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Entrepreneur or Victim?
“Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances….Strong men believe in cause and effect.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every thought you form broadcasts a distinct and particular frequency, and that frequency elicits a response from the quantum universe as surely as a swinging hammer has an impact on the surface it strikes. Things don’t arbitrarily happen to you. Events in your business are the reflection of your thoughts, the echo of your own actions and the thinking behind them. In the East, this truth is reflected in the idea of Karma, and in the West, the Golden Rule. The core of this principle is this—You are at cause in your life and your business.
For many people, this is a challenging principle because it puts you squarely in the driver’s seat. Embracing this principle means you no longer have the luxury of blaming other people or external circumstances for the things that happen in your life.
Here is the flip side of that equation: Embracing this principle also means you have far more capacity to create the events and circumstances in your life than you have ever imagined possible.
When we don’t recognize this principle operating in our lives, it’s easy to start seeing ourselves as being the effect of those events. Rather than seeing that we are making things happen, we start to believe that things are simply happening to us. This easily leads to what is often called victim mentality.
If you are someone who is growing a massively successful business, there is no place for victim mentality in your life. The two states of mind—victim thinking and entrepreneurship—are 100 percent incompatible.
The word entrepreneur derives from the French word that refers to the source of the event, the one who initiates. Building and growing a successful business requires a commitment to being at cause, not at effect.
There are many things you need to know to successfully play the game of business. A great many of them you can learn as you go, and a great many skills and fields of expertise you can bring into your business by hiring or partnering with people who possess them.
But there is one skill you must have yourself, and it is a single most important skill of any successful businessperson, the one without which success is impossible: You must be practiced at creating the thoughts that will serve your business.
Creating a clear business vision is the critical first step to your success, but it’s just that: the first step. No matter how crystal clear it is, simply having a goal doesn’t make it happen. If you want to create financial freedom for yourself, five key elements have to be in place.
The Five Musts are:
- You must find something that stirs your soul.
- You must become excellent at it.
- You must recondition your mind to believe you can have it and achieve it.
- You must understand how to make money at it.
- You must take daily action.
Find more ways to live the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur at
The Answer for you: The right thoughts, held clearly and resolutely, can build your dream business.
Written by John Assaraf: www.johnassaraf.com
Benefits of Deploying Unified Communications on a Cisco Integrated Network
Add More Profit to Your Annual Bottom Line Profits
Overview
The Unified Workspace
Unifying IP Communications and Collaboration Applications
• Unifying voice, video, data, and mobility applications on both fixed and mobile networks: With rich call control, unified messaging, and unified client software, workers can take their workspace (and all its advanced capabilities) with them wherever they go.
• Enabling more effective communications: With presence and instant messaging, people can check the availability of colleagues, know how and where co-workers wish to be reached, and click-to-communicate in real time.
• Delivering media-rich collaboration: When voice, video, and web conferencing solutions use the power of the integrated network, people can collaborate instantly. They can also easily escalate sessions by adding video to an audio conversation or by adding web conferencing or whiteboarding to an existing audio or video conversation.
• Enabling the creation of business applications: With Cisco service creation platforms, customers and partners can develop innovative rich-media and web applications, making it possible to embed unified communications capabilities into existing business process systems.
The Power of an Integrated Network
An End-to-End System
• Device-aware: Because Cisco integrates intelligence throughout the network – even in the endpoints – a Cisco Integrated Network “knows” which device is being used, where it is being used, and what unified communications applications it is allowed to use.
• Application-aware: A Cisco Integrated Network actively participates with applications, automatically providing the appropriate rights, priorities, and organizational policies of each application.
• Network-aware: Cisco Unified Communications applications seek out the network services they require to help ensure that applications receive the appropriate quality of service (QoS).
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
• The networking costs per employee are, on average, almost 50 percent lower: According to a report by IDC (Operational Excellence in Networking: Industry Leaders Point the Way, IDC, April 2007), companies that consolidate router, switch, security, wireless, and voice vendors have, on average, a 45.6-percent lower cost per employee than those with six or more vendors.
• Each endpoint has a lower cost of ownership: According to a customer study conducted by Sage Research (Unified Communication Application: Uses and Benefits, Sage Research, 2006; http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns394/ns165/net_implementation_white_paper0900aecd8040970b.pdf), organizations that use a single, primary network vendor have on average a 26-percent lower cost of ownership per endpoint than those that use multiple vendors.
• The overall network cost of ownership is substantially lower: Sage Research also found that organizations that use a single vendor for IP telephony have a 43-percent lower network cost of ownership than those that use multiple vendors. These savings are derived from all areas, including network deployment and maintenance, network performance improvements, and benefits for both IT and end users.
Recommendations for a Head Office or Campus
Faster, More Cost-Effective Deployments
• When a Cisco Unified IP Phone is plugged into a wall jack, the Cisco Catalyst switch automatically detects the phone and extracts the device information through either Link Layer Discovery Protocol-Media Endpoint Devices (LLDP-MED) or Cisco Discovery Protocol exchange.
• Then, using the Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) feature in the Cisco Catalyst switch, you can automatically configure the switchport for voice. Cisco EEM is a powerful and flexible automation technology. It reduces deployment costs by allowing administrators to set policies that control the actions that a switch should dynamically take when specific events occur.
