Entrepreneurs Vs Business Owners

The role of the owner is to provide the skills or purpose to employees and infuse a results-driven culture into the business.

A businessperson who is an entrepreneur can generate purposeful action within their business whether or not they are physically present. Entrepreneurs focus on the business. They can, with a couple of phone calls, generate income. They lead, inspire, and generate purpose amongst staff. They do not need to work in their business, but may choose to do so.

Ultimate café owners are entrepreneurs. They understand:

Who is responsible for every result within their business – they are.
That their business is all about them – physically, mentally and spiritually – but does not mean they have to be in it 24/7.
That business is energy – vibrations must be positive and strong.
The difference between effective actions and efficient actions.
The power of leverage (Pareto’s law).
That there is no such thing as competition (certainly not at the top 1%) – they create their own outcomes.

Ultimate café owners I have worked with have certain common traits. They:

* are willing to listen in the first place, and accept instruction.
* possess an enquiring mind
* are always prepared to take on more
* work on becoming or being positive
* are not aggressive, but solidly confident when going about their business – unassuming and humble would be another description

What’s more, despite the overwhelming numbers of coffee shops and cafés, there are very few of them around – only 1%. This is great news for you, since it will be rare indeed that you will set up your business next to one. You have a 99% chance of locating yourself next to the ‘average’ performers who are no competition at all. Capturing the market from them is as easy as a turkey shoot.

The traditional picture most people have of an Ultimate businessperson is the Lt. Colonel George Custer model – the type who brandishes his sword and wildly throws himself into the fray! Someone who is aggressive and loud, who sounds like they know what they are talking about, and who generally likes the sound of their own voice.

What’s in Your Home Business?

Every day thousands of people look for a home business out of the need to help with the stack of bills that see to arrive everyday, pay off their increasing credit card debt or to have more time with the people they care the most. I know, I was one of those people.

There are countless Internet Businesses, MLMs, Direct Sale Businesses and Network Marketing Businesses out there, and more are popping up every year. What most people don’t know is, the average lifespan of a home based business company is less than two years, so when they close their doors (or change their company name to avoid legal issues) the home business owner feels betrayed and enraged because they were lied to and now are deeper in the debt sinkhole.

Before you’re roped into this group, take some time to ask yourself exactly what you want in a home business before joining. There’s more too it than wondering, “Which company can make me super rich quick?”.

Here’s a list of things you need to consider before you enter your credit card information and buy a ticket for the get rich bus:

1. Start Up and Continuation Cost

a. Is it affordable for you now to start a home business with the company you want?
b. Most businesses have a monthly membership. Can you afford to stay with the company after one month? Two months? A year?
c. Are there any extra costs involved to be successful with the business?
d. Does the business provide a budget plan for you so you don’t overspend?
e. Does the business provide a refund if you decide not to quit?

2. Compensation Plan

a. What percentage of commission do you earn from the product(s)/service(s)?
b. Can you earn commissions with your business more than one way?
c. How often do you get paid for your business? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly?!
d. Does the product(s)/service(s) have to be kept by the customer for a certain amount of time before you receive your commission?
e. If the customer wants a refund for the product(s)/service(s), do you have to pay back your commission?
f. Is there a limit to how much you can make in a week? Month? Year?
g. Are there extras (bonuses, trips, vehicles) for being a top earner or making/breaking sales records?

How to Build a Business Credit Portfolio

A company’s corporate structure determines the line of credit extended. Banks are less likely to extend credit to a business that is not incorporated or an LLC. Most business with solid credit portfolios are structured as an LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp or Nonprofit. Every business owner needs to choose the best possible type of corporation for his or her business based on the following information.

LLCs are popular among small business owners because of their simplicity. Anyone who has fewer than 20 employees will benefit from the LLC structure. They are essentially business hybrids that combine a business partnership with a corporation. An LLC offers the protection of a corporation, but has paperwork similar to a business partnership. Taxes are filed under the individual shareholder’s capital gains rather than the entity level like in a C-Corp.

S-Corps share a similarity with LLCs. They are not taxed at the entity level and income is filed under the shareholder’s capital gains. The taxation of S-Corps comes from a special designation by the IRS. Small companies with more than 20 employees may be eligible for this designation.

C-Corps protect business owners from liability completely because they are financially separate. However, C-Corps are subject to double taxation. They corporation is taxed as well as the shareholder dividends. The Articles of Incorporation does have some by-laws that may offset a portion of the taxes, but business owners should carefully consider the double taxation before they choose this option.

