Tag: Invest

Invest $100 Dollars and Grow Enough Seed Capital to Start Your Own Business

Do you have ideas for a business you want to start but do not have the seed capital it takes to get your business idea off the ground? Are you tired of being turned down for small business loans because of your credit or financial status? There is a way you can grow enough seed capital to start your own business and even build a substantial income. If a sixteen-year-old can do it with his lawnmower in one month, then so can you!

One summer day I observed my neighbor’s teenage son as he went door to door with his lawnmower offering to cut grass in our neighborhood. I asked him how many lawns he had cut that week and he said four and needed two more to make $120 dollars. I admired the young man’s determination and ambition and I asked him if he was saving for anything in particular. He told me he wanted to buy a car that cost $1200 dollars that he hoped to have saved by the end of summer.

My neighbor’s son didn’t realize that what he was doing was similar to the concept of compounding money. If he repeated cutting the lawns of the neighbors that paid him weekly and added one more lawn per day each week, his money would grow exponentially. His $120 dollars from the first week of cutting one lawn a day would double the second week to $240 dollars; by adding one more a day the third week to $360 dollars and by the fourth week he would make $480 dollars for his week’s labor. His earnings for four weeks would have totaled $1200 dollars. If he thought he could make enough to buy his car by adding one lawn a day, six days a week, for four weeks, I’m sure he would have done it without any problem. Otherwise, it would take him the entire summer at $120 dollars a week to make his $1200 dollars to buy his car.

This is how compounding your money works. The goal is to take the initial investment and increase it by 30% or higher. Using this example, the first $120 dollars never left the young man’s pocket; his investment object (which was his physical labor) increased his investment ten times by adding to his weekly earnings. He would have earned ten times his initial goal of $120 dollars a week in just four weeks, a 1,000% return!

Imagine if this was your $120 dollars that you started with as your initial investment. The difference being, instead of doing a laborious type work for your money to grow, you used the internet to find investment objects with intrinsic value that you could purchase. You would have enough of a profit margin built-in to locate buyers to purchase your investment object that would give you a Return On Investment (ROI) of 30% or higher. The key to this method of compounding money is to repeat this process by reinvesting your profits back into purchasing objects of greater market value and reselling for a higher ROI.

The great thing about compounding is you can start with whatever amount of money you have to work with. You can start with $100 dollars and build enough seed capital to start two or three businesses. Use the internet to search for investment opportunities that you can invest in and build on. If a sixteen-year-old can do it with his lawnmower, you have a much greater advantage; you don’t need a lawnmower as your tool, you just need the knowledge and then the skill. Knowledge can be acquired, and the skill will come through experience. So gather together your initial start-up capital and get started!

Why Should You Invest in Android Apps?

To be honest, a mobile application is an icing on the cake for the user experience, while calls and text messages are the foremost functions of a mobile device. Nevertheless, an app can become the topmost priority for a person, if it is engaging enough. A mobile application can create brand loyalty and help you from falling behind in the competitive market. As a matter of fact, the users want their favorite brands and companies to develop their own mobile applications for a customized user experience. The Mobile application development in India has become a serious business as there is a growing urge to develop and design mobile applications.

A mobile application is the best marketing and communication tool for any business/company in an inexpensive way. Keeping in mind, the importance of mobile application and its usability, you can either choose Android or iOS. Before you develop your app, it is advisable to do a market research on the Android and iPhone app development companies in town to find the right developer for you. All most every entrepreneur might come across this question: Android or iOS? Both the platforms have its own pros and cons. Based on your requirements, choose the right platform for your app.

The green robotic human is known for its lucrative features, affordability and smartphone fragmentation. Unlike Apple, Android has a wide range of devices which makes it the topmost priority in app development. Wait! This isn’t the only reason to choose Android. There are more advantages in developing an Android app. Here’s why:

Android dominates the Indian smartphone market

According to a recent survey, the Android operating system has captured 97 percent of the Indian smartphone market. Currently, India stands as the world’s third largest smartphone market after China and the USA.

Android is only the market which can offer high-quality features at an affordable price for an extensive range of mobile devices. To put it simply, any average Indian consumer can buy an Android smartphone within his/her preferred budget. Due to the market segmentation and affordability, Android still continues to dominate the Indian smartphone market share.

Android offers low barriers to entry

The iOS app development companies must require a Mac desktop to develop the iOS apps. On the other hand, Android app development can be done on a Windows, Linux or Mac. Moreover, Google charges a one-time payment of $25 to register as a developer while Apple charges $99 annually. For an Android app development, all you need is a system and a fee of $25 to start your development process.

