Business Success Archives - Her Business Directory™

5 Tips To Know If You Have What It Takes To Start A Home Based Business

You may see, hear, and read a lot of people constantly raving about the numerous wonders of a home based business but in reality, starting and managing one isn’t immediately a bed of roses. In some cases, having a home based business is easier than having a business in traditional settings, but in some cases, it’s absolutely the other way around.

Tip #1 You Still Need the M’s for a Home Based Business

The only difference is that there’s no need for you to pay for rent and possibly, you’ll have lower business costs because your business is based at home. But other than that, the process of starting up and the necessary factors of production are still the same.

Money – It’s rarely possible, if at all, to start a home based business without spending even a dollar for investment and pre-operating costs.

Material – If your home based business is selling products and not services then you’ll still have to ensure that you’ve got the best mat…

How to Network Like an Expert

You know it’s critical to your success, but are you doing it with forethought and a solid strategy in place, or do you just “wing it?”

Admittedly, most of us are squarely in the winging it category, but there are some quick and easy changes you can make that will put even your most important networking tasks on autopilot.

Outsource the research: First step, hire a VA who can find and connect you with potential JV partners, affiliates, guest interviews, and all the other marketing options at your disposal.

With a list of requirements at hand, he or she can spend an hour or two on Google and bring back a list of hundreds of people you can then reach out to. What would a list of 100—or even 10—new JV partners do for your business growth?

Automate the initial connection: Create a script or email template to use when you first reach out to potential partners. Your VA can send this in an email or make a call on your behalf, but having the s…

5 Ways to Stay Motivated in Business

If you own your own business or are an entrepreneur, you can often be faced with challenges that strike down your motivation to go on. But here are a few ways you can reign in the troops and find the gumption to keep going.

Define your core values. Core values encapsulated in a mission statement will guide your company through times good and bad by helping you find direction and bringing you through turbulent times. “Making money” is not a goal that’s sure to keep you motivated when clients aren’t coming, but “delivering sustainable sources of energy” or something similarly specific will help you stay motivated towards a goal that forms the bigger picture.Take a look at the checkpoints. There may be a gap between your desired results and the actual results of what’s happened so far because your goal is monolithic and too far into the future. Take a look at smaller components to get a more accurate picture of how things are progressing, which will also bolster your mo…

Stay in Your Own Lane

Overwhelm is a real thing in online businesses. There is always more that could be done. More products to create, more blogs to write, more opt-in pages to build, more clients to connect with, more, more, more.

And one of the biggest contributors? Shiny object syndrome.

Every time you’re tempted to buy that new, must-have tool, or to test out a new marketing method, or even to switch business models entirely, you’re falling victim to this business killer.

Here’s the problem with shiny object syndrome. It prevents you from achieving success by shifting your focus away just when you’re about to hit your sweet spot. It’s true. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. A promising startup just begins to make sales and gain a following, and then out of the blue, the owner does a pivot into a completely unrelated niche or business.

All that work… just gone.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Set Clear Goals

The first…

ADVICE TO A 20 YEAR OLD

Recently on HER Mastermind Network (on LinkedIn) Kassandra Vaughn posed the following question: Knowing what you know now, if you could give one piece of advice to your 20 year old self, what would it be?

What a wonderful question! Here was my response:

I would tell myself that every day when we wake up we decide what kind of day we are going to have. When we wake up surrounded by challenged and we allow those challenges to affect our attitude, it sets the tone for how we will react to every incident we encounter throughout the day.

We can decide to wake up on the right side of the bed or on the wrong side.

Once I learned this valuable lesson (took me a long time) I realized just how powerful our minds are. My life has been a lot more rewarding and many more opportunities have come my way because I choose to have a great day… each and every day!

Julie replied with “Instead of worrying IF, concentrate on WHAT y…

6 Traits of a Great Leader in the Workplace

When we think of leadership, we sometimes think of epic moments like George Washington crossing the Delaware, or Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But what makes a leader great in a less epic venue, like work?

Communication

A good leader at work is a good communicator and clearly spells out expectations. Not only that, they foster good communication between their team. A great leader goes above and beyond leveraging chats, emails, and texting groups to bring their team together around workplace issues. They don’t just offer tools for networking—they help develop a sense of how to communicate effectively.

Empathy

A good leader in the workplace cares about their employees and shows it. Remembering the details of their lives and asking follow up questions (in a non-invasive way) about spouses, children, parents, and life events shows that they care about their employees and view them as more than just human chattel.…

Turning Knowledge into POWER

One of the magazines I read every month is Success Magazine. I consider it one of the best motivational magazines on life and leadership available today. There are dozen’s of articles in each issue to help us with all aspects of our lives.

