Looking to Business

Getting Your Own Office

Daniel M. Wood — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:18:14 +0000

When starting a company one of the most loaded questions is;
“When should I get my own office?”
Should you get it at once, should you wait until you want to start hiring?
When should you get your office?

In my opinion there is only one way to answer this question – when you get a positive Return on Investment from having an office. As soon as your increased income from having an office is more than the cost of the office it is time to find one.

How do you calculate the ROI?
First, you need to know how much the office would cost per month that is your baseline, the figure you need to beat to be able to afford moving into an office.

To calculate your increased income you have to take a lot of different things under consideration.

- Will you be more efficient at the office? How much more efficient? How much more will you earn because of that efficiency?
- Will you be able to invite customers to your office? How much of an increased income per month could that result in?
- What other added benefits are there from having your own office? How much money (quantify it) are those benefits worth.

Hiring
If you are going to have employees you cannot invite them to work from your home.
Either you work without offices, letting everyone work out of their own homes, or you get an office.

- What are the benefits of letting your employees work from home?
- What are the benefits of having them work out of the office?
- What is the difference in monthly income for your company?

Now add all the different increases and decreases in income together, to calculate how much extra you will earn because you have an office, did the income supersede the costs of an office?

Then it is worth it!

What if you need to get an office long term, but in the short term it is a bad investment?
If you have properly created a business plan and your long term goal you might see that you need an office to reach your goals. If you by using the above calculation got the result that is wasn’t worth it to move into an office, you either made a miss calculation when calculating the value of the employees you could hire or you need to revisit your business plan.

If you are looking to get new offices with room to hire maybe 2 new employees and the value created by those 2 employees isn’t enough to sponsor the office, you need to find ways to increase your margins.

There is no reason to get an office just to have an office, the whole point of moving into an office is to increase your income and make more money.

If you cannot afford it?
You need an office and can calculate a positive ROI, but you cannot afford it, what do you do?

There are two things you can do, the first is to take a risk and get a loan so that you can afford your offices, the second is to wait, keep growing your business out of your home and when you have more money you move into the office.

That decision I leave to you.

If you want to learn more about how to make your goals reality, join our email newsletter “Your Path to Your Dreams” and you will receive tips and advice, and even a free copy of our e-book “How to make Selling Easy” and “The Beginners Guide to Success”.

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Storytelling in Goal Setting

Daniel M. Wood — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:22:11 +0000

Goal setting is one of the most important parts of success, if not the most important.
Setting goals helps you focus your efforts, it gives you a target, opens you up to new ideas and unlocks your creativity.
The classic advice is to be brief when writing down your goals, it should be in the positive active form with a deadline e.g. I have 12 million dollars in the bank by the 31 of December 2014.

This way of writing goals activates the subconscious, since you are telling it that you have already achieved the above statement. By giving yourself a deadline it becomes a goal instead of a wish, you know when you will have completed your goals so you start asking yourself the word “how”, the word “how” opens up your creativity and gives you idea after idea.

Storytelling
What is even more powerful than just stating your goal, is imagining it.
Visualizing your goals is what really empowers you and builds your future.

We humans are created with a huge amount of creativity, we have the ability to dream and imagine.
The most powerful way to set a goal is to not only see exactly what you want, but to tell yourself the story, write down the story.

In the book and movie “The Secret” they give an example of a man who liked to paint pictures of beautiful women, looking away from him. His creativity went into creating an image of women looking away from him. Sadly the same seemed to happen in his life. He was a single, good looking man, but he couldn’t get a date.
When prompted to try painting pictures of the women fawning over him, he did and he put all his creative energy into creating the truth in the painting and in his life. Before long his life had changed and he was dating multiple women. After a while he decided that he wanted to settle down with one woman, so he painted it and before long he was married, happily.

Most of us aren’t painters; storytelling is just as, if not more, powerful.
Start by deciding what you want in the 4 major areas of your life; Health, Relationships, Career and Finance, and writing it down, now you have the goal of your story, you know where it is leading.

Then start imagining how your life will look when you have achieved your goals, what will you do, how is a day in your life – Write the story of a day in your life when you have achieved all your goals.

Tell the story of your success
When you have a clear picture of your life as it is when you have achieved all you dream about – start writing the story about how you got there.
This takes more imagination and a lot more work. Have fun with it though – it doesn’t matter if it is completely correct. You are answering the question “How am I going to achieve my goals?” you are unlocking your creativity and putting it to use.

Once you have finished your story you have a guideline, you know what you should do to start on your way – all you need to do is make sure the story begins today!

If you see that unforeseen circumstances changes the path you will take – rewrite your story, re-answer the question “how?” and keep yourself moving forward.