• For administrators who use Cisco Network Assistant, Cisco offers an alternate method for configuring switches for voice. When a Cisco Unified IP Phone is plugged in, the Smartports Advisor feature on the Cisco Catalyst switch can automatically send a dialogue box prompt to the Cisco Network Assistant management interface. The administrator can then apply the appropriate Smartports Advisor voice macros to that switchport for easy configuration.
• If you need to move to a new location, you simply unplug your phone and plug it into the wall jacks in your new office. Removing the voice configuration on the previous switchport helps to strengthen security. You can remove the configuration dynamically when the phone is unplugged.
Nonstop Communications over the LAN
• Maintain triangle topologies for Layer 3 routing peers, especially between the core and distribution switches: This topology helps ensure that a switch can take two equal paths to get to a destination. These two paths will simultaneously reside in the routing table. If a link failure occurs, the traffic will flow on the other path without requiring a route recalculation.
• Summarize routes from the distribution to the core: This process prevents the core switches from having to respond to routing advertisements coming from the access and distribution layers.
• Deploy switches with high-availability innovations: Cisco Catalyst 6500, Catalyst 4500, and Catalyst 3750-E switches lead the industry in meeting uptime requirements with advanced technology that contains, detects, and resolves faults faster with minimal effect on voice traffic. Features such as Stateful Switchover (SSO) preserve critical state information across dual supervisor engines to help ensure that unified communications traffic is continually switched if a primary supervisor engine fails. Cisco IOS® Software Modularity allows you to upgrade single software modules without having to take the switch out of service, thereby increasing up-time even for planned upgrades. This feature localizes the effect of software process faults with a protected memory architecture. Even if a software process failure occurs, voice and video traffic can continue.
Quality of Service
• Maintaining voice quality through the switch: The CoS value for unified communications voice traffic is controlled by the Cisco Catalyst switch. The switch indicates to the Cisco Unified IP Phone which voice VLAN ID it should use and then automatically applies the appropriate CoS value. The switch can also indicate CoS for traffic coming from devices attached to the phone using the Extended Trust feature. A CoS value of 5 indicates high priority and is usually reserved for voice. Call signaling is given a value of 3, and best-effort traffic is given a value of 0. So even if a rogue PC tries to raise its CoS value to 5, the Cisco Unified IP Phone resets the CoS value on the incoming packets of that PC to the CoS value indicated by the switch.
• Monitoring traffic to ensure QoS: Voice traffic is typically assigned the highest-priority queue. You can set an EEM script on a Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switch to detect excessive packet drops and automatically alert the network administrator. Additional voice traffic monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities are provided through the network analysis module (NAM), a data, voice, and video traffic-analysis blade. For example, if dial tone or call setup latency exceeds specified thresholds, the NAM detects these anomalies, analyzes Cisco Unified Communications Manager response times, and then sends an alert to a network operator. For H.323, Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP), and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) traffic, the NAM monitors active calls between caller and callee pairs and identifies call quality degradation by reporting packet loss and jitter statistics. The NAM also performs Differentiated Services (DiffServ) QoS monitoring and provides traffic usage information for each DiffServ code point, helping validate QoS planning assumptions and detect unauthorized or incorrectly marked traffic that could adversely affect voice QoS.
Operational Manageability
• Smartports macros: Based on Cisco best practices, Smartports macros can be applied to any Cisco Catalyst switch to make port configuration much simpler and more accurate. With a standard or customized Cisco Smartports macro, an administrator no longer has to log into each switchport and configure all the parameters for voice VLANs, port security, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) snooping, and Spanning Tree PortFast. Instead, the administrator automatically uploads the Smartports macros, which include all the proper settings. Cisco Smartports macros do not function in third-party or multivendor network environments. As you might imagine, the loss of this powerful cost-and-time-saving tool really accumulates when it comes to the moves, adds, and changes that generate significant costs each year. Cisco Smartports make these configuration changes as easy as possible, providing a greater return on investment.
• AutoQoS macros: Cisco developed AutoQoS macros in response to customer demand for a faster way to deploy QoS configurations, which are traditionally deployed manually on hundreds or thousands of switch and router ports. This powerful feature of Cisco IOS Software automatically handles a range of tasks, including classifying applications, generating policies, configuring QoS, monitoring and reporting to test QoS effectiveness, and enforcing service-level consistency. After Cisco AutoQoS evaluates a network environment and determines policy, it configures the port on an access switch to prioritize voice traffic – with only one command. And it still offers the flexibility to adjust and tailor QoS settings to customer-specific requirements. It also automatically monitors QoS settings and makes this information available in reports, with notification of abnormal events.
• Cisco IOS IP service-level agreements (SLAs): This tool actively monitors the health of the underlying network by generating and then analyzing traffic between multiple network locations or across multiple network paths. It uses the timestamp information to calculate performance metrics such as jitter, latency, network and server response times, packet loss, and mean-opinion-score (MOS) voice-quality scores. Administrators can schedule a Cisco IOS IP SLAs operation at any point in time or continuously over any time interval. Cisco IOS IP SLAs is configured to monitor per-class traffic over the same link by setting the DiffServ code point (DSCP) bits. Administrators can specify measurement characteristics including packet size, packet spacing, protocol type, DSCP marking, and other parameters. They can use measurement statistics provided by Cisco IOS IP SLAs operations for troubleshooting, problem analysis, and designing network topologies (Figure 2).
