argue with it, but they will have the basis for conversation with you. Without explaining your assumptions, funders will be left to assume your projections are based just on wishful thinking and may drop your plan without even a call back.

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