What a truly massive physical experience standing on its southern rim is!  You peer down into what seems an impossible distance, only to realize that the vast span between you and the bottom of this awesome rent in the earth actually masks the true gargantuan size of boulders which present themselves at all levels — impressive though they may already seem!  A huge boulder halfway down the abyss is likely the size of a cathedral.  The band of colored rock outlining a sub-canyon wall across may well be twenty stories in height.  The proportions take time to fathom.

This is a Nick Yates travel experience not to be missed if you’re traveling the American southwest.

For those of an even more adventurous nature, the trails leading down into the canyon from its rim can offer the chance to confront the limits of your own physical and mental stamina.  The most challenging have you edging along meter-wide pathways with shear rock walls on one side and shear drops to eternity on the other.  And no guard rails to interfere with your personal destiny should you choose to step carelessly.  A Nicholas Yates tip for grand canyon trekkers:  Do make sure you’re well rested and alert prior to setting out on any but the most gentle of Canyon hikes!

Whatever the Grand Canyon’s original Spanish explorers must have thought of the place when led there by natives, one doubts that even the recorded gasps of astonishment fully convey the surprise at the Grand Canyon’s grandeur — nor the urgency with which they must have longed to communicate news of this natural wonder’s existence.

In my career as a business consultant I have evaluated numerous businesses from high-tech start-ups looking for venture funding to small businesses conducting selling personal services. The two biggest things businesses seem to get wrong are:

1. No Understanding of their Break Even Point

Understanding how much money you need to make to cover your costs may seem like an obvious thing to do but many businesses don’t seem to understand this. More specifically, businesses often don’t calculate what it costs to produce or deliver a single unit of their product or service. This is where a basic break-even analysis should begin. If you are selling widgets, figure out the cost of all the inputs to manufacture that widget. How consistent is the pricing of the inputs. A good example of how this can be underestimated is with gas and commodity prices sky-rocketing these costs are likely to have gone up in the last six months. If you are selling a service this is a bit harder but you need to calculate things like office supplies and products (toner, printing costs etc.) whatever the per unit costs are of delivering your service. Overhead and factoring this in comes into play as well but first just focus on the per unit costs.

2. No Marketing Plan

Not having a marketing plan or underestimating what amount of marketing is necessary to generate a sale is the second biggest mistake start-up businesses seem to make. Frequently, if it is a service business or some type of franchise, small businesses got into the business because someone sold them on how easy it would be to do the particular business. Oftentimes this resulted in vague or undefined explanations of how to market the business. Activities like going to networking meetings, advertising in the paper or flyers or simply putting up a website are the only advice and instructions given. No accounting for how long it would take to realistically generate sales from these activities is given or understood.

The Result

The result of making these two big mistakes is an unprofitable business. Either sales are made but with no regard for the actual costs is the outcome, no sales are made and therefore no income or both. Either way the business then fails.

The Franchise Business is probably not something new for you. You’ve probably heard about food and clothing establishments being franchised. But for those who do not have a clue, a franchise is a permission that is provided by the manufacturer or the owner to retailers or distributors to sell the manufacturers’ or owners’ products and or services.

Take for example Restaurant X who specializes in fried chicken. Restaurant X has established its name all over one country. Now, it wants to expand by providing franchising opportunities to smaller companies or individuals looking for a business to start. So if Individual Y wants to have a restaurant that serves fried chicken, he or she may opt to just get a franchise of Restaurant X. If it approves, the Individual Y can open up a Restaurant X of his or her own, using the brand, under the terms provided by the franchisor. Restaurant X will provide training, support and guidance to help Individual Y start the business.

Now that you have an idea of what franchising means, let’s begin to learn about the different types of franchise businesses. For those who are not familiar with the details of franchising, there are four types of such business:

1. The Product Franchise.

With this the manufacturer uses the franchise agreement to determine how the product is distributed by the person buying the franchise. A retail company can be provided with a franchise to distribute, for example, a range of tyres. The franchisee can utilize the brand name and the trademark owned by the manufacturer to distribute or sell the car tyres. The owner of the store will pay the manufacturer a franchising fee or agree to purchase a minimum inventory to sell on to their customers. The manufacturer gets the income from the purchase of the retailer, and/or the franchise fee, and the retailer gets the benefit of the brand and experience of the franchisor.