• Cisco IOS IP SLAs Responder: This component is embedded in the destination Cisco routing device. It processes measurement statistics and sends detailed timestamp information about the processing delay of the destination router back to the source Cisco router. Cisco recommends that round-trip delay be less than 150 ms and jitter be less than 30 ms for successful transmission of voice traffic. Unidirection measurements are also possible.
Secure Communications
• Secure connectivity: Cisco offers many options that help ensure secure communications. For example, VLAN segmentation keeps voice traffic on separate virtual network segments. Voice and Video Enabled VPN (V3PN) provides secure remote connectivity. WLANs are protected through Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2. Call management and endpoints offer strong voice media encryption using the Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP), and Transport Layer Security (TLS) provides protection for signaling traffic. At the application layer, Cisco uses HTTPS to permit protected remote management of IP communications applications. And the Cisco Unity® system is the first voice messaging system to offer encrypted messaging.
• Trust and identity: To contextually identify users and establish trust, many standards-based authentication mechanisms must work together. Cisco offers support for traditional authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services in the infrastructure, as well as more advanced capabilities elsewhere with such tools as Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) and digital certificates. Wireless LANs (WLANs) can allow IP phones to transparently connect on ports where user authentication with 802.1x is mandated. By deploying Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) framework, customers can restrict non-security-compliant wired and wireless endpoints that may be vulnerable or infected with worms, viruses, or spyware. All these threats are stopped before they can enter the network and potentially disrupt voice services.
• Threat defense: Cisco uses many techniques to provide protection against aggressive threats. Integrated and standalone firewalls and intrusion detection systems protect the infrastructure, the voice VLANs, and WLANs. A hardened OS and integrated host intrusion prevention solution called Cisco Security Agent protects the call-processing components. To protect endpoints against common Layer 2 exploits such as man-in-the-middle attacks, Cisco employs advanced dynamic Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) inspection protection and other tools on its LAN switches and unified IP phones. In addition, the Cisco Unified Communications applications themselves offer security features. For example, Cisco Unified Communications Manager can support multiple levels of administration access and advanced protection against toll fraud. Finally, the Cisco Integrated Network infrastructure is designed to withstand denial-of-service (DoS) attacks so that data and voice traffic continues to be forwarded even when DoS attacks occur. Cisco Catalyst 6500 and Catalyst 4500 switches provide such protection through CPU rate limiters as well as control plane policing (CoPP), which is embedded in the hardware.
Scalable Wireless Services
• Simplified wireless voice deployment and management: Cisco integrates wireless controller functions into its switches and routers so network managers can scale and manage wireless networks as easily as they scale and manage traditional wired networks. For example, the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series/7600 Series Wireless Services Module (WiSM) supports zero-touch deployments that require no preconfiguration of access points. It also supports QoS policies, mobility groups, and back-end services, as well as other important tools such as template-based configuration management, which allows quick application of systemwide wireless security configurations.
• Wireless voice call roaming: Efficient roaming is critical for voice applications, which are unforgiving of any delays in authentication. The Cisco Catalyst 6500 WiSM, the Cisco Catalyst 3750G-24WS, and the WLCM offer fast, secure roaming that facilitates roaming of voice clients between access points in the same subnet (Layer 2 roaming) or between subnets (Layer 3 roaming) without disruption to voice calls.
• Integration with diverse wireless clients: A growing number of client devices support 802.11 wireless voice communications today, including dual-mode cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop softphones, and Wi-Fi handsets such as the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7920. Cisco Compatible Extensions, a licensing program for wireless clients, facilitates secure interoperation of these devices with the Cisco Unified Wireless Network. It also helps enable interoperability of client-side features such as power-save mode, QoS, and assisted roaming. Wireless clients that support Cisco Compatible Extensions undergo extensive testing at an independent third-party test lab to help ensure support for innovative Cisco features, as well as interoperability with the Cisco WLAN infrastructure.
Video as a Simple Addition
• Enable video endpoints: You can introduce traditional video conferencing equipment based on the H.323 video conferencing onto the converged network, and you can enable these systems to automatically register to Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Thereafter you can easily control them with Cisco Unified Communications Manager.
• Optimize video delivery: IP Multicast is a bandwidth-conserving technology that reduces traffic by simultaneously delivering a single stream of information to multiple recipients. This technology is ideal for video applications where the same large set of data or video must be transmitted efficiently to multiple clients.
• Dramatically simplify video conferencing management: Call detail records (CDRs) are also integrated into and managed by Cisco Unified Communications Manager. IT managers no longer must download CDRs from two separate systems. Instead, all phone and video records are located in one place.
Energy Savings
• Maximize PoE port density
• Minimize the number of switches required
• Expand savings through decreased use of electricity, backup UPS, and battery power systems
Voice and Data Teams Share a Common View of the Network
• Query Cisco Catalyst switches to ascertain the operational status of the switch as well as the system resources and different ports and interfaces
• Alert administrators in case of operational faults
• Track IP phone inventory and IP phone status changes
• Create a variety of reports that document all the moves, adds, and changes of IP phones
• Increase productivity and enable faster trouble isolation by providing contextual diagnostic tools that troubleshoot through diagnostic tests, performance, and connectivity details about different elements of the Cisco Unified Communications infrastructure
• When an administrator is alerted to a voice problem by a switch, the administrator can instruct the switch to mirror the real-time voice traffic so it can be analyzed.