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Passion – How to Find it and Nurture it, in Yourself

Daniel M. Wood — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:46:52 +0000

For managers the most important trait they are looking for in their employees is passion.
People with passion get noticed; it opens doors and opportunities.

But what if you don’t feel passionate about your job?
What if you haven’t felt passion in any job you have been in? If you don’t really care about the work you do during the day?

3 Steps to Becoming Passionate

1. Start by reading this article about setting your goals

Without long term goals, without a reason to perform, passion is very hard to find.
Once you have set your long term goals, evaluate how your job can help you reach your goal.

“The biggest mistake we ever make is thinking we work for anyone but ourselves” – Brian Tracy

The reason you are working for your employer is so that you can realize your personal goals, by over performing where you are now, you will get opportunities to rise, both within the company or by being headhunted into competitors. You might be looking for career advances or salary advances, or both!
Both doors will be opened by over performing and being passionate about your job.

2. List everything that is good about your company

Does the company provide value to customers?
Does your employer offer you opportunities?
Are they helpful in society?
How is the social climate at the company?

See if you can find anything within the company that resonates with you, that is something you care about. If you think about it long enough, two things are all that can happen – Either you find something or you don’t!

If you find something, focus on that; use that to channel your focus and your passion.
If not – well if nothing in the company resonates with you and is something you can care about – maybe it is time to find new employment…

3. Fake it till you make it!

Even if you set your goals, work your current job into the plans, find something in the company that you can really care for – it doesn’t always make you passionate overnight.

It takes time to build passion, to take a small spark and fan it into a flame.
The above two steps can create the spark – the third is all about fanning that flame.

Work as if you were passionate, talk as if you were passionate, work as if you are passionate.
In everything you do – be passionate!
Before you know it you will be feeling that passion – you will realize that you aren’t faking it any more, you are truly passionate.

Remember this advice can be used for any of the 4 major areas of your life “Health, Relationships, Finance or Career” – Just switch the work company.

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Success is Right There – You Just Have to Reach Out and Grab It!

Daniel M. Wood — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:00:11 +0000

I don’t know how many times I have been told this, and given this advice myself.
Last week I realized the truth and the false in this statement.

Think of when you are standing in the shower.
You have soap in your eyes, you cannot see and you want to pick something up.

It is right there in front of you, you reach out your hand, and miss.
You reach out again and end up pushing it away. You grab for it again and you find it!

It is the same way in success.
Success is right in front of you, but you cant see it.
The ones who succeed are those who try, try and try again until they are successful.

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Sorry for my absence and Merry Christmas

Daniel M. Wood — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:34:24 +0000

The last month I haven’t posted much on LookingtoBusiness.com, I apologize for this.

The reason is that me and my wife chose to move home to Sweden from Norway. I have changed jobs and had a lot to do with the move.

Sadly this has left little time over for studying psychology or sharing what I have learned about personal development.

I will be taking a break for christmas but as the new year enters I will be back 100% working on new techniques and sharing tips on how to improve your efficiency and become more successful!

Merry Christmas!
In the mean time I just want to wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year. Make the best of it and take some time off with family and friends.

Hope to see you all soon again here on LTB after new years.

//Daniel

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Choosing Your Business Idea – Market Research and Your Business Plan

Daniel M. Wood — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:55:32 +0000

Almost everyone I speak to has an idea of a great business they could start.
There was a period of my life when I was being fed ideas from all around, people working in companies seeing the company missing target markets, producing the wrong products or just people with plans to create completely new products and opportunities.

I am sure that if you think about it, you could come up with at least 5 good business ideas.

The question is, which one is right?

Market Research
Before you start it is important to learn what the size of your potential market so that you know if your company can support itself in the future.

Is there an interest among your potential clientele?
Is this something they need?
Is this something they want?

If you can find a product where people answer yes to all three of these questions, you have a potentially good business, if the market is large enough.

How to do market research
Start by identifying your target market, who are you selling to?
Make a demographic picture of your customer, age, gender, geographic location, income, family situation and so on.

Then explain them in the terms of their wants and needs, why would they want your product?
Why do they need it?

Survey your guesses
Now that you know who your customers are, ask them if they would be interested in the product you are thinking of creating.

You could start by using focus groups; gathering a group of people from your target market and have them discuss the potential product, its pros, cons, why they might want it, why not, pricing and so on.

Next I suggest you create a survey as a result of your focus groups discussion to see if what the focus group discussed and felt is what the larger market thinks.
If you can try to survey at least 100 people, you can do this by asking around town, by creating an internet survey or by finding a place where these people gather like a sports organization, a book club or a business association and ask if they could survey their members for you.

Your business plan
As a result from all this market research you will know a lot about your customers wants a needs, now is time to write your business plan.

This should be both done as a financial statement showing how much you will have to initially invest, what expenses you will have over time and how much you need to sell at what price to be profitable.