2. The Manufacturing Franchise.

The franchisee is permitted to manufacture the products under license and sell them using the originator’s trademark and name. They also get the benefit of the national advertising of the product they manufacture. The company owning the product gets the franchise fee and sometimes a fee for every unit sold. Examples include the food and beverage industry.

3. The Business Franchise Venture.

The franchisee purchases and distributes the products for the franchise owner. A client base is provided by the product owner for the franchisee to maintain. Vending machines are a classic example of this, where the franchisee purchases the vending machines and distributes and services them, taking their share of the takings of the machines.

4. A Business Format Franchise

This opportunity is very popular, and involves providing the franchisee a proven business model using a recognized product and brand. Training is provided by the franchise owner and assistance in setting up the business. Supplies are purchased from the franchisor and the franchisee pays a royalty fee. Frequently the franchisor will sell the franchisee the products or raw materials to provide the same quality of product. Most well known fast food franchises are of this type, and also many jewelers and other ubiquitous High Street names.

We use the terms entrepreneur and small business owner interchangeably. Are they the same or are there any differences? I decided to do some research to get answers to these questions. My findings say an entrepreneur and a small business owner (SBO) are not the same; therefore, we cannot use the titles synonymously.

Although you start out as a small business owner, somewhere along the way you either remain a SBO or you become an entrepreneur. If you are contented with earning enough profits to live a comfortable life and keep your business afloat, chances are you are a small business owner. This type of income replaces your income stream, which you earned from traditional employment. You really are not interested in growing or expanding your business. More than likely you will keep the business in your family.

Maybe you are not satisfied with the status quo, and you are very ambitious and have the drive to go beyond just surviving. You would fit the definition of an entrepreneur. You will take more risks. Entrepreneurs enjoy learning through growing and expanding their businesses. Some establish businesses for the purpose of resale after realizing a certain amount of wealth. It may take a lifetime for a small business owner to earn wealth compared to approximately five years for a successful entrepreneur.

Another difference is how innovative are you. Small business owners are not the type to “think out the box”; whereas, entrepreneurs come up with new ideas, innovations, and products, as well as construct creative, strategic marketing plans.

If you are the type who works in their business, you would be considered to be a small business owner. You are more repetitive. On the other hand, if you tend to strategically work on your business, evolving it, change target markets, if necessary, you are an entrepreneur. As a SBO, you tend to not change markets. In addition, your markets may be more general when compared with entrepreneurs who target markets are more focused.

In regards to staffing, if you are a small business owner, you may have employees, which would involve having to pay employee-related expenses; such as, benefits and taxes. As an entrepreneur, you may choose to work with independent contractors rather than having employees work for you.

There are some of you who tend to have characteristics of both groups. For example, as an entrepreneur, you may choose to keep the business in your family, just like a small business owner, rather than selling it. In addition to having this in common, there are similarities in operating your businesses. Both of you have to do some degree of advertising and marketing, as well as daily administrative functions.

Overall, a notable difference is as a small business owner, you tend to need motivation; whereas, if you can be described as an entrepreneur, you are fuelled by ambition, drive and inspiration. Although similarities exist among the two groups, according to my research findings, the two terms are not interchangeable, and there are significant differences.

Executive leadership development programs which empower managers to generate entrepreneurial ideas and construct innovative systems are destined to enhance organizational performance. As studies conducted by field researchers reveal, business acumen and creative leadership rank highly as the most desirable executive qualities.

Providing managers with the wherewithal to develop, implement and follow-through on their entrepreneurial ideas as well as their innovative systems should be the “prime directive” of any executive educational program.
To accomplish that lofty mission, today’s executive leadership development programs must address every facet of leading projects, programs and progressive initiatives by taking “deep-dives” into the strategies, principles, techniques and processes needed to perform these critical tasks:

* planning and organizing;

* visioning and questing;

* setting goals and agendas;

* delegating and coaching;

* executing and assessing;

* managing and consulting;

* innovating and entrepreneurship.