• The Encapsulated Remote Switched Port Analyzer (ERSPAN) on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switch mirrors the traffic across the campus and across Layer 3 boundaries to a central site, where it can be analyzed.
• The NAM analyzes the traffic, eliminating the need for the administrator to go on site with a portable troubleshooting tool to solve the problem.
Recommendations for a Branch Office
Providing Optimum Voice Quality Across the WAN
• Network-aware Call Admission Control (CAC): Cisco integrated services routers not only support standards-based QoS, they also exchange information with Cisco Unified Communications Manager to enable network-aware CAC with QoS. CAC allows the network to accept or reject a call based on bandwidth and policy considerations. A primary enabler to this solution is the Cisco IOS Software feature called Cisco RSVP Agent. It facilitates dynamic adjustment to changes in the network, supports complex network topologies, and helps enable unified data, voice, and video network designs.
• Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP): This IETF standards-based signaling protocol secures and reserves bandwidth across the WAN for calls accepted by Cisco RSVP Agent (Figure 3). The resulting user experience is characterized by superior QoS and reliability for calls amid meshed and multitiered networks. Cisco RSVP Agent is supported on the Cisco 2800 and Cisco 3800 Series Integrated Services Routers.
• Low Latency Queuing (LLQ) on the WAN interfaces: This technology gives voice traffic a higher priority over other forms of traffic on the link.
• Traffic shaping: Traffic shaping prevents WAN traffic from reaching the line rate in case of speed mismatches with the central hub. It is also used to stay within the committed information rate delivered by the service provider.
• Link fragmentation and interleaving (LFI): This technology is very helpful when WAN links are less than 768 kbps. LFI takes large packets destined for the WAN and cuts them into manageable pieces for transmission. It allows voice packets to be interleaved within these pieces and transmitted across the WAN. Without LFI, voice packets would have to wait until the entire large packet was transmitted across the WAN before they would be allowed on the link. This delay, of course, could affect the quality of the voice connection.
• WAN optimization: Service modules on Cisco integrated services routers support a variety of technologies that optimize WAN transport. For example, the Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Network Module minimizes protocol chatter as it traverses the WAN link, conserving bandwidth for business-critical applications. The Cisco Network Capacity Expansion (NCE) services module can focus on bandwidth optimization through compression, and the Performance Routing services module is a Cisco routing innovation that determines optimized routing paths for different types of applications.
Delivering Resiliency for Intrabranch Communications
Nonstop Communications over the WAN
• If the WAN link to a remote office fails and the connection to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager for the domain is lost, the phones in that branch office automatically redirect to the Cisco Unified SRST-enabled router.
• The Cisco Unified SRST-enabled router automatically takes over and offers a rich set of telephony functions to help ensure business continuity with minimal effect on the system.
• When the disrupted WAN link is restored, the phones automatically reregister with the original Cisco Unified Communications Manager and, again, no manual intervention is required.
Simplifying Services Integration
Award-Winning Services and Support
• Comprehensive planning, design, implementation, and optimization services to help ensure a smooth and efficient migration to unified communications
• End-to-end integrated and validated solutions and systems that are easier to order, install, manage, upgrade, and use
• In-depth training, certification, and expertise delivered by Cisco and our worldwide partners
• Twenty-four-hour technical assistance and comprehensive service and support for the complete solution
• They can have one point of contact to receive speedy implementation and problem resolution.
• They can be among the first to deploy new features as they are developed. They will do so knowing that the unified communications solution and the integrated network will be completely compatible.
Summary
• When a high-tech Fortune 500 company replaced its old TDM voice technology with VoIP at 75 percent of its sites, it saved more than US$35 million in voice operating expenses over a span of 30 months. The company estimates its unified communications savings from employee productivity to be $220 to $280 million. This large enterprise was also able to integrate 30 acquisitions in 3 years with no increase in IT voice staff.
• By deploying unified communications across the business, a U.S. government agency exponentially increased its unified communications benefits. The agency expects to reduce annual travel costs by US$10 million and has already reduced voice conferencing costs by 50 percent while increasing monthly usage from 400,000 minutes to 2.5 million minutes in the first year.
• A high-end Japanese retailer used the embedded unified communications capabilities in its inventory application to optimize the customer experience in one of its biggest profit centers. The result? In the 6 months that the company piloted its radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled in-store inventory application, it increased revenue growth by 113 percent over the previous year. At the same time, the company reduced its sales cycle time by 20 percent while dramatically improving customer satisfaction.
10 Mistakes That Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make
When it comes to starting a successful business there’s no surefire playbook……..
that contains the winning game plan. On the other hand, there are about as many mistakes to be made as there are entrepreneurs to make them.
Recently, after a work-out at the gym with my trainer—an attractive young woman who’s also a dancer/actor—she told me about a web series that she’s producing and starring in together with a few friends. While the series has gained a large following online, she and her friends have not yet incorporated their venture, drafted an operating agreement, trademarked the show’s name or done any of the other things that businesses typically do to protect their intellectual property and divvy up the owners’ share of the company. While none of this may be a problem now, I told her, just wait until the show hits it big and everybody hires a lawyer.