Most businesses do not qualify as nonprofits, but those that are need to establish themselves accordingly. The finances of nonprofits are completely separate from the business owners and offer full liability protection. However, nonprofits also have a 501(C)3 or tax exempt rating since they do not technically make a profit. A charity would qualify for a nonprofit corporation.

Filing as a corporation, no matter the type, proves a company’s authenticity and reliability to creditors and potential investors. But building a portfolio takes more time and effort than simply filing the paperwork to become incorporated.

After determining which type of corporation your business needs, register with a credit bureau. The credit bureaus used regularly are Dun & Bradstreet, Business Experian, and Business Equifax. In fact, 99 percent of potential investors and creditors use these bureaus to determine how they will invest their resources. Registering with each credit bureau requires your EIN number provided by the IRS once a business is incorporated. Register with each bureau separately, and make sure to monitor your credit report. You will be provided with a DNB (DUNS) number by the bureaus. Even if your credit reports are blank, check them to be sure the information is accurate, and check them later, periodically. It is sound business sense to keep track of your companies credit as well as your own. You can begin applying for credit at any time, but it may take up to three years to actually obtain the credit you really want.

Creditors are more comfortable lending money to an established business. Three years from the date a business is listed as a corporation is when creditors provide a company with larger credit limits. The reasoning is due to the fact that a large percentage of companies fail within the first three years of opening. This does not mean that it is impossible to obtain credit before that time, but the amount offered to a new business will be substantially lower than the amount offered to an established company. Having credit, even if you do not need to use it, will increase your ability to obtain loans or further credit when it is time to expand the business. A good rule of thumb is to apply for credit every six months.

A Look at Why it Pays to Make Use of Local Business Directories

Today, every business needs a means by which it can be located online which is why businesses, whether big or small, will do well to make use of local business directories. The good news is that it is very easy to add your business to such directories and the whole thing can be done in a quick and easy manner. Using local business directories can and will certainly help to ensure that your business gets to be seen by all the big search engines.

Local business directories can help you in different ways, especially if your business serves customers in a particular neighborhood. After the coming of the Internet, most, if not all, businesses and individuals have virtually abandoned the traditional way of advertising. Therefore, today, there are very few business persons that continue to depend on Yellow Pages. In fact, modern business people are more intent on developing online presence which is easy to do by making use of local business directories.

Quite surprisingly, about thirty percent of search requests with the major search engines involve use of a city or state or a zip code. Even more surprisingly, approximately fifty six percent of local users that make use of search engines will, if they find a neighborhood store, head down to it and purchase something.

All this shows that there are many benefits to making use of local business directories. If you look around, chances are indeed high that you will come across many such directories that will help you to develop a stronger online presence and at the same time these directories will also help you connect with potential clients in your neighborhood.

All you need to do is find the right business directory in your area and then you can get in touch with them and get your business listed. Once you do that, it will not take long before people start finding your business online.

To make full use of local business directories you must first add your business to the directory. This means leaving your details with the directory which is easy to do if you use their links. Once you clink on their links, they will then get in touch with you and ask you to register. For this, you will need to create a dedicated profile page.

Your business profile will include the name of your business and a description of the service(s) that your business is offering. You must also provide the address of your website and you need to also provide local information and your business phone number.

What Good is Information Technology?

Most companies ought to have an IT department. This appears to be an obvious observation. However, it is worth recognizing that, in the memories of more than half the working population of the US, a company department organized solely around information technology was unheard of. The IT department has evolved from a narrowly focused data processing element of the accounting department to a function that supports and, in many cases, drives, nearly every area of the company. This has happened in a mere 40 years. Stand-alone IT departments are a relatively recent development. The number of people working in technology-related jobs grew six times faster between 1983 and 1998 than the US workforce at large. Information technology related industries doubled their share of the US economy between 1977 and 1998. Practically overnight, technology related services have become a global, trillion-dollar industry.

The principle driver behind this remarkable, rapid creation of a vibrant, sophisticated, and enormous industry and the attendant inclusion of a department dedicated to it in every credible company, is the quest for business productivity improvement.

The notion of technology investments as a driver of US business productivity has a controversial history. The benefits of technology investments (and IT departments) were not always so apparent. Productivity growth in the US faltered from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s, in spite of large technology investments from most major US corporations. The disconnect between heavy capital and expense investment and the theoretically associated improvements in productivity led to a so-called productivity paradox. In reaction to the failure of such large investments to produce the expected productivity gains, MIT Nobel Laureate Robert Solow famously remarked in 1987, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” More recent research suggests that the productivity benefits from the deployment of technology have had a massive, albeit delayed, impact on the US and world economy.