Android apps are developed using JAVA

Java is proven to be the most powerful programming language and used for developing a wide range of devices. It is an open source which provides free source code from its Java Development Kit (JDK) to the developers and the added advantage is that it can run on any system regardless of the hardware and software dependency. This powerful programming language is used for developing the native Android apps.

As Android apps are written using the Java programming language, it can be easily ported to other platforms like Symbian, Blackberry, Ubuntu and Chrome OS.

Android is great at customization

Are you tired of the same old widgets? Chill! Download a widget from a third party app and replace it with your stock one. Bored of the same layout? You can download and replace it too. Android allows you to customize your app the way you like it – that’s the foremost reason why developers love developing apps on Android than any other platforms.

Android provides the perfect platform

In the fast-growing app market, the ability to adapt quickly does matter a lot. Android’s Google Play Store allows you to update the app within an hour, in response to the user’s feedback while the App Store follows the same lengthy process to submit your app. You can submit the same app for multiple times on the Play Store while you’ll need at least a week to launch your updated app on the App Store.

Beside the multiple uploads, it also offers Alpha and Beta releases which can be accessed by a set of members to test your app. Based on the feedbacks from the testers, you can rectify the errors and/or incorporate some features before it reaches the actual users. Thus, Android provides the perfect platform to test your app.

Android is profitable

Yes! You heard it right. The general assumption is that the iPhone users are rich to make in-app purchases, and thereby it generates more revenue than Android. But this isn’t true anymore. Android developers can generate revenue through initial app purchases, in-app purchases and from the most profitable way-app ads.

According to a survey by DAU-UP, the average revenue per user for Android games was just 20% by January 2010. Surprisingly, it has reached to 65% by the year end. Moreover, the advertising cost are 20-50% lower on Android apps, which can eventually be more profitable than the iPhone apps.

Now that you are aware of the benefits of investing in the Android app, you can develop your app on this most promising platform to stay ahead in this competitive market. Due to its usability and affordability, Android still remains unbeatable and continues to rule the smartphone market. Remember, developing an Android app isn’t an expense. It’s an investment!

Why Your Business Should Invest Into Direct Mail

Like any good entrepreneur, I’m always thinking of ways that I can develop and grow our businesses and brands. One of the best marketing strategies does not occur in the digital world. Each week, one of my companies sends out over 1,000 pieces of direct mail. We have an excellent response rate, even with a younger demographic target audience.

Think about it; people are deluged with emails, social media posts and instant messaging. In the digital world, it’s a novelty to receive a great piece of direct response material in the mail. However, there are a few differences in what we do in our direct mail than what was done in the old school days.

  • We experiment with all types of colorful pieces.
  • We rarely send any letter.
  • The pieces are always vibrant with images and very little copy.

There are a couple of reasons why your business should consider direct response to prospect and grow your business.

  • Response Rate: Last year, Compu-mail noted, “Direct mail household response rate is 5.1% (compared to.6% email,.6% paid search,.2 online display,.4% social media). This is the highest response rate the DMA has ever reported, since coming out with the Response Rate Report in 2003.
  • Personalization: When your prospects receive mail (not including bills), particularly those who are of Generation X or older, there is a familiar feeling. The older generations still like to receive something in the mail with their names on it. They can touch the piece, and there’s something novel about it in today’s world.
  • Generational Myth: Believe it or not, a sizable portion of Millennials also like direct response because it’s something they too can touch and hold. According to a Forbes article, 36 percent of people under the age of 30 like to check their mailboxes, and 95 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 have a favorable view of mail, such as personalized cards.
  • QR Codes and PURLs: Companies have been experimenting with testing QR and PURLs (personal URLs), which redirects a person who receives a piece of mail back into the digital age. Since most people now have a smartphone, these codes can be scanned by the target audience for more information.
  • Messaging: If you’re doing a particular project or sale, consider using direct mail to bolster the urgency. My team and I have gotten high response rates to direct mail pieces that have had a deadline to partner with our companies. One of the key reasons we have seen this work is because with all of the emails people receive, lots of times they are dismissing this form of communication quickly just to get through their email box.
  • Multi-channel Marketing: Direct response is an excellent way to support your digital marketing efforts. We know that people have to see your brand and logo multiple times for it to begin to “stick” in their minds. Direct mail helps reinforce your brand’s digital efforts. Prospects not only see you in the digital world but also in the “real world.”
  • Testing: Direct mail provides your business with an opportunity to test another method for reaching out to your prospects. We’ve tested direct response with high-level prospects in our target audience, and the new accounts we’ve obtained has paid for the mailing expenses
  • Easy Analytics: Direct mail results are straightforward to understand. You don’t need to have anyone on your team sign-into a digital platform to pull a report for you. Direct response provides you an easy way to see how much you spent against the amount of new business you achieved.
  • Credibility: Direct mail, because it’s familiar and tactile, gives the recipients an automatic sense of your credibility. We live in a world of “fake news” and raging social media debates about content in the digital space that is authentic and real. Direct response cuts through the noise and instantly gives credibility because of the investment and its familiarity.
  • Creativity: Direct response is an excellent way to experiment with color, size, shape and different packaging for your pieces. Sophisticated marketers are experimenting with many different types of mailings to stand out from a regular sized and traditional letter and envelope, which encourages people to look at the piece.