Here, in my experience, are the top 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs make when starting a company:
1. Going it alone. It’s difficult to build a scalable business if you’re the only person involved. True, a solo public relations, web design or consulting firm may require little capital to start, and the price of hiring even one administrative assistant, sales representative or entry-level employee can eat up a big chunk of your profits. The solution: Make sure there’s enough margin in your pricing to enable you to bring in other people. Clients generally don’t mind outsourcing as long as they can still get face time with you, the skilled professional who’s managing the project. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often churn out how-to business books and fancy themselves as management gurus, but few see their methodologies adopted. Eric Ries is experiencing something different. He speaks with WSJ’s Pui-Wing Tam.
2. Asking too many people for advice. It’s always good to get input from experts, especially experienced entrepreneurs who’ve built and sold successful companies in your industry. But getting too many people’s opinions can delay your decision so long that your company never gets out of the starting gate. The answer: Assemble a solid advisory board that you can tap on a regular basis but run the day-to-day yourself. Says Elyissia Wassung, chief executive of 2 Chicks With Chocolate Inc., a Matawan, N.J., chocolate company, “Pull in your [advisory] team for bi-weekly or, at the very least, monthly conference calls. You’ll wish you did it sooner!”
3. Spending too much time on product development, not enough on sales. While it’s hard to build a great company without a great product, entrepreneurs who spend too much time tinkering may lose customers to a competitor with a stronger sales organization. “I call [this misstep] the ‘Field of Dreams’ of entrepreneurship. If you build it, they will buy it,” says Sanjyot Dunung, CEO of Atma Global, Inc., a New York software publisher, who has made this mistake in her own business. “If you don’t keep one eye firmly focused on sales, you’ll likely run out of money and energy before you can successfully get your product to market.”
4. Targeting too small a market. It’s tempting to try to corner a niche, but your company’s growth will quickly hit a wall if the market you’re targeting is too tiny. Think about all the high school basketball stars who dream of playing in the NBA. Because there are only 30 teams and each team employs only a handful of players, the chances that your son will become the next Michael Jordan are pretty slim. The solution: Pick a bigger market that gives you the chance to grab a slice of the pie even if your company remains a smaller player.
6. Overpaying for customers. Spending big on advertising may bring in lots of customers, but it’s a money-losing strategy if your company can’t turn those dollars into life-time customer value. A magazine or web site that spends $500 worth of advertising to acquire a customer who pays $20 a month and cancels his or her subscription at the end of the year is simply pouring money down the drain. The solution: Test, measure, then test again. Once you’ve done enough testing to figure out how to make more money selling products and services to your customers than you spend acquiring those customers in the first place, roll out a major marketing campaign. (See related article, “On a Tight Budget? How to Land a Client.”)
7. Raising too little capital. Many start-ups assume that all they need is enough money to rent space, buy equipment, stock inventory and drive customers through the door. What they often forget is that they also need capital to pay for salaries, utilities, insurance and other overhead expenses until their company starts turning a profit. Unless you’re running the kind of business where everybody’s working for sweat equity and deferring compensation, you’ll need to raise enough money to tide you over until your revenues can cover your expenses and generate positive cash flow. The solution: Calculate your start-up costs before you open your doors, not afterwards.
8. Raising too much capital. Believe it or not, raising too much money can be a problem, too. Over-funded companies tend to get big and bloated, hiring too many people too soon and wasting valuable resources on trade show booths, parties, image ads and other frills. When the money runs out and investors lose patience (which is what happened 10 years ago when the dot-com market melted down), start-ups that frittered away their cash will have to close their doors. No matter how much money you raise at the outset, remember to bank some for a rainy day.
9. Not having a business plan. While not every company needs a formal business plan, a start-up that requires significant capital to grow and more than a year to turn a profit should map out how much time and money it’s going to take to get to its destination. This means thinking through the key metrics that make your business tick and building a model to spin off three years of sales, profits and cash-flow projections. “I wasted 10 years [fooling around] thinking like an artist and not a business person,” says Louis Piscione, president of Avanti Media Group, a New Jersey company that produces videos for corporate and private events. “I learned that you have to put some of your creative genius toward a business plan that forecasts and sets goals for growth and success.” (See related article, “Are Business Plans a Waste of Time?”)
10. Over-thinking your business plan. While many entrepreneurs I’ve met engage in seat-of-the-pants decision-making and fail to do their homework, other entrepreneurs are afraid to pull the trigger until they’re 100% certain that their plan will succeed. One lawyer I worked with several years ago was so skittish about leaving his six-figure job to launch his business that he never met with a single bank or investor who might have funded his company. The truth is that a business plan is not a crystal ball that can predict the future. At a certain point, you have to close your eyes and take the leap of faith.
Despite the many books and articles that have been written about entrepreneurship, it’s just not possible to start a company without making a few mistakes along the way. Just try to avoid making any mistake so large that your company can’t get back on its feet to fight another day.
About the Author
Rosalind Resnick is the founder and CEO and Axxess Business Consulting Inc., a New York consulting firm that develops business plans and financial projections for start-ups and early-stage companies. She is also the author of “The Vest Pocket Consultant’s Secrets of Small Business Success.”