There is also a little surprise strategically placed in the center of the magazine as a BONUS. It is a CD/DVD with enhanced articles, motivational presentations and ideas. I love listening to it on the way to work.

Today I joined the Success Achievers Community and have already met some amazing people. I think its a better way to strategically connect with like minded people (its currently not overflowing with hype so its worth checking out. You can learn more here: https://achievers.success.com/feed

Today I want to focus on 10 Actions You Can Take to Turn Your Knowledge Into Power (some my own and some from a recent article on Success. Use these tips to jump start each action.

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The Secrets to Success … Just Ask!

Most of the great leaders and successful business people in the world were looked up to and admired because they attained something many aspire to and maybe never achieve. I believe it is because they were good at asking questions! Inventors would never invent things if they didn’t ask questions.

A simple example is the wheel. I can imagine two Neanderthals sitting around thinking, “gee I would love to visit Ugh, but he lives so far away.” And his friend says to him, “it wouldn’t be so bad if we had something to get us to his place quicker!” They had already tried riding the backs of dinosaurs and that didn’t’ work. Have you ever tried to tell a dinosaur where to go? Those big lugs don’t like taking orders from anyone!

Hence the question, what could we invent to get us from point A to point B in faster and safer? Some sort of transportation device is my guess. And instead of riding on the back of a di…

The Great M’s of Success

People who have studied successful people over the last 300 or more years have found certain traits that accounted to their achievements. These success techniques not only helped them forward but also kept them there even in times of depression, recession or other personal disasters. Four of them are The Great M’s of Success in business and life. <b>Mentoring, Masterminding, Marketing & Motivation</b> I have heard it repeated over and over again, "Get Yourself a Mentor." Get help, advice and guidance by someone who has already been there and made it. A mentor can save you years to a lifetime of mistakes. They can excel you forward, in ways you never could on your own. You’ll have a much greater ability to achieve your goals because you will have a blueprint to guide your way. Surprisingly, many people if not most will go to a friend or relative for advice. People who have never succeeded and have no ambition to go anywhere, and then these same people are sur…

Scale-up Your Business’s Bottom Line With Eco-friendly Processes

With such a steep rise in the levels of air, water, and noise pollution over the years, experts worldwide are all thumbs up for “green” living. Even businesses are making the necessary strategies towards becoming more sustainable. But, unlike the popular beliefs, choosing eco-friendly business processes is not only helping the environment, but it’s also enhancing the productivity, efficiency, and reducing the overall cost of running an enterprise.

Most importantly, it’s transforming the brand perception in the eyes of consumers. If you are new to this term, here are a few suggestions you can implement to turn your company into more eco-friendly.

Start With The Obvious- Go For Alternative Energy Resources

A penny saved is a penny earned- Benjamin Franklin.

If you want to be a part of the “green wave,” you can start by saving money on your overall energy costs. You can either opt for solar panels or use the resources that las…

How to Convince Your Boss to Let You Work Part Time from Home

Everyone is after more work-life balance. Some jobs are better than others at allowing at least some work-life integration possibilities, but some business owners are slow to catch on. If you have a job that would make it simple to work part time from home, then you’re in a good position to try to convince your boss to let you work part time from home by following these steps. Figure Out the Logistics First Before even approaching your boss about the idea of working from home, you’ll need to figure out whether it’s possible. What tools do you need at home that you have at the office to make it work? Are you willing to come out of pocket and set this up for yourself, or are you going to ask your boss to foot the bill? Provide a Well Thought-Out Plan of Action If you can demonstrate exactly how everything will work, including showing up at meetings on time, then you’re half way there. Create a report for your boss about how you will do each area of your job while you’re at ho…

Keep Covid stress out of your customer communication

12 steps executives can take to hold toxicity at bay and put good karma into the universe

TL;DR: Pandemic stress-related toxic communication can creep into your customer communication. Don’t let it! Set the example, nip toxicity in the bud, protect your team from incoming, build in rest, celebrate the good stuff, and codify that positive voice in your company styleguide.

As we think about healthy communication at work, we’re reminded of the saga of Away. The direct-to-consumer luggage company experienced such massive growth that it couldn’t keep up with demand. As customer requests piled up despite the customer service team’s 16-hour workdays and canceled vacations, executives blamed the team for not keeping up. They reportedly became so toxic that the team virtually imploded, service quality plummeted, and the story unfolded in an unflattering media exposé.

This moment finds us with a different kind of anxiety. Pandemic-related stress is at an…