It should also include a marketing plan on how you expect to sell your product, how to become profitable, what your key selling points will be, how much you plan on working, and a timeline for when different parts of your plans will be implemented.

Get started
Once you have created your business plan all you need to do is get to work.
Keep your plan close, it will need to be updated many times as your business grows and how the reality of the world proves that your initial assumptions were incorrect.

The fact that you have a plan though will give you something to update, something to work from and a frame of reference when you evaluate new opportunities and ideas.

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Being an Entrepreneur

Daniel M. Wood — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:53:03 +0000

Most of my readers are entrepreneurs at heart. You want to do be, be more, create and do the things you see other people wrong, right.

You want to create something you can call your own, that you can stand behind and which you can control.

Starting your own company is a great option.

Starting as a project on the side
Many make the mistake of rushing in to a new project all guns blazing, just to learn that their ideas and skills weren’t really good enough.

I am more of the careful type, I like to test the project small scale before I go in 100%.

When I started my first company I kept my day job and worked on my new project evenings.
This worked well since I could get a lot of work done, I had a stable income so I didn’t have to stress about making the company profitable from the get go, since most companies don’t show a profit the first 12 months it was enormous relief of pressure.

Having the guts to go all in, even if you don’t in time
The mistake I made with my first project was that I didn’t have the guts to invest myself in it.
I knew that I needed help in many areas, but instead of hiring or investing, I tried to figure it out myself.

This is what killed my first company, the product was poor and it took too long a time to get it to the market, before I was able to launch there were multiple competitors already out there with much better products.

Having a clear goal and plenty of support
When you start your project you work double, both on your day job and on your side project, it is important to have the support of your family since it will take its toll.

Before you start it is therefore important that you have a clear goal of what you want.
What is it you are after? How will your life look when you succeed? What will your business look like? And so on.

Knowing this before hand will help you family see why it is a good idea for you to start your side project. Because if they only see it as you working more and spending less time with them, why would they want you to do it?
They love you and want to be with you, show them how in the long run this project will give them that.

The amazing feeling when you can quit your day job
The day you quit your day job and move over to your business full time is incredible, you feel as though you have succeeded!

This is the first step into becoming a true entrepreneur. Once you are working on your project full time you can dial up your efforts, expand and quickly start achieving your goals.

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Stress Management Training; How to Coach Yourself to Handle Stress

Daniel M. Wood — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 10:30:45 +0000

Stress management exists in many forms; in the last article we discussed several mindsets and techniques to help you be better at handling stressful situations.

Today I want to discuss your self-talk when handling stress. What you tell yourself helps handling the emotional stress of the situation and lets you use the problem focused techniques we discussed last time.

1. Preparing for the stressor (The stressful situation)

Self Statements:
- What do I need to do?
- I can work out a plan and deal with it.
- Remember, stick to the issues and don’t take it personally.
- Stop worrying. Worrying won’t help anything.

2. Confronting and handling the stressor (situation)

Self Statements:
- As long as I keep my cool, I am in control of the situation.
- I can meet this challenge. This tension is just a cue to use my stress management techniques.
- Don’t think about stress, just about what I have to do.
- Take a deep breath and relax. Ah, good.

3. Coping with the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Self Statements:
- Keep my focus on the present. What is it I have to do?
- Relax and slow things down.
- Don’t try and eliminate stress totally; Just keep it manageable.
- Let’s take the issue point by point.

4. Evaluation and Self-Reinforcement.

Self Statements:
- OK, what worked and what can I do better next time?
- I handled it pretty well.
- It didn’t work, but that is OK. I’ll do better next time.
- Way to go! You did it!

Whenever you are in a stressful situation, repeat these statements to yourself, they will help you gain control and put you in a mindset to handle the situation.
By controlling your mind you control your emotions and your actions, you put yourself back in the driver’s seat, which in itself reduces stress greatly.

In the Time Management Expert Course we teach techniques to help reduce stress and a system to make you more efficient which in turn gives you a better starting point to handling new stressful situations.

If you want to learn more, check out the Time Management Expert Course home page.

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How to Cope With Stress

Daniel M. Wood — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:48:33 +0000

My last couple article have been about the problems of stress and what causes it.
Now that we are all sufficiently afraid of the effects of stress – Obesity, Heart Disease, Cancer, Depression, Anxiety and Unhappiness to mention just a few – We will discuss how to handle stress.

Two main ways of Coping with Stress

1. Problem-Focused Coping
As the name suggests problem focused coping is about directly facing the cause of our stress and trying to resolve the situation.

2. Emotional-Focused Coping
Emotional focused coping try to manage the emotions coming as a result of the stressful situation and learning to handle and minimizing the emotional impact.