Social Media Marketing with YouTube: Why? – BLASTmedia
Are you looking for a social media marketing firm to handle your next campaign?
(Click’n Play):> Social Media Marketing with YouTube: Why?
Let the agency with a proven track record of social media success handle it. The social media team at BLASTmedia “social media” BLASTmedia “social media youtube” “marketing with youtube” “youtube marketing” “social media agency” “social media firm” “pr firm” “public relations firm” “public relations agency” vseo “video SEO” “youtube video optimization” “youtube secret weapon” “julie perry” “blake fife” Social Media Marketing with YouTube – BLASTmedia The social media team at BLASTmedia has a wealth of experience creating successful YouTube marketing campaigns for our clients — from major consumer tech companies to small businesses and start ups. Whether your company’s goal is list-building and lead generation, search engine optimization (SEO), or simply increasing your social media presence and interactivity, BLASTmedia knows how to make sure you maximize PROFIT with every YouTube video you upload. : : BLASTmedia.com : : Also skilled at social media outreach via YouTube, BLASTmedia can help get your product into the hands of some of the top influencers YouTube has to offer. The results we’ve achieved for our clients in the way of increased exposure, traffic, and conversion (yes, SALES!) is astounding. Contact BLASTmedia today to read some of our case studies! Led by YouTube expert Julie Perry (the featured YouTube expert in Entrepreneur Magazine’s latest book “Success Secrets …
The Quality of Your Product Doesn’t Matter (That Much)
Now I don’t like this fact.
By Darren Hardy
I would philosophically argue against this fact. But it is a fact… and the evidence is all around us.
Who makes the best-tasting hamburger in the world? Doubtful you’d anoint McDonald’s with that title, but they outsell everyone else by many billions of dollars.
What is the best wine in the world? Certainly Franzia (which comes in a box!) wouldn’t be your first or 100th guess, but it is the best selling.
What is the highest-quality bottled water? If you tested it, it certainly wouldn’t be Aquafina (owned by www.PepsiCo.com), Dasani (owned by www.CocaCola.com) or Poland Spring (owned by www.NestleWaters.com), but those are the number 1, 2 and 3 best selling.
Nine times out of 10 it is not the best or highest-quality clothing line, automobile, restaurant, CPA firm, real estate agent, lawyer, furniture manufacturer, refrigerator, etc. that sells the most or becomes the biggest—it is the ones who market themselves the best.
This is the business axiom that I witness all around me every day:
The ultimate success of a product or service is 10% the quality of the product and 90% the quality of the marketing.
Now while I don’t necessarily LIKE that fact, as I believe the success of a product or service should be what’s most important and it should stand ENTIRELY on the value it delivers, that is just not how it works in reality.
Even if you are simply an individual in a sales organization this is true. It is not necessarily the best, the highest quality, highest class, most refined people that make it to the top… it is the ones who market themselves, network themselves, position themselves with credibility amongst their peers and demonstrate their growing and developing selves to the circle around them that end up at the top of the sales organization.
Now, let me also add this: If your product or service is bad… or even if you are bad, unethical or without integrity, no amount of marketing will make you or your product or service successful—especially in this day and age of Yelp, Twitter, Facebook and Google. You and your product or service reputation will die a certain and expedient viral death.
Here is a not so funny (literally) great example of this: When the greatly anticipated and greatly marketed movie, coming off the hit Borat by Sacha Baron Cohen, called Bruno was released; it had one of the biggest first day attendance statistics ever. But then people walked out of the theatre and Facebooked, Twittered, blogged to their friends how bad the movie was… the movie died that very day.
So the lesson is, yes you must create a high-value, quality product or service, but even more important to the ultimate success of it will be determined by how well it is marketed. Don’t forget to see the last 90% of the way through to success.
Even though I lack personal experience, I equate it to giving birth to a child. It takes nine months to gestate a child, which is like product development. But when the child is actually born you don’t just set it on the shelf and hope for the best. No, 90% of developing a successful child happens after birth. This is also the ratio of marketing to product development to create a successful product or service (loose analogy I admit, but gives you the picture nonetheless!).
For our August issue of our SUCCESS Audio Series (private SUCCESS partner product—not available for public sale) I interviewed two of today’s marketing wizards—Jay Abraham and Frank Kern. Let me pass on a couple of key tips they shared with me for your (free!) benefit:
1. The heart is closer to the wallet than the head is.
Right now write out a one- or two-sentence description of what you sell (pause your reading now). Is your description a solution… is it an emotional outcome? Or is what you wrote more of a description of your product or a functional benefit?
Peter Drucker said, “People buy with their hearts, not their minds”.
So, is your description trying to appeal to a prospect’s head or heart? Gotta redirect your efforts to the heart.
Homework: Write out the three most important solutions or emotional outcomes your product or service produces and start clarifying and focusing your messaging around that language.
2. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Now turn your emotional description into an irresistible headline. This alone could improve your results—not by 10%, 25% or 50%, but by 3, 5 or 10 times. Not just the headline as in a print ad, banner ad, Google Adword or even email. This headline is the attention-getter in every form of communication—prospecting call, sales presentation or stage presentation you do. The response to your headline needs to be: That’s me or… that’s what I need or… I’ve gotta to know what that is… NOT… So what?