A variety of researchers have concluded that investments in IT have been instrumental in the improved productivity seen in the US economy beginning in the mid 1990s. In early 2000, the Federal Reserve gave information technology investments credit for approximately $50 billion in productivity improvement, which represents more than 65% of the total $70 billion in productivity gains seen by businesses in the US in the last half of 1990s.

The Federal Reserve staff report, by Kevin J Stiroh, concluded, “Industry-level data show a broad productivity resurgence that reflects both the production and the use of IT. The most IT-intensive industries experienced significantly larger productivity gains than other industries.” The report went even further, attributing most of the productivity improvement to technology. “Results show that virtually all of the aggregate productivity acceleration can be traced to the industries that either produce IT or use IT most intensively.”

Sharp Air Purifier Review – Plasmacluster Ion Technology Efficacy

Our Sharp air purifier review continues with an in-depth examination of the efficacy of Plasmacluster Ion technology, the innovative air purification technology invented by Sharp Corporation in 2000. Conceptually, an efficacy test is one conducted in the laboratory to demonstrate that the reactive agents of a technology, plasmacluster ions in this case, work in practice as opposed to just being a fancy theory demonstrable only with computer animation.

In a typical efficacy experiment, the reactive agents are pumped into a sealed container. The pathogen is injected into the same container. After a certain time period, a sample of the mixture of reactive agent and pathogen is extracted. This “treated” pathogen extract is injected into a laboratory-grown cell culture (Culture A). For control purposes, a sample of “untreated” pathogen is injected into another cell culture (Culture B). After a few days, the two cultures are compared. If the cells in the treated Culture A retain their original cell structures, while cells in the untreated Culture B have become deformed and damaged, then scientific proof has been obtained that the reactive agents are efficacious or effective.

In the process of our Sharp air purifier review, we viewed many official Sharp advertising videos in which plamascluster ions dramatically encircle and neutralize harmful pathogens. Whilst useful for illustrating activity at the molecular level, these computer animations tend to be less useful for the serious air purifier users who require scientific proof that can, ideally, be independently verifiable. No one wants to buy a sophisticated looking gadget that only burns electricity and does nothing else. No one wants to be lulled into complacency when there may be alternative air purification technologies that really improve indoor air quality.

No one is more aware of these genuine consumer concerns than Sharp Corporation. This is evident from the fact that no one goes to the extent that Sharp has to allay these fears. At last count, with 28 experiments done by various scientific organisations all over the world, Sharp is clearly in the lead. The only thing missing is that there has been no scientific peer review of any of these 28 experiments. Yet, ironically, if Sharp were to arrange for such a review, there is no value in the resultant work. A classic Catch 22 in action.

For the purpose of this Sharp air purifier review, we believe the 28 experiments have value to the discerning consumer. This is because, given that the experiments were conducted by qualified experts in scientific organisations, it is reasonable that a scientific peer review of any one of the experiments should be possible. It is also reasonable to expect that Sharp will not rebuff any genuine attempts to do a proper independent scientific peer review. In a nutshell, this is the crux of Sharp’s “academic marketing” for Plasmacluster Ion technology.

Resourceful Use of Green Screen Technology

The dawn of information technology has brought incredible changes in the technological advancement of humankind. It has introduced a broad spectrum of modified techniques and technology. This technology has been introduced in various fields. Photography is one of the fields in which technology works wonders. Photographers use green screen technology in digital photography. This technology replaces the background of the subject in the photograph with the selected image. This technology is a widely used expertise that delivers creative and effective results.

One can make effective and productive use of green screen technology if handled carefully. A photographer should first collect the photographs or images that he wants to replace. You should deploy a good quality camera. Such a camera photographs an image lucidly and attractively. The focus of the camera is clear. The photographer is also able to defocus the desirable areas in an image. After collecting the images for a background screen, you can photograph the subject. One should provide proper lighting to focus the subject.

Proper lighting is beneficial, as unnecessary shadows do not fall on the subject. The lighting should not be very bright as this can cause unwanted glares in a photograph. While photographing the subject one should also take care of the color of the background screen. You can select either blue or green color as a background screen. One should select either of the two colors, as the image sensors in the camera are sensitive to these two shades. You should also ensure that the subject should not wear a color that you are using in the background. This enables a proper masking of the image at the background at the time of replacing the background screen with the selected image. If you want to display a green hill resort at the back of the subject, you should select a green color. To show a sea beach one can use blue color as the background.

Portrait photographers and other professionals deploy this technology to deliver effective results. Professionals deploy the green screen technology for advertising, photo shoots, modeling and other such purposes. News stations extensively use this technique. One can also employ the technique at home.

