| Recent Articles |
Impressions And Brand
You never get a second chance at a first impression. I've never cared for that quote. The implication is that you get one and only one chance at success and that's hardly true. Your first impression is the most...
Forces That Might Be Lowering AdSense Earnings
WebmasterWorld has another thread about lowering AdSense prices. When the economy is good and advertisers have robust ad budgets, an ad network...
Understanding Your Brand From An SEO Perspective
I always recommend that folks optimizing their web sites take great care to not confuse the name of their company with what the searchers are actually trying to find, which is frequently the brand. Unless you are...
Networking And The Spectrum Of Blogging Influence
Two posts on the subject of networking with other bloggers caught my attention over the weekend. The premise of both is that you'll be better served working...
How I Cheat My Way To Success
I like to think this web site is moderately popular. Maybe a little quirky, a bit unfocused, perhaps a little too geeky for some and far too un-geekish for the real geeks, but fun and informative for the few who read...
Using Social Media To Improve Your Business
[[This article was written for The Association for Women in Communications, Denver Chapter newsletter...]] Let's start out with a spontaneous quiz (yes, you were warned that there'd be days like this!). How did you...
|
| 03.06.08
Stages Of Business Ownership
 By Andrew Wee
Talking to a number of budding entrepreneur's at last evening's Singapore Facebook Developers Garage and hearing about their growing pains served as an impetus to get this post out.
Some of you whom I met up with at Affiliate Summit would have heard parts of this, but here it is in more detail...
No matter whether you live in Las Vegas, or Vancouver, BC, New York city or Singapore, the questions are the same - How do you grow your business?
I'm going to outline 3 discrete stages that I see business go through, and I'm going to paint some generalizations here. (generalizations refer to 90-95% of the people in each of these categories out there. So hold off on the flames, especially if you're part of the 5-10% of "distribution curve busters" out there)
The 3 stages of business ownership:
• Stage 1: Bootstrapper/Solopreneur (Generalized income potential: $1,000 per day or $30,000 a month)
At this stage, you're building your business and might be the sales guys, the operations guy, the bookkeeper, and coffee maker all rolled into one. Bootstrapping can be a useful tool, especially if you don't start out with or you're not willing to pump a lot of working capital into your initial endeavor.
I like this stage because it's very "hands-on" in nature. I believe to have "business ownership", you need to have a basic understanding of each function in your business. I am a pretty terrible "details" person, but having a basic understanding of the "nitty gritty" helps you put all the pieces together at the strategic/macro level.
The major constraint here is time, because you'll have to juggle the various tasks within a 24-hour workday.
But if push comes to shove, remember that marketing and sales are the most important element of your business because that's what brings home the bacon.
The solopreneur model works regardless of whether you're playing in the brick-and-mortar space, the online space or the hybrid of the two. The one major advantage of being in the online space is that technology can give you a major advantage, whether it's managing a PPC campaign with 120,000 keywords or managing an email campaign out to 25,000 subscribers.
It's a fair simple stage to get up to speed on. But here's where it gets interesting...
• Stage 2: Employer (Generalized income: $10,000 a day, or $300,000 a month)
So once you've maxed yourself out, you'll probably start hiring people. They could be outsourcers or employees (young kids or work-at-home mums are a great fit here...).
Being an employer means you've very much moving from being a "do-er" to a "project manager". You coordinate your workers, give them daily tasks, weekly tasks, set milestones, motivate them and help them pick up new skills.
A good time to move from bootstrapper to employer is at the $5,000 - $10,000 a month income mark. At that income level, you should be familiar enough with the business operations to delegate out responsibility.
One common issue I hear from bootstrappers is that it takes "too much effort" to train an employee…which might be a valid argument, except that if you don't get through the initial hurdle of training someone up, there is a tendency for things to bite you in the behind, especially when the projects and contracts starts flooding in (you become a victim of your own success).
One of the worst things that could possibly happen at this stage is not being able to make the transition to becoming an employer, and having to turn work away.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Andrew Wee is an Asia-based Internet Marketer focused on blogging, social traffic generation and affiliate marketing. Previously rated as one of Asia's top technology journalists, Andrew covers breaking news and industry developments at WhoIsAndrewWee.com
|
!
0 comments:
Post a Comment