What Services Does Your Business Need To Soar?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | What Services Does Your Business Need To Soar?

As a business, there are certain services that you are going to need to ensure that the day-to-day operations of your company are running smoothly. As well as this, you are going to need help bringing in more customers and keeping everything going, which is why we have written this article. Down below, you are going to find some of the services that your business is going to need to soar!

Marketing

The first thing that we are going to look at is marketing. Marketing lets people know who you are, what you are about, and why they should choose you over the other companies on the market right now. Marketing is something that you can do yourself, but if you don’t have experience in this field, then you are better off hiring someone to help you out here. The reason that we say this is because marketing has to be done right, or it is not going to have the desired effect. For example, if you have a bad advertising campaign, then people aren’t going to want to use your business.

Professionals know what the average consumer is looking for. They have designed marketing campaigns before, so they know what to do. The experience that they bring to the table is going to be invaluable.

Accounting

The next thing that you are going to need is help with your accounting. Now, you might not have to hire someone to do this for you if you don’t want to. There is plenty of accounting software such as QuickBooks Online that are available for you to use to make things run smoother. Alternatively, you can hire a qualified accountant to deal with this for you, and you might find this is a good idea, especially if you aren’t great with numbers. They will be able to give you a good idea about where you can save money, and what areas of the business need more money put into them. This on top of managing your money to make sure that you are on track!

Human Resources

Finally, human resources are going to be a big help to you. A lot of business owners will say that this is a waste of money, but they won’t be saying that when they are dealing with an issue with an employee, and they don’t know how to handle it correctly. A human resources team make sure that all issues with employees are handled well according to the law and the situation at hand. It is far easier to run your company when there is someone else handling this, freeing up your time to deal with other matters.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now know what services your business needs to soar! If you take our advice, you are going to have all of the services that you need, and while it might seem like a big investment in the first place, you are going to be thankful that you made it further along down the line.

Do You Have What It Takes to Hack It as a Female Founder?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleWomen’s curiosity and interest in entrepreneurship is at an all-time high. Getty Images has seen a fourfold increase in searches for “woman entrepreneur” photos in the last year alone. With the popularity of television shows such as Shark Tank and The Profit, more and more women are wondering if they have what it takes to be a female founder.

It takes more than having a good idea to be a successful entrepreneur. While there are a vast range of personalities, educations, and backgrounds among female founders, there are a few personality traits that are paramount to hacking it as a woman entrepreneur.

Passion is one such trait. To be a female founder, you must be passionate about the product or service you have devised to solve a problem. Authentic passion is what helps women find the best employees, sell their customers, and sell potential investors. If you don’t believe in yourself and your idea, no one else will, no matter how good it is.

Having enough grit and self-motivation to overcome setbacks and disprove early nay-sayers is another important characteristic of successful women entrepreneurs. The women who use negative statements as fuel for success instead of self-doubt are the ones who build ideas into thriving companies. Entrepreneurship is a high-contact emotional sport. If you get knocked down or denied seven times, you need to stand up eight times and keep pushing to make your dream a reality.

Long-term vision is needed for women to make the leap into entrepreneurship. Our tendency to be risk adverse serves us well after we launch a company, but that same tendency can having us making lists of reasons why we shouldn’t launch our own businesses. Female founders typically have the ability to see the big picture and justify the risks and challenges that come with startups because they know they will be successful.

If you have an amazing idea as well as the traits outlined in this article, you have what it takes to hack it as a female founder. Take the time to validate your idea and market, map your business plan, and prepare for the ride of your life!

About the Author

Danielle Tate is the author of Elegant Entrepreneur and founder and CEO of MissNowMrs.com, a multimillion dollar online name-change company. As a female founder in her 20s she noticed that few business guides offered step-by-step advice to smart but inexperienced entrepreneurial woman.

11 Most Profitable Online Course Ideas in 2020

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Online Course Ideas|11 Most Profitable Online Course Ideas in 2020Let’s face it, wage earners are not seeing a lot of increases in their paychecks these days. The average worker is lucky if they get a two to three percent pay increase this year. As a result, many people are looking for new avenues to earn money.

Freelancing is gaining in popularity. Individuals are cashing in on hobbies, special skills, and things in which they are a subject matter expert.

If you have knowledge people are in need of, you can profit from it by creating popular online courses. You simply need to come up with online course ideas.

The rising cost of college tuition and the time it takes to get a degree is what is fueling online learning.
The process can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of months to create the courses. Once it’s up and running, you can focus on marketing.

Are you looking for ways to create a new stream of income? Keep reading for the 11 most profitable online course ideas in 2020.

