All Entries Tagged With: "business ventures"
Persistence Is The Key, Remember your “Why”
Two to three weeks is what it takes to make or break a habit, they say. What happens when the excitement dies down. It’s so easy to get caught in the excitement of a new business. As an entrepreneur, I have to stay in my zone and not let the excitement of the business die down. As anything that we put our minds to do gets old, so will owning a business. Many business owners will get discouraged, at first, when they don’t see the profits coming in.
One thing that is key for many entrepreneurs is write down your "Why" when making the decision to start your own business. Could it be financial security? Could it be to have more free time? Whatever your reason for seeking out entrepreneurship, take out the time to write down your why. Having your why is essential because it is so encouraging to go back and look at your reason for starting your business venture.
It is important to remain encouraged and be persistent. One of my favorite saying is consistency creates results. It take more than two or three weeks of doing something to see results. I would relate owning your own business to making a decision to have a child. When you have a child you have to take so much into consideration. You have to ask yourself, am I ready? Am I at a place in my life where I can devote a lot of time and attention to this business? Am I ready to make financial investments into this business?
If you have to follow-up on your customer base or prospect be diligent and following up with them consistently. Have a set plan every day of what you will be doing and how long you will be doing it. Although, in network marketing for instance, many things happen spontaneously. You will get calls from your prospects or your customers and sometimes you have to stop and take the call. It’s important to keep in mind to have a set plan for your time. Being organized and managing your time well will cut down on much of the stress of business operation.
Many entrepreneurs will realize the responsibility of owning a business only once they get well into the business and will become overwhelmed. I am here to encourage you to be persistent. 
Keep your why in a place where you can easily access it. After looking over your why you will be reminded of why you made the decision to start your business venture. Do not allow your efforts to get laxed. Make a conscious decision to work diligently in every area and avenue of your business and keep in mind the goal that you are trying to achieve. By keeping a good mind set and staying positive you will see much progress and then will you achieve your ultimate goal.
To your success,
Jarrod Clark
5 Steps for better business development
In the hustle and bustle of the everyday business ventures, sometimes it’s easy to loose focus and get disorganized. You may find yourself getting wrapped up in one particular task and loose focus of time. Proper time management is one of the key essentials to business success.
Setting a set time or a time limit for your everyday tasks is effective time management practice. Proper time management cuts down on the stress of everyday business tasks. The following are steps to help cut down on the stress of business operation.
Give yourself a specific time to do your daily tasks.
One of the pros of being an entrepreneur is having the free time to be able to do what you want when you want to do it. However, one of the important things of being an entrepreneur and working for yourself is being able to manage yourself. When you were, or if you are still working a day job, you would wake up in the morning in an effort to get to work on time.
Why?
Because being on time indicates that you value your job. The same thing applies when you’re working for yourself and managing your own business. You have to be able to manage your time effectively. As you wake up to start you business day, make a list of the tasks that you have ahead of you for the day and the times to start those tasks and the ending times for those tasks.
Organization is key.
There is nothing worse than coming to a disorganized work space and trying to progress to the next level. The way you start your business sets the tone for the way the business will fair out. If you start out disorganized then chances are it will be a complete mess and turn out to be a very stressful venture. Organize your work space in a way to where everything you need is easily accessible. Disorganization can be an indication of lack of self discipline so make a point organize your workspace and your time better.
Do not procrastinate.
Procrastination ties in heavily with step 1. Sometimes meeting deadlines can be a stressful thing. Much of the stress that comes with meeting a deadline is procrastination. I must say once more, one of the many perks of owning your own business is the time freedom you get. I’m reminded of many times when I was younger, if I was given a particular homework assignment. Many times, if it was a big assignment, we were given ample time to complete that assignment. After weeks have gone by I would always say to myself, “I’ll get on it tomorrow or next week…” then tomorrow became the next day and next week became the week after next and… next thing I knew… the assignment was due in a couple days! I would try to make all the last minute stops to do the homework assignment.
Many times it wasn’t that the assignment was hard it was just that I tried to cram a few days worth of work down to a 1 or 2 day time frame and it was very stressful. As I got older I’ve overcome my procrastination and I’ve come to realize that spreading out my tasks evenly over the time that I’m given to complete them is so much easier. Make an effort to apply a small amount of time to your tasks daily and you will see a world of difference in the stress level of your business.
Rest, Rest, Rest!
It is often said that the body requires 8-9 hours of sleep a night to be up to full operation. It’s very easy to get caught up in taking advantage of as many hours a day as possible. Over a period of time getting a lack of sleep can take a toll on the human body. You may find yourself feeling groggy and restless during the day and you will not be able to function at your fullest potential. Make a choice every night to get to bed at a good time so that you will wake up refreshed and ready to start a new business day full of excitement.