The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) has reported that direct mail has declined. However, in a digital world where people are inundated with massive amounts of content, direct mail stands out as a creative way to cut through the noise. At the very least, direct mail is an excellent complement your digital efforts, and at best, it’s a great way to obtain new business.

Plan Your Time – Manage Your Time, Invest Your Time

Introduction

At one stage or another we all have heard or read all or any of the below mentioned, Time Related Phrases:

1) Time is money. Time is wealth.

2) Time is a river. Time is wind.

3) Respect your time.

4) Doesn’t matter what you do…time will just pass away.

5) You never know, when your time will change. (Samey bada balvaan hota hai)

6) Each year, each day, each moment is unique in its own way. Once it passes, it will never come again.

7) Respect my time and I will respect yours.

8) With time, all wounds will heal.

9) If I had more hours

10) I don’t have time

There are many more.

But, like money or wealth or your assets can you save your time for difficult days? No, you cannot. Your time is now, invest it or waste it.

We are living in an era where researchers, philosophers and historians are talking, discussing and debating about “Life Management”…”Plan your life”. Every individual should know what he want in his life? Where he see himself after 5 or 10 years? One should know what he or she is expecting in his or her life. Hence, Time Management is an important aspect of our life.

How busy are you? – Your daily Routine

Let’s see, what we (Most of us) do in our daily life. How we are managing our day? As an example, I will take my daily schedule and I am sure that yours too will be closer to that. We spend time in following activities:

1) Rest / Sleep – 8 hours

2) Health: Yoga, Exercise – 1 hour

3) Prayers – 1 Hour

4) Food (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Snacks) – 2 hours

5) Entertainment – 2 hours

6) Knowledge / Learning / News – 1 hour

7) Socializing – 1 Hour

8) Work/Profession/Career – 10 hours

9) Traveling – 3hours

10) Time for Family – 3 hours

One should do all these activities to have a successful, purposeful, stress free and happy life. If I calculate above mentioned time, it comes out to be 32 hours, whereas there are only 24 hours in a day. So, how to manage? I don’t want to cut any of the activity.

Manage your Time

One can manage his time by using following skills and tools

1) Planning

2) Multi-tasking

3) Optimum use of Technology

4) Delegation

5) Self Discipline

Plan your day. Be disciplined. Respect your time and that of others too. Have proper schedule. Do multitasking. Use technology in a best possible manner.

Let’s plan your day

1) You wake-up in the morning and then go for walk or jogging. At the same time on your walk-man you can also listen to prayers, religious songs etc. Right or Wrong?

2) Once you come back from your walk, at the time of your morning tea or milk, you can scan through Newspaper or News Channels to keep you updated with the latest events and news. Can you?

3) While having your breakfast, you can also spend that time with your kids and family or listen to songs of your choice.

4) While driving or traveling to your office you can either listen to songs or use your mobile – phone to stay in touch with your friends and relatives through messages and calls. If you are at a senior level and really busy and your office is quite far away…you can also have one meeting in your car. You can also go through few reports, analysis; check those reports and also sign those documents that need your signatures and approvals. Can you do this?

5) In office, you do all of the following things:

A) Internal Meetings (There are three types of meetings – Briefing, Discussion / Debate, Review)

B) Routine work (It will be very useful for you to have well defined processes to take care of routine works)

C) Value Addition to your Function and Department

D) Client Meetings (Purpose can be any of the following: update them; get more business; grievance / query handling)

E) Interviews (To add a new person to your team; Employee Retention; Employee Grievance Handling)

Do you think that there is anything more that you do at your workplace; over and above the activities that I have listed???