Homework: Fashion three sensational headlines that fit your product, service, company, opportunity or presentation.
3. Results in Advance.
How can you help prospects in advance of them actually purchasing or paying for your product or service or getting into your business? What can you give them or help them with? Maybe it is as simple as education, research, a valuable report, connection to resources or other people, a tip from someone else in their industry, etc.
Homework: Think of three ways you can help your prospective clients get results in advance of them even purchasing your product—in a way that will make them want to come to you begging to buy because you have been so valuable in helping them get results—in advance.
Okay, your turn. Contribute one or two great marketing ideas that you have proven to work in the comments below. Can’t wait to read!
Tips to Turn Off Geo-Tagging on Your Cell Phone
Keeping tabs on your favorite celebrities might be easier than you think — and much easier than they want. But they likely have no one to blame but themselves. Phone and camera pictures can show where they were taken.
According to two teams of computer scientists, Hollywood stars could be unintentionally giving up the exact locations of their homes and private whereabouts through pictures uploaded to the Internet, leaving them wide open to attacks by tech-savvy thieves (not to mention unwanted visits by starstruck fans).
CLICK HERE to get some tips for disabling geotagging.
Most cameras and video recorders don’t instantly attach location data (or geographic coordinates) to photos and videos. But some smartphones, such as the iPhone, automatically embed the user’s latitude and longitude in each photo’s metadata. It’s possible to disable the function, but the researchers said many people don’t even realize that they might need to.
The scientists say geotag data embedded in photos and videos that are uploaded to Twitter and other online sites often reveals location information that stars — as well as the rest of us — probably don’t want to share.
“Many people are not aware of the fact that there are geotags in photos and videos,” said Gerald Friedland, a computer scientist at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, Calif. “If they are, they’re most probably not aware of the consequences.”
Using simple technology available online, Friedland said he and his colleague Robin Sommer were able to find the private home addresses of a Playboy playmate, a couple of TV hosts and a handful of other television personalities. Out of respect for their privacy, he declined to name the stars.
William Shatner, Hammer Among Celebs Who Tweet Geotagged Pictures
Ben Jackson and Larry Pesce, computer security experts in Massachusetts, said they were able to uncover location information in photos uploaded by William Shatner, M.C. Hammer, Weird Al Yankovic, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others.
“We have no problem with people posting this data online,” said Jackson. “[But] most people don’t even understand that they are posting this information online.”
ICanStalkU.com Scans Twitter for Pictures That Reveal Location
In May, Jackson and Pesce launched the website ICanStalkU.com to raise awareness of just how much information people share when they post a simple picture to Twitter.
The site’s software scans Twitter for images that contain location data and then translates those geographic coordinates into an actual street address or place name. The site then displays a real-time stream of all the tweets broadcasting the precise locations of Twitter users.
“When we initially started setting [this up]… people were shocked that we were grabbing this information,” said Jackson, security analyst for Mayhemic Labs in Boston.
For Hollywood stars or lesser known wealthy Twitter users, the consequences can be damaging, he said.
For example, do celebrities really want to leave behind a real-time digital trail for paparazzi to follow? Do they intend to disclose the specific street addresses of their multi-million dollar homes?
And do average people really want to let potential thieves know that they’re on vacation, leaving their homes vacant, or where they grab coffee or take an evening run?
Jackson said some people might be perfectly comfortable disclosing their location history, but if they’re not, they should be aware so that they can disable the features that make it possible.
Pesce, a security analyst for NWN Corporation, an IT firm in Waltham, Mass., said geotagged photos also pose corporate threats.
Let’s say an employee with valuable corporate information stored on a home computer or laptop posts geotagged pictures to Facebook and Twitter. A hacker could use the photos to monitor the person’s location history and figure out a good time to make a move, he said.
“Thinking about that from a computer security perspective has some interesting implications as to how someone could gain access to corporate IT data,” Pesce said.
These security issues aren’t just limited to social media. Online classified sites such as Craigslist can also pose problems.
Craigslist Users Reveal Location Through Pictures
Friedland said some Craigslist users who otherwise make a point to protect their identities online are disclosing the exact locations of their homes through the pictures they post on the site.
People selling couches, desks and other items online might think that they are posting anonymously, but through the photos uploaded to the site, Friedland said, they were able to locate to users within one meter accuracy.
“We found quite a lot of postings where the photos contained geolocation information, some were even anonymized,” he said.
Friedland and Sommer will present their findings to the technology community next month at a security conference in Washington, D.C. But Friedland said that there’s a takeaway for the non-technical too.
Location-based services, such as Foursquare which can people locate friends and programs that auto-cluster pictures by location, can be helpful and positive, he said. But he emphasized that people need to be careful about what they disclose.
“I think people have to be made aware of the geotagging issue before something really bad happens,” Friedland said. “In reality, this is really nice technology. You just have to be aware of it.”
Web Extra Tips:
People can tag their friends location on Facebook. Follow the following steps to opt out of this feature:
Go to your Facebook account.
Click “Account” in the top right corner.
Click “Privacy Settings.”.
In the “Sharing on Facebook” section, click “Customize settings.”
Scroll down to “Things others share” and make the option next to “Friends can check me into Places” read “Disabled.”
The Web site ICanStalkU.com provides step-by-step instructions for disabling the photo geotagging function on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Palm devices. Click HERE to visit the website.