How Do Online Course Ideas Earn You Money?

The most profitable online courses are those that are well-thought-out and meet a need that is in high demand.
You can’t look at it as a get rich quick scheme. People depend on you to deliver high-quality content on the level of a business school.

Once you have your course idea and develop your project, the next steps are to:

  • Set the price.
  • Get your content on a platform (online marketplace, learning management system, or your own business website).
  • Market your online courses.

The courses you choose to offer will guide you down the best path for your individual success.

1. Crafting

Do what you love for a living is a reality many people rarely experience. Imagine being really good at something that brings you great joy and making a living teaching it to others. That’s exactly what many crafters are doing.
Your online course ideas can teach people everything from knitting to how to design 3D wall art.

2. Home Improvement Projects

These bestselling online courses are a hit because everyone loves doing weekend projects. Maybe not everyone, but if you’re a homeowner there will come a time when you may have to replace the gutters or install new flooring.
Online courses can save you thousands on actual projects when you know how to do-it-yourself.

3. Bestselling Author

It seems everyone wants to be an author. Between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books are published each year in the United States. Most people that decide to write a book have no clue what they are doing.

The stigma associated with self-publishing is no longer a big deal. How to write a book and get it published are popular online courses.

4. Blogging

Next to writing a book, blogging has become a big moneymaker for many people. Too often people jump into things without fully understanding the ins and outs of what looks simple on the surface.

There are numerous online course ideas someone with extensive blogging expertise can use to build their course offerings.

5. Influencer Marketing

Two huge misconceptions about influencer marketing are that you have to be a well-known celebrity and you need a million followers. Both are untrue.

Influencer marketing is about gaining trust and being able to get people to buy into what someone is selling.
There are special techniques and best practices people need to learn in order to be successful in any marketing endeavor. It is all about selling, and this is a great course to create for someone with a successful sales background.

6. Make-up Artist

The beauty industry is a multi-faceted multi-billion dollar industry. Teaching people how to be a make-up artist is one of the most profitable online course categories. There is so much money to be made.

With the success of the social media platform, Instagram, more people are focusing on their appearance. This has led to new opportunities in make-up artistry.

7. Event Planner

Freelance opportunities are on the rise because people want personalized service. Event planning is a career that can span across socio-economic grids. Regardless of how much money someone earns, when it comes to putting on an event cost goes out the window.

Event planning can be the church picnic or a million-dollar conference. The right online courses can teach people how to get started.

8. Line Dancing

This online course is for a fitness instructor or a dance teacher. People love to line dance at weddings and other social events. It is also a fun way to workout.

If you know the moves to 50 different line dances create a course to not only teach people the routines but also how to open a studio and create a strong following.

9. Vegan Cooking

Vegan cooking is all the rage and if you know how to create popular dishes using cauliflower, you can create various cooking courses. The art of making online courses is to find what’s trending and provide people with step-by-step instructions.

10. Business Start-up

Regardless of what a person’s interest is, anyone, wanting to go into business for themselves needs to learn the basics. This is why a school of business is on every college campus.

For these online courses, you may want to include proctored exams to test the student’s knowledge. Check out this article to learn more about online proctoring services.

11. Trade Professions

HVAC, plumbing, stucco, and many trade professions require testing at the county or state level. For these profitable online courses, you can teach the content for a sub or general contractor to obtain their license.
It is the perfect opportunity for someone with extensive contractor experience.

Are You Ready to Make Some Money?

Coming up with online course ideas is the easy part. Once you have your ideas, you’ll need to create the content and get it in front of your target audience. Perseverance is the key to your success.

Do you have a niche market with proven success? Contact us to learn how you can become a member of our service provider network.

The Idea Is Not Enough

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StrategyDriven Innovation Article | The Idea Is Not EnoughWhen I talk to aspiring startuppers, I realize they have fallen a little for the myth of a winning idea. While it is true that there must be an idea at the base of the creation of a new company, it is also true that it is now almost impossible to invent something new. What makes the difference is putting the idea into practice.

I think this is a more current, less naïve and definitely more complex concept in the sense that an idea may be brilliant, but if it is the wrong time, placed in the wrong market, by the wrong team, it will not go anywhere. Just as there are less interesting ideas, but they are put into practice so well that they can achieve exceptional results. Rather than having the idea of the century, the real advantage is having the resilience to be able to put it into practice in the right way.

Thanks to the experiences I have had so far, I have realized that even potential investors see it that way and, rather than just evaluating the idea itself, they wonder if those in front of them are able to realize it. They generally do not care if it is a sensational novelty, or whether all the numbers add up, or if the business plan is perfect, because they invest in people. That is what happened to me, Stefano and Marco when we looked for investors for our new venture, Foorban – they wanted to meet all three of us to see if we were really the right team to turn that idea into a business.