6) During your first tea-break in office, have a brief meeting with your team-members and delegate your routine work.

7) You can have an important client or business meeting during your lunch.

8) For discussion / debates with seniors or your peers located at different areas, you can either use the technology of Conference Call or Video Conferencing. It will help you in managing your time and save your money. Same technology can be used for interviewing candidates from different locations. You can also use this technology for Induction, Training and Development and also for Media briefing. If you can solve a problem through a simple message on mobile phone or a simple e-mail; you don’ have to call for a meeting. So, use your mobile phone and internet to help you in managing your time.

9) Along with your second tea-break, you can also have another meeting (Review Meeting) with your team.

10) While moving from one office to another or one department to another, you can also send messages to your family members, relatives and friends and stay in touch with them.

11) When you are in a meeting, it is important that you prepare yourself for the meeting and keep it within the limits of discussion. Be there for the meeting, on time and you should also know when to end the meeting. It is a matter of discipline.

12) In the evening, while going home you can do any of the following: Listen to your favorite songs; go through the reports and papers or have meeting with client or customer.

13) Once you are at home, give your time to family. Listen to them. Solve their Concerns. Enjoy with them. Do not bore them by discussing about your day in the office.

14) At the time of Dinner, you can again update yourself with news and current updates.

15) Before, you retire for the day, read something.

Do you think, that you have things to do or to take care that I have not mentioned in the list?

What Busy People do?

1) They respect their time as well as that of the other person.

2) They manage their time in such a manner that they get time to do everything in their life.

3) They use technology in a best possible manner.

4) They are self-disciplined.

5) They plan their day and their time.

6) They know their limitations. They trust people, efficiencies & talent of people around them and delegate their work.

7) They take responsibility and accountability.

What Busy People don’t do?

1) They don’t scream or complain for lack of time.

2) They do not procrastinate or postpone their work.

3) They don’t gossip.

4) They don’t blame TIME for their failures and frustrations.

5) They don’t mix their work with family. They don’t carry their work to home and don’t bring their family emotions and fights to workplace.

6) They don’t blame others.

Conclusion

Number of hours in a day will not change. There will only be 86,400 seconds in a day. It is up to you, how you manage and use each of those seconds. One needs to invest each second. As, it has been rightly said, time once passed will never come again. Busy people are very satisfied, happy and do everything that they want to do in their life. Those, who show that they are busy, end up with frustration, burn-outs, stress and most of the time failure in life and profession.

Before I sign-out, I like to share few examples to let you know the value of Time, I studied these examples when I was in school,

To realize the value of one year; ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of one month; ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week; ask an editor of a weekly newspaper or magazine

To realize the value of one hour; ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute; ask the person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize the value of one second; ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond; ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you share it with someone special.

Looking forward to your Comments and Feedback

With lots of love, care and affection,

The Complete List of Things to Evaluate Before You Open or Invest in a New Venture

Do you have an innovative idea you wish to market? Are you planning on opening a new business? Are you investing on somebody else’s idea?

If you said “yes” to any of these questions, don’t do it just yet!

Starting or investing on a new venture can be an emotional process full of anticipation and excitement. You need to keep a cool head and treat the process with the utmost objectivity.

To help with that, I’ve put together a complete list of questions you NEED to answer before you even think about putting a business plan together. This will help you make sure that no overlooked variable makes you incorrectly go forward or not. Make sure you don’t skip any part of the process and end the exercise with a very honest yes or no decision based on the answers.

You will find it difficult if not impossible to answer some of the questions. It is very important to understand the sureness of each response and the risk that each unanswered question implies. Handle this risk by analyzing scenarios with the different possible answers.

Write down a simple comment to each question, doing this formalizes your analysis. You can also think about each question in a SWOT analysis context identifying each one as a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity or Threat.

The Dos and Don’ts to keep in mind:

Do this all the time

  • Be methodic, analyze completely. Understand the need, competition and constrains, then tailor and differentiate.
  • Be on the lookout all the time for the fatal flaw that will make this fail.
  • Lots of questions can’t be answered or are too vague, check the risk of not knowing them.