47 Top Tools & Strategies for Productivity
Turn your activity into achievement.
Amy Anderson Erin Casey Darren Hardy Deborah Heisz Brandy Jules Mariana Lenox Lisa Ocker K. Shelby Skrhak August 5, 2010
Productivity is not an accident. It’s a decision.
Legendary coach John Wooden said, “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” You may be busy from the moment your alarm goes off in the morning until the time your head hits the pillow at night, but are you accomplishing anything meaningful toward the fulfillment of your goals? Are you making forward progress, or are you just running in place?
Make a decision today to stop wasting time—or just spending time—and, instead, invest some time in learning how you can be more productive in the areas of your life that really matter.
Our SUCCESS team has put together tips and strategies from experts and readers alike for enhancing your productivity at the office, at home and on the go. Read our favorites, and then feel free to join the discussion on Facebook or Twitter and share some of your own best practices.
Plan Your Day //
While many people rely on their computer’s calendar, writing down events and to-do lists in a day planner or journal forces you to spend a few minutes each day setting short-term goals and prioritizing tasks. Reader Simon Ponce uses the 90-Day Success Planner. Of course, the Franklin Covey planner (see www.franklincovey.com) is a beloved classic. And other readers have discovered The 7-Minute Life Daily Planner by Allyson Lewis, who suggests the strategy of a “5 before 11™” list—the five things you want to accomplish before 11 a.m.
List Your Goals //
Hopes and dreams remain fantasies until you identify them, write them down and create a plan for achieving them.
Determine Your Best Time of Day //
Are you a night owl? An early riser? You may already know your peak times of day for energy and creativity. If not, take a week and chart the times of day when your energy and attention seem to peak or lag. When do you work quickly or creatively? When do you make the most errors? Once you know your peak times, schedule activities accordingly, keeping in mind that everyone has highs and lows throughout the day; it’s what you do with them that counts.
Journal //
Not only a diary, a journal is an all-encompassing log of thoughts, ideas, discussions, phone numbers, tasks, planning, reminders, etc. By keeping a journal, you’ll have only one place to look for previous ideas, thoughts and plans. As SUCCESS reader Jim McMonagle says, “My journal is my productivity tool. It keeps me focused on what is most important every day.”
Commit to a Peak-Performance Partner //
Once a week, have a 30-minute accountability call with another superachieving peer. Discuss your wins, losses, fixes and ah-has, and challenge each other for better results the following week.
Rethink and Renew //
Historian Arnold Toynbee said, “Nothing fails like success.” Using old strategies to tackle new circumstances may be keeping you from taking greater strides. In his blog, Stephen R. Covey recommends taking time to rethink. “We have to examine our paradigms (our view of things), our tools, our skills to determine if we’re approaching the problem in the right way. As a first step, we may even step back and make sure we’ve correctly defined the problem. Then we need to see if, based on the evidence of results or lack of results, we need a new approach.” If you find you need some new tools or skills, don’t be discouraged. “This can be an exciting proposition because you will most likely find new growth and development in the process—this is success!”
For the complete article, check out the digital edition of SUCCESS magazine. www.successmagazine.com
Tags: strategies, peak-performance, www.franklincovey.com, activity, achievement, www.facebook.com, www.twitter.com, tools, www.successmagazine.com
Communication Defined
Communication Defined
By Zig Ziglar
The dictionary says that to communicate is “to impart, to give to another, as a partaker, to confer for joint possession, to bestow, as that which the receiver is to hold, retain, use or enjoy. To impart as knowledge, to reveal, to give as information, either by words, signs or signals, as to communicate intelligence, news, opinions.”
Despite the fact that we have incredible technology which enables us to “communicate” instantly with people all over the world, we’re still woefully short on one-on-one communication skills. Effective communication skills are critical to building good relationships and to increasing productivity and the effectiveness of the people with whom we associate. Basically, leaders know how to communicate and they communicate in many ways. Once, while jogging in Chattanooga, I passed a house that had a sign which said, “No Trespassers.” Underneath it, the sign said, “Trespassers Will Be Shot – Survivors Will Be Shot Again.” That’s communication.
Fiero LaGuardia was mayor of New York during World War II, before America entered the conflict. During his tenure he was given the unenviable task of providing police protection for a group of Nazi dignitaries who were visiting the city. He had no choice but to provide it, but he communicated very strongly by making certain that every member of the police force assigned to protect those men were Jews. I’m confident Hitler got the message. That’s communicating.
I love the little story told by Herm Albright who, after watching a middle-aged waitress going about her business efficiently and with a smile for everyone, decided to compliment her on her good humor. She responded, as she continued to work, “It’s like this. If you see the twinkles, you won’t notice the wrinkles.” That’s communication.
Think about your communication skills. Practice good communicating techniques in your personal, family and business life. The better you do it, the more likely I am to SEE YOU AT THE TOP!
Zig Ziglar is known as America’s motivator. He is the author of 29 books and numerous audio and video recordings. He brings his message of hope to thousands on the stages at the Get Motivated Seminars. See him in action!
Quote
Ambition, fueled by compassion, wisdom and integrity, is a powerful force for good that will turn the wheels
of industry and open the doors of opportunity for you and countless others. ~Zig Ziglar