The Future of Green Technology

Stood on the four major pillars including energy, economy, environment and society, future of green technology is no more a buzz word. This technology is soon going to end up with fifteen more wonders ranging from Rotating Towers to the Seawater Greenhouses.

Some of the major wonders of green technology include:

The Spinning Tower
Seawater Greenhouse
The Dice House
The New Las Vegas CityCenter
The Chicago Spire
Frasers Broadway
Green Transbay Transit Center
A New Residential Plan Named Habitat 2020
California Academy of Sciences
Landscape House
The Sabah Al-Ahmed International Finance
These technologies will help reduce fuel consumption from 20-40%. The most interesting American green technology product is New Hydrogen Generators. This device is especially designed to save petrol, gas and diesel and to bring improvements into the ecological system.
According to many environmental experts, this unique green technology will transform our current future into an “electric future.” In other words, we can say that the living and working standards of this future technology will bring about numerous challenges as well as opportunities that can only be envisioned by a very few percentage of people in the current scenario.

Future products made from green technology would comprise of super computers, smart appliances, taller buildings, safer living and travelling standards. It would also include recycling and better packaging designs, magical architectural and environmental friendly construction designs. Furthermore, the focus of green technology is also on water preservation to make the world a green and safe place to live in.

Home Improvements Increase the Value of Your Home

Upgrading your home not only makes it aesthetically pleasing to your eyes, but it also increases the value of your home. There are numerous ways you can improve or upgrade your home. This article will focus on ways to accomplish this whether you plan on staying on your home or selling it.

Before you begin a home improvement project, you have to decide whether the upgrade will increase the value of your home. You need to know beforehand whether this project will be a good investment. Even if you have no plans to sell your home now, there will be a day where your family members will inherit it. What kind of house would you want them to inherit?

All improvements should add to the value of the home. They should make any potential buyer or future generation feel comfortable enough to move right in. For example, if you only have one bathroom on the top floor of the house, you may consider adding a half bathroom on a lower floor for added convenience. You may consider tearing down walls to make your current space larger.

If you can’t afford a project, like a bathroom addition, then you could select a smaller, more budget friendly project. New paint can change the mood and look of a room. And if you don’t like the new color, you can always repaint it later in a more suitable color. Maybe you could just paint an accent wall to match the decorations in your home.

Another small project that you can undertake is landscaping your yard. You can add new shrubs, plants and flowers to decorate your front and back yards. Perhaps, you could plant trees for scenery as well as privacy purposes. You could also add benches or tables for sitting areas if your yard is large enough.

Focusing on Energy Conservation With Home Improvement Projects

How can you save energy on a daily basis? With concerns about the environment continuing to spring up, people are asking themselves this question all the time. When you are looking at different ways to save energy in your home, the question has another side to it – for every bit of energy you save at home, you save a bit of money at the same time. Here are some ideas for making home improvement go hand in hand with saving energy on a daily basis.

1. Going green and silver in the kitchen. Talk of ‘going green’ will always bring a homeowner to the kitchen sooner or later. Giant appliances like the refrigerator and dishwasher are known to use tremendous amounts of energy if they are not using the latest technology. Want to see some savings in energy bills while making the entire room look sleeker and more modern? Stainless steel appliances are the way to go to address both issues.

2. Seeing lights in a whole new way. There has been some resistance to fluorescent and LED lighting solutions over the years, mainly because of the look of the light they offer. What most homeowners don’t know is that they can change the way fluorescent bulbs look by moving the lamp shade and using other types of filters. The amount of energy you save by using fluorescent bulbs is hard to ignore, while you can always save an incandescent bulb or two if you cannot part with a lamp’s direct exposure.

3. Replacing old air conditioning units. Air conditioners will use energy no matter what model you are using, but the difference between modern and older units is startling. Efficiency has finally been achieved with wall units that have the Energy Star rating, making summer afternoons cooler without sapping so much energy and costing the homeowner too much to enjoy it. Considering how harmful to the environment the old units are, this item probably should be first on your list.

4. Insulating the attic. Getting an efficient cooling and heating system won’t do you much good if poor insulation at home is causing you to let in too much of the outside air. Insulation near all windows is crucial, but the attic’s insulation may be the single biggest cause of poor efficiency overall. If you are not experienced in improvement jobs of this magnitude, get professional help in improving insulation and allow your HVAC system to do its job right.

5. Getting rid of old wooden siding. If there has been a knock on wooden siding, it isn’t in the looks department. Older houses can benefit a lot from this look, but the maintenance and other concerns involved could cause you to tire of it quickly. Switching over to vinyl is an inexpensive option which will help you out in the energy department as well. Improved insulation and minimal maintenance (saving your own personal energy) make this choice a smart one on many fronts.