Don’t Do This

  • Don´t follow the classic idea method: “I have an idea, let me think how to shove it to the channel or customer”.
  • Don’t focus on the features of the product, focus on the need you are trying to fulfill.
  • Don’t get tempted to skip a full analysis.
  • The most frequent mistake is to think everybody in the market is like you. If you like the product, everybody else will.
  • It is common to confuse a good idea with a good business opportunity, they are not the same.
  • Thinking “We have no competition” is only for naive entrepreneurs.
  • Don´t obsess with first mover´s advantage, most of the time funds prefer second movers because the idea is already validated.

The questions you need to answer:

Product or Service

  • Can you describe the business idea in 25 words or less?
  • Is the idea scalable? Is it limited to your time or something else?
  • Can your offering later change / adapt?
  • Risk of not being able to develop / manufacture the product?

Market or Customer

  • Can you do formal market analysis or only informal? (Interviews, observations, focus groups, surveys, market experiments, etc.)
  • Who is the customer? How precisely can he be defined? Location, profile, etc.?
  • What problem are you solving? Why would the customer buy? Does he want to?
  • Commercial risk, no willingness to buy?
  • How big is the market? Growing or shrinking?
  • How penetrated is the market by the industry? What share can you get fast? Later?
  • What price is he willing to pay? Based on what? How important is it?
  • How price-conscious is your customer?
  • Risk of change in consumer behavior?
  • Can the target market later be changed? Can you later attack other levels in the value chain?

Industry

  • Can you do formal analysis or only informal?
  • Is it thriving? Shrinking?
  • Do suppliers have power? Risk of supply shortage? Change in price?
  • Barriers to entry:
  • . Contractual? Patent or trademark?
  • . Lead time in tech development? Innovation?
  • . Management? People?
  • . Location?
  • . Regulations and government?
  • . Other barriers?
  • Can barriers change easily?
  • Do you have relations in place?
  • . Customers?
  • . Suppliers?
  • . Partners? Talent? Investors?
  • Experience in industry? Yours? Other management?
  • Risk of regulatory or other government related changes or intervention?
  • Technology risk of obsolescence?

Competition

  • Can you do formal competition analysis? If not, what informal analysis can you do? Is it good?
  • Who else is attacking the market? How? Successfully?
  • What is your competition´s pricing strategy?
  • What is the closest thing in the target market to your product? Are you a first mover? Second? More than that?
  • Strategic advantages / differentiators. Clearly visible to consumers or only in your mind? Sustainable? True, important and provable?
  • . Function? Design? Quality? Uniqueness? Innovation?
  • . Delivery? Channel? Availability? Location?
  • . Cost? Marketing? Sales?
  • . Ignorance of buyers?
  • . Customer service?
  • . Other?
  • Are you taking advantage of a certain opportunity, situation or advantage?
  • How fast can competition catch up?

Channel

  • Which options do you have?
  • Which one is the ideal? Why?
  • If the first choice does not work, does it make sense to try others?
  • What channels does your target market prefer?
  • Which ones are your competitors using?
  • How much integration do the channels have?
  • Will the channel change with customer habits or tech?
  • Risk of no access to the correct channel or consumer?

Sales and Advertising

  • How will you get customers?
  • How will you retain customers? Is it important?
  • Describe the necessary salesforce?
  • Can a salesperson of ordinary skills sell it?
  • Do you need advertising? Which kind? How much? Is it important?

Economics

  • How clearly can you model the basic economics of the idea? (Costs, sales, margins, required capital, ROI, etc.)
  • Will there be economies of scale? Are they important?
  • Accounts receivable? Can it become a problem?
  • How will you finance initially? Later?

Management

  • Do you have or can get the necessary management team?
  • Do management / leadership / organizational capabilities make a difference? How big a difference?
  • How valuable is intellectual property?
  • Does it make sense to do this solo? It normally doesn’t.

Other

  • Validation:
  • . How fast can you know if the business can work or not?
  • . Can you define the variables to know it? How fast can the data flow?
  • . Do you need product development to know? Dangerous!
  • . Do you need a long selling process or many tries to know? Dangerous!
  • Can you diversify? Not easy on new ventures, but can it be done?
  • Give me the biggest drawback / risk (fatal flaw) of the idea? The one that will make it fail?
  • Enlist the seemingly fatal flaws that can be fixed.
  • Does the idea fit your life objectives? Workload?
  • Do you feel passionate about the idea? Enjoyable? Are you doing it only for the money?
  • Give me the upside / best case scenario?
  • Give me the downside / worst case scenario?
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