Make good habits.
I heard a saying that everything that you do on a daily basis is centered around the habits that you make. Evaluate your habits and make a choice to become better at everything that you do, whether it’s your personal life or business life take the time out to do everything to make your life less stressful, more ethical and more fulfilling.
Take time out for yourself and evaluate what you do on a daily basis. Continue to keep a positive mind set and have a “CAN DO” mentality. By applying these steps you will not only see a difference in the way you function but you will see much improvement in your business. Remember to keep the big picture in mind and always strive to do your best.
To your success,
Jarrod Clark
10 Must Have Web Sites for Online Marketing
Provided here is a compilation of useful sites that I refer to often within my daily online business ventures. By sharing these sites it is my sincere hope and desire to shed some light for entrepreneurs in the areas of online marketing, web site optimization and site advertising. Here are a list of a few websites:
1) Freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
This is a great site for searching keyword phrases that are highly searched. This site is great because it highlights the most used keyword phrases in connection with a single keyword. I go here often when I’m keyword brainstorming and searching for a host of particular keyword phrases.
![Tel Aviv Traffic [Incoming]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2325123820_421321c015_m.jpg "Entrepreneur Ideas Image")
2) Alexa.com
This is an extraordinary site that will give you a ranking based on the incoming traffic that your site receives. This is a great site to refer to when building your traffic and attempting to achieve a higher ranking to your site.
3) Directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/
Directory Submitter is a great software program. It is free to download and easy to use. With Directorysubmitter you can input your information such as your name, website name, title of your site, description of your site and a few other variables only one time and DirectorySubmitter will provide hundreds of free sites where you can submit your website for free. DirectorySubmitter makes it much easier for you by automatically submitting your information into these sites and all you have to do is click send. Go here and take a look at the video and it will give you a short tutorial on how to use Directory Submitter and how it can benefit you in getting free one way links to your site.
4) Articlesubmitter.imwishlist.com/
Article Submitter works in the same way Directory Submitter does except you’re submitting your articles to online article directories. Like Directory Submitter it’s a great tool to attract viewers to view your content and to your website. With Article Submitter, you only have to input your site and article information once and Article Submitter will provide you with hundreds of Article Directories for you to choose from. All you have to do is pick which sites you want to submit your article to and Article Directory will automatically submit your information then you’ll just hit send. Just that easy. Go here to download and view a short tutorial video on how to use Article Submitter and how it can also benefit you in gaining exposure to your articles.
This site gives you a free downloadable google toolbar that can be placed at the top of your internet browser. It’s very helpful because it gives you the google page rank of every page you visit. It has a google search bar there so you don’t have to go to google’s home page to search for a term you can just key it into the toolbar and it will take you strait to the SERP listings. I use it and I have found it to be a very good resource.
Link Popularity is the total number of websites that link to your site. LinkPopularity.com is a great tool for finding what sites are linking to your website or your competitors websites. Go here and scroll down to the bottom and key in the website you want to analyze backlinks.
7) "SEO Made Easy" free ebook
Through out many of my blogs I’ve mentioned Brad Callen’s free ebook "SEO Made Easy." It’s a wonderful tool for webmasters or bloggers who are optimizing your pages. The link to download the free ebook "SEO Made Easy" is http://www.homebiz-direct.com/SEO-made-easy.html.
8 WordPress.org Blog sites are one of the many ways to voice your thoughts on certain ideas or topics. Many bloggers will blog to gain an audience in an attempt to expose their personal life, politics, business, or an effort to market their business online. WordPress.org is a free site that gives you access to a more secure blog site which gives you more tools and freedom than some of the many well known blog sites such as blogger.com and others. WordPress also offers many plugins that you can download for free at: Wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ However with WordPress you will need to host your blog.
9) Hostgator.com Hostgator.com is a hosting site that supports WordPress. It offers a hosting plan for about $4.95/month which in my opinion is well worth it due to the security that you get that some of the free blogging sites don’t offer. Just as an FYI, for $7.95/month you can host an unlimited number of sites through hostgator.com.
10)online-income-101.com/series/becomea/blogger.html
For those of you who have tried Wordpress.org or are in the process of setting up your blog, the above link features outstanding hands-on tutorial videos that take you step by step on how to set up your blog. I know for me, in the process of setting up my blog the tutorial videos just mentioned were very helpful. I have found all of these sites to be conducive in my daily online business ventures. I was fascinated by how useful these sites were and thought I’d put them on here and provide awareness for many entrepreneurs. Many of these sites are are well known but for someone who is just starting these tools could be a lifesaver. And indeed… that is what my ultimate reason for starting this blog is to provide awareness and help smooth out some of the rough edges in this long but well worth it journey of online marketing.
To your success,
Jarrod Clark