Your initial thought might be that problem-focused coping is always best, but that doesn’t need to be the case, you need to be able to handle the emotions coming from the situation before you can start doing something about it.
There are also situations which you have no control over that are stressful; here emotional coping strategies are the only ones you have at your disposal, which is why they are important to learn.

4 ways to solve the problem
If you decide to use problem focused coping techniques for solving a stressful situation there are some things you can do.

1. Planning
I like to make a list of everything stressful and try to come up with solutions to each problem.

2. Active Coping and Problem Solving
This is where you directly go and solve the problem, best used together with the planning techniques.

3. Exercising Restraint
Simply, you take control over yourself, focus your thoughts and get to work.

4. Assertive Confrontation
If your situation is with another person talking directly to them to solve the situation might be frightening but is often the best way to resolve a situation.

As you can see all 4 techniques are about directly facing and handling the problems that are making you stressed.
This way you get them off your back, into the open and hopefully dealt with so that you can let go of the stress.

How to handle your emotions
There are many ways to use emotional coping techniques, but I want to share some here:

1. Positive Reinterpretation
This is one of my favorite techniques, especially when I have a setback or a situation with a person. I try to see the situation in another light, what good could come of it? Why did the person act as they did? What is their view of the situation?

When you do this you refocus your thinking and quickly decrease the stress.

2. Acceptance
Some situations are out of your control, you have no control over what will happen, this can be very stressful.
Accepting the situation often makes it feel as though a load is lifted from your shoulders, try it!

3. Denial
The opposite of acceptance, sometimes it feels as though you have no control but when you refuse to accept it you can turn it around.

4. Controlling Feelings
When something gets difficult our mind starts to race and all kinds of thoughts pop up in our mind, controlling these thoughts and our emotions, breathing deeply, helps you get back the control.

As you can see all these techniques work in different situations and you might need to use multiple to overcome a stressful situation.
But using these as a basis you will be prepared to handle anything.

Emotional Support
Another method that will help is emotional support and I want to mention it because in many ways it is the most effective. As a species we are a social being.
Asking for help is therefore hardwired into our minds.

1. Getting help and guidance from someone who has been in a similar situation calms you down and gives you a roadmap of what you can do to solve the situation.

2. Just having someone listen to you really helps and lets you get things off your chest, it lets you work through the situation and be able to handle it, just having an understanding ear and shoulder to cry on works wonders.

3. When someone also affirms our value we grow stronger and our confidence rises again, that is another reason why emotional support is so important and helpful.

4. In some situations it is impossible for us to handle it alone, getting help in forms of money, coaching or connections might be needed.

You are now prepared to handle almost any situation.
I hope this list helps you and makes it easier for you to cope with stress.

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What is the Cause of Stress?

Daniel M. Wood — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:42:57 +0000

If we are to avoid all the problems stress causes as we discussed last time we need to first understand what causes stress and how to avoid it or at least decrease its hold over us.

Stress is a complicated issue but I am going to try and shed some light on the causes and on how we can counteract stress.

Stress is in itself an internal process; it is not happening “out there” it is a psychological response in you. But it is often caused by outside factors; these factors are called stressors and can be anything that is stressful, like having too much to do, having monetary problems or experiencing a catastrophy.

A stressor can be characterized by the following characteristics:

1. Intensity/severity
How powerful is the stressor, is it something that can really distress you or is it more like a little thorn in your side.

2. Duration
Is it a short term event or is it something that can be stressful over a longer time period.

3. Predictability
Is it something you can anticipate or does it come right out of the blue.

4. Controllabity
The amount of control you feel you have over the situation is one of the most important parts of a stressor, when we feel powerless the feeling of stress becomes a lot worse.

5. Chronicity
Is this something you will always have to live with ex. backpain or something that will go away ex. A financial setback.

Through these 5 factors we can determine the power of the stressor and determines what demands and resources the situation requires of you.

Your mind than makes an appraisal of the situation:

1. What are the demands required of me?

2. Do I have the resources to solve the situation?

3. What are the potential consequences?

4. What meaning do these potential consequences have to me?

This leads both to physiological responses and psychological affects.
You body becomes aroused and starts secreting stress hormones.
You begin to feel worried, your thoughts start to race, your confidence decreases, you start expecting the worst and you might start feeling hopeless.

The bodies’ arousal makes your body react by muscles tensing, your heart rate increasing, shortness of breath and you have an increased susceptibility to illness.

The reactions become more powerful if the answer to the second question is negative: “Do you have the resources to solve the situation?”, this is closely tied to your control over the situation.

If you do not feel as though you can solve the situation or that you are in control, the psychological reactions will be a lot more powerful which in turn will cause the physiological responses to become even stronger.

Luckily though there are a lot of ways to handle stress, a lot of research has been done in this area and we will be discussing these in the next chapter of this series.

If you want to learn more, check out the Time Management Expert Course home page.

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