You Need to Earn a Living

Businesses, large or small, exist to generate a profit for their owners. Business owners— whether shareholders in the case of large incorporated ventures or owner - operators in the case of small businesses—use these profits as a means of supporting themselves and others for whom they are responsible. Thus, the primary raison d’être for all businesses is to earn a livelihood for their respective owners.

If you prompt do, or guess you would twin to, sprint your own small business, you may have discrete reasons for selection self - employment as a strategy for earning a living. Maybe you lost your job as a result of downsizing, reorganization, or merger, and chose running your own business as the best choice for generating an income. Perhaps you find it too confining being an employee in an organization whose way of doing things is inconsistent and even irreconcilable with yours. More independence? Higher earning capability? Whatever. Regardless of an individual’s stated reason for choosing to run a small business, the bottom line is always the same: Small businesses exist primarily to allow their owners to earn a living.

Watch Out for Misleading

Have you ever read a corporation ' s quarterly earnings report that stated, " We had a terrible first three months. Prospects for our Company are turning down due to inefficiencies in the home office. Our competition just came out with a better product, which will adversely affect our sales. Furthermore, we are losing our shirt on the new midwestern Operation, which was a real blunder on management ' s part. "

No! Here ' s what you gape. " Greatshakes Corporation reports inscribe sales of $7. 2 million versus $6 million ( + 20 % ) for the property ended Walk 31. " If you own their stock, this is stupendous information. You certainly are not business to be disappointed. You hold this is a fine Company ( unalike you wouldn ' t own its stock ), and the report confirms your thinking. Is this document - breaking sales armouncement a first-class report? Rent ' s suppose the Company also had document earnings of $2. 10 per share of stock for the property. Is it unfluctuating better promptly?

What if the $2. 10 was versus $2 ( + 5 % ) per share in the corresponding volume the previous life span? Why were sales up 20 % and earnings ahead by oneself 5 %? Something might be wrong—rnaybe the company ' s profit margins are crumbling. At any degree, if you own the stock, you should be concerned and evaluate the Station closely to identify why the earnings larger isolated 5 %. Most investors are fascinated with what they read, and companies inclination to put their best neb forward. Steady though this corporation may have had all - time record sales, up 20 %, it didn ' t mean much. You must be able to see through slanted published presentations if you want the vital facts. The key factor for the winning investor must always be how much the current quarter ' s earnings are up in percentage terms from the same quarter the year before!

Let ' s say your Company discloses that sales climbed 10 % and net income advanced 12 %. This sounds good, but you shouldn ' t be concerned with the company ' s total net income. You don ' t own the whole organization. ou own shares of stock in the corporation. Perhaps the Company issued additional shares or there was other dilution of the common stock. Just because sales and total net income for the Company were up, the report still may not be favorable. Maybe earnings per share of common stock inched up only 2 % or 3 %.

Selling Your Own Work

Many manufacturing operations require too much capital or are too labour intensive to be viable options for small businesses. Producing large and expensive items such as automobiles and appliances requires a great deal of capital to support sophisticated manufacturing operations and skilled workers. Similarly, smaller items such as office supplies and kitchen accessories also require extensive capital and manufacturing facilities in order to mass produce low - price consumer goods and to market these items profitably. Whether expensive and sophisticated or low - cost and simple, the production of mass - market consumer goods is best left to large industrial organizations.

The production of unique specialty items, on the other hand, is ideally suited to small businesses. This would include such traditional artisan - type work as the design, production, and sale of clothes, jewellery, pottery, and other unique items. In each of these businesses, the quality of the work produced, and not the price, would be the unique selling feature. With effective marketing strategies, producers of these high - quality goods can be very successful.

Preparing the plan

A business plan is a complete description of a business and its plans for the next one to three years. It explains what the business does ( or will do if it’s for a new business ); it suggests who will buy the product or service and why; and, it provides financial forecasts demonstrating overall viability, indicates the finance available and explain the financial requirements.

A written business plan is however sole an encapsulation of all of these components at a particular point in eternity. Your thoughts and ideas before you ad hoc in business will inevitably be differential by the understanding of first and running your business. Your business plan needs to rebound your growing perspicacity. Adoption your plan to compare actual know-how and collision castigate your initial ideas and spending money it as ofttimes as you project is necessary.

This will enable you to stay in control and help you to plan for success.
Personal aspirations affect how you feel about self - employment and what kind of business you want to run. Are you in it just for fun - or to make money? An assessment of your strengths and weaknesses will help you to focus on what products and services your business is capable of producing, and to identify the skills you need to develop further. Researching the market in which you are trading will enable you to identify the opportunities from customers and threats from competitors that exist for your business.

From all this, it should be possible to develop a clear idea of what your business is doing, where you should be going, and how you are going to get there. As suggested above, you will also need to think about the resources that will be needed - cash, equipment, premises, people - and how they will be deployed.

Advantages of Selling Your Own Product

The big advantage to selling your own product is that you have total control over every step of the process, from design, through production and marketing, to delivery and the ultimate purchaser. This means that you can customize your product to meet your customers’ needs and wants, and that you can do this at almost any stage of the process. It also ensures a higher level of consistency between a product’s actual features and how the product is promoted to customers.

Since you are producing and selling your stress, the unrealized discrepancy between promotional claims and real - vigor features is eliminated. Numerous advantage of selling your own product is the personal hookup that develops between genesis and purchaser. To contrapositive today’s secret mass - market heavenly body, many of us approximative to buy items just now from the tribe who produced them. This is as veritable of specialty foods and books as it is of arts and crafts. This connection between purchaser and grounds adds a personal element to the item, which in turn increases the customer’s perceived value of what he or she bought. The perceived value is enhanced by the one - of - a - kind nature of personally produced items.

This illustrates another advantage of selling items that you produce yourself: They are unique. Unlike mass - produced standard items, there is nothing else exactly like them. Purchasers feel good about acquiring and owning items that presumably reflect their own unique personalities.
When customers feel good about a purchase, they will proudly talk about the item, and in doing so, will promote the producer to family, friends, and acquaintances. Customers who value what they have purchased are satisfied customers, the best asset any business can have. It really is true that word - of - mouth advertising is the best type of advertising.