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Articles About Small Business Development and Running Your Small
Business
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It's Okay to Think Small
- In nearly
every business book I read and from the lips of nearly
every business guru I listen to is the premise that you
have to grow your business. Grow, grow, grow -- think
big -- and you'll feel successful. More products, more
services, more revenue -- and you'll be happy. Bigger is
better, right?
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The Best of Times, The Worst of
Times -
What would happen if your revenues decreased by 44%
in one year and looked like they would
continue to fall in the next 12 months?
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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: How to Fire Your Assistant,
Website Designer, etc. - We hire people to
help us grow and run our small business: assistants and virtual
assistants, website designers and graphic artists, copywriters,
coaches and consultants, and bookkeepers. But what do you do
when their work isn't up to par or they are constantly missing
their deadlines?
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Think Small and Accomplish Great Things
- Mary came to
me to create big, new changes for her business. How
exciting, having a big dream! She had a million ideas
and a solid, well thought-out task lists to back up the
big plan. Except there was one small problem -- Mary's
dream was dying on the vine. By thinking big she was
overwhelming herself. She was paralyzed.
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How to Choose a
Virtual Assistant - When I looked through the list of all the tasks I
wanted an assistant to perform, there was no reason why this person couldn't
be located anywhere in the world. After careful research I hired an
assistant who lives 2,500 miles away, and although we've never met in
person, we've formed a strong foundation which helps my business run
smoothly.
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Vacations Are A MUST For The
Self Employed - It's impossible to describe the sheer terror of finally
deciding to take more than a week's vacation. Would my business crumble?
Would I miss logging on each morning to get my email? Would my clients
remember me when I returned?? Would I miss a new business opportunity while
I was gone?
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What Should Be
In Your Business Plan? - Many people quake in fear at the idea of
writing a business plan. They imagine in their mind a 100-page document full
of charts and financial figures. While it's possible to create a business
plan of that magnitude when trying to get capital for your business, a
typical business plan for self-employed people should be less than 10 pages.
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Self Employment: The Hardest Way to
Make Easy Money - So many people I speak with dream of becoming self
employed and starting their own small business. Don't get me wrong: being
self employed is the best lifestyle I know. But it is hard work, plain and
simple.
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Are You Cut Out
To Be Your Own Boss? - There really are personality traits that separate
born-entrepreneurs from people who can't hack it
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Someone Stole My Site: How To Defend Yourself When Someone
Plagiarizes Your Website Text - I knew
one day it would happen. Someone stole the text from my
website and used it on their own website. Dirty rotten
scoundrels! Here's what you can do about it.
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How To Raise Your Fees - There is a delicate
balance between the fee you need to charge for your products and
services, and the fee that people are willing to pay for them. But
with gasoline, heating, shipping, health care, and other costs
rising, there comes a time when you must raise your rates in order
to remain profitable.
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Are You a Jumper or a Planner? -
There appears to be two types of small business owners: people who jump
right into running their business and marketing their products and services
with little or no planning, and those who plan a strategy -- and a service
or product design -- before they ever dream of offering it to the public.
Is one better than the other? Yes and no.
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How To Manage Success -
You’ve struggled for years to get your small business off the ground. You
planned, marketed, sold, schmoozed. You spent long hours with little rest.
Then suddenly it comes: Success! Do you have a PLAN for success?
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Courage, And The
Self-Employed - Each week, I hear people telling me they want to be self
employed, but they don’t (or can’t) move forward on their dreams because
they’re afraid. There are so many things to be afraid of when you’re self
employed: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of illness, fear of
lawsuits. No money, no time, no skills, no help, no support.
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Self-Sabotaged By Research
- A woman in my MasterMind group posed a question today: why did she spend
all her time doing research and never actually go on with "doing" the thing
she was researching? She loved looking up information, finding resources,
interviewing people, gathering facts. But taking these facts and applying
them to her business seemed to always be put on the back burner.
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10 Things To Do When Business Slows Down Over The Holidays
- I’m sure you’ve seen
it happen every year: your business slows down during predictable
times, like the summertime months or year-end. For
the self-employed who rely upon steady cash flow, this can be a
disconcerting time. Should you just take a time off until things
naturally pick up again? Or should you try to find the
needle-in-the-haystack business that might be out there during slow
times?
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What's the Difference Between a Coach and
A Consultant? - When should you pick a Coach, when should you pick a
Consultant, and when do you need someone who combines these two talents.
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Six Reasons to Become
Self-Employed in Your Retirement - So, you’re looking forward to being retired. Relaxing in
the lawn chair, sipping iced tea, watching the clouds roll by. Lazy days of
reading good books, traveling with family and friends, puttering around in
the garden. What? That’s not the lifestyle you want? Good for you!
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Full Time or Part Time -- What's Right For You? - When you're self-employed (or thinking about becoming
self-employed), one of the more important decisions you'll need to make is
whether you want to do this work full-time or part-time. That's a difficult
question for many people, and here are some things to consider when making
that decision.
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What Should Your Fees Be?
- You must decide for yourself whether you will charge for
your services or not. Should you decide to charge, the next question is
"what should my fee be?"
First, examine carefully your skill level. It is common practice in business
to charge based on skill. The more skill and experience you have, the more
you
charge.
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Do You
Have Enough Clients To Survive? - When your business is offering a service, you have to
determine how many clients you'll need in order to reach your goals. You
don't have to have a group of ready-made clients when you begin, but it
helps if you have a good network of people who you can approach, asking them
to become clients.
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What Is Your Legacy? -
During a recent speech, I told the audience that my mission was to empower
the self-employed to succeed. Instantly a hand shot up in the audience.
“What’s your definition of success?” I smiled to myself -- I love it when
they ask this question!
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How to Create and Run a
MasterMind Group - There is synergy of energy, commitment, and
excitement that participants bring to a MasterMind group. The beauty of
MasterMind Groups is that participants raise the bar by challenging each
other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each
other with total honesty, respect and compassion. MasterMind participants
act as catalysts for growth, devil’s advocates and firm supporters.
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Why Small Businesses Fail (or
Fail to Thrive) - We review some of the common reasons why small businesses fail. Here
are 14 top reasons, which might help you to determine why your
business isn’t growing and thriving. Some of them are related to
learnable business skills; others relate to personal attitudes,
habits, or self-sabotaging belief, which are not so easy to change,
except through coaching or other self-development work.
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Cleanup and Planning Checklist
For The New Year - As the end of the year approaches, it’s important to both
close-out the old year properly as well as plan for the new year. I
recommend you do this process throughout the year so that there isn’t a
last-minute rush to complete your year-end closing tasks. Here are
some idea that you might want to add to your checklist.

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Using Your Voice in Business and
Life

Attention Coaches, Speakers and Consultants:
Learn to tap into the real source of your power and reflect that power in your voice. Be more effective on the phone and in person.
In this five-week teleclass you will:
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Use all your senses to create a memorable picture of your
powerful voice so you can command it in any situation.
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Discover how the knowledge of the four stages of learning
will help you reclaim missing aspects of your voice.
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Recognize why your emotions affect your voice and how to
work with them, not against them.
Sounding Authentic:
Voice Strategies to Connect, Communicate and Inspire
This five-week teleclass begins
August 5, 2008
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Most Popular Articles
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"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be
anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision
against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves
of the ordinary."
--Sir Cecil Beaton
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