When they asked me where we got our inspiration from for Foorban, a lunch delivery service, I always feel a bit like laughing because we copied the business model of a New York startup called Maple… which failed dramatically in just two years! Maple arose from an idea from restaurateur and entrepreneur David Chang and debuted in Manhattan in the summer of 2015, offering a high level of service with gourmet lunches cooked in a dedicated restaurant and delivered to the customer in a quarter of an hour. Maple was a huge success; they managed to make US $20 million sales in a year, but then they went bankrupt. The problem was that, in an attempt to win over the whole market, they had lowered the price of their dishes to US $9. Of course, it was an economically unsustainable decision. With a business like that, where the raw material costs more than that of competitors who offer a more standard product, and with the costs associated with delivery in an area like Manhattan, it was unthinkable to enter into a price struggle – they could not win. In fact, at the third round of financing, investors refused to continue to bankroll it.

Maple’s story contains various lessons, such as that you need to have the correct positioning and understand exactly who your target audience is. It is clear that such a high-end product should not be offered to the masses, but to those who are more sensitive to the quality and healthiness of the product and who are willing to spend a little more.

The most important lesson of all is this – an idea may be right, but afterwards you also have to do everything else right, because every stage of creating a new business has its own perils.

About the Author

This guest post is adapted from CREATE UNIQUENESS: How To Turn A Passion Into A Business by Riccardo Pozzoli. Pozzoli is a global entrepreneur; he has co-founded eight companies in the past ten years and is Creative Director for Condé Nast Italias Social Academy.

For more information please visit https://www.koganpage.com/product/create-uniqueness-9780749497385

Eco-Friendly Business Ideas

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Eco-friendly|Eco-Friendly Business IdeasFinding a viable source of income is vital for our survival, and entrepreneurship is often a better option than employment. Being your own boss, if done right, can be more meaningful and lucrative, but it can be challenging to find an idea that requires minimal capital and starts making money right away.

What if we tell you that there is a solution that has a massive potential to grow, does not require a lot of investment, and to top it all, it is environmentally friendly.

Because let’s be honest, the world as we know it has taken a turn for the worst, temperatures are fluctuating like never before, natural disasters are on a rise, etc. Now, more than ever, we need to take a holistic approach – find a lucrative business opportunity that doesn’t add to our carbon footprint.

Eco-Friendly Business Ideas

Our solutions are practical yet straightforward – the work hours are flexible and if done right, there are streams and streams of earnings. Here are some of our recommendations:

Car Sharing, Ride Sharing Or Mobility Service

We recommend you start a car sharing, ride sharing, or mobility service that taps into the needs of the commuting market and is a better alternative to driving yourself or using public transport.

Because not only is it a cost-effective mechanism for ride seekers as it trumps the need for expensive car rentals and taxi services, but it also helps sustain what mother nature has bestowed upon us for the long haul. In the U.S. alone, one-fifth of the emissions are caused by cars and trucks, which is about 24 pounds of carbon dioxide, and other gasses which lead to global warming.

Just imagine how much carbon emissions can be reduced when there are fewer cars on the road because people prefer mobility services over owning cars. To get a better perspective on how easy it is to start and build this business, visit Ridecell, a high-yield shared-ride company that can help you start a shared mobility business and show you how “shareable becomes profitable.”

Green Building Materials

With rising awareness of environmental sustainability, people are looking for ways to make their homes more environmentally-friendly – and it all starts with clean green building materials. This is a viable business option, especially for those interested in working for the construction industry.

The good thing is that there are many materials you can work with, so you can choose something which is directly or indirectly linked with your expertise. Some of the green materials options include:

  • Collecting paper, plastic, aluminum, cardboard, etc. and recycling them for a variety of purposes
  • Junk hauling and trash removal services
  • Selling local produce at the farmers market
  • Sourcing or producing organic food or snacks and selling it to people
  • Selling of solar panels

Green Bloggers

If you are well versed in writing, you can choose to write about environmental topics that can make a difference. A blog that’s filled with informative content can be a lucrative business all on its own. You can start making money by featuring advertisements via Google AdSense and other advertisement providers. The more people visit your blog, the more money you make.

Also, once your green blog has a decent following, you can even start selling different green products, especially related to your niche.

All in all, there are many lucrative opportunities with many environmental benefits – so why not jump the bandwagon, strike while the iron is hot, and bring an eco-friendly business idea to life.