What Are Entrepreneurial Ideas?

The generation of entrepreneurial ideas requires more than performing mere research or being creative - this task combines sourcing and processing your innovative systems for new opportunities along with executing a series of strategic “coup de grace”. Traditional executive leadership development programs simply fail to prepare managers for meeting those daunting challenges.

As Peter Drucker defined it: entrepreneurship is “both drastically (upgrading) the yield from resources, and (creating) a new market and a new customer. Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in (the rigorous applications of its) concept and (in the uncompromising practice of its) theory rather than in (a feeling, a tendency to take risks, a ‘kiss-from-the-muse’ or a single bright idea or in your ) intuition.” (all words in parenthesis are mine)

Therefore, entrepreneurial ideas are those patterns of thought, conceptuality and envisioning which give management the ability to describe the whats and whys along with defining the hows and who which satisfy Drucker’s version of entrepreneurship.

What Are Innovative Systems?

Our research has indicated a new trend in the realm of competitive advantages - we now believe that Imagination or innovative systems, not Knowledge, is the key driver of competitive advantage. All of our executive leadership development programs and skills training courses to help clients meet those challenges.

Innovative systems must possess all the attributes of a structure. It needs to behave, operate and achieve results synergetically (enabling us to “measure our experiences geometrically and topologically and … employ geometry and topology to coordinate all information regarding our experiences, both metaphysical and physical” - R. Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics.)
Following Bucky Fuller’s guidance, we suggest your innovative systems would contain these core ingredients:

* 1) Entities - a person, place or thing - seen as realities, dynamics, leadership, communications, ecological niches and relationships

* 2) Processes - a series of steps, procedures or techniques being applied or implemented in an orderly fashion - such as, exploring, creating, implementing and supervising

* 3) Linkages - any connection, real or imagined, between entities, processes or the system with some portion of itself or with the world outside the system - to facilitate energy importations, exportations and transformations

Executive leadership development programs which push the envelope of subject matter beyond the normal by helping managers generate entrepreneurial ideas and executive leadership training courses which feature these concepts of the Imagination Age (by developing innovative systems and not mere Knowledge) are sure to bring success and prosperity to their students.

I have been an employee for many companies, managed companies for others and started several of my own companies. While I was an employee, I did not care about the bottom line or profit margins. As a manager I cared about the bottom line and profit margins only as it pertained to my job and my salary. As a business owner the bottom line and profit margins are the difference between whether I eat and have a roof over my head or don’t.

I have never really considered myself a “business woman”. I have always considered myself an entrepreneur. The definition for a businesswoman (yes it’s in the dictionary) is: a woman engaged in business. A person engaged in commercial or industrial business. Whereas the definition for an entrepreneur is: a risk-taker who has the skills and initiative to establish a business. A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.

As you can see there is a major difference between a businessperson and an entrepreneur just in the definition. I applaud anyone who makes the effort to make something out of their life either by running a business for someone else or for themselves. But sometimes it’s hard to transform a ‘business person’ into an ‘entrepreneur’ because some business people have what I call “employee mentality”. Employee mentality is simply when a person wants to start a business but may be too use to having a structured environment where they have others who will take on projects or ’step in’ when something needs to be done.

When you’re transforming yourself into an entrepreneur the problem, in most cases, is there is no one who can step in for you. You only have yourself to count on. Often, when people go into business for themselves after being in corporate America running someone else’s business for years, they fail. Why? Not because they don’t know how to run ‘A Business’ but because they do not know how to run ‘Their Own Business’.

There are certain things that you will learn in corporate America that will most definitely apply to owning a business of your own but it’s hard to get people to understand that there are so many things that you have not learned that you will need to learn and learn quickly!

I think as people we are all creatures of habit. We get so use to doing things a certain way and get so comfortable that we are resistant to change. If you are looking to start your own business after years of being an employee for someone else, you will need to re-train you mind. You have to teach yourself to use what you have to make it work and learn whatever skills you are lacking along the way. You’ll need to remind yourself that you will have to take risk. Some will be calculated, some will not. The important thing is that you continue to re-train your mind so to know that it will require countless hours of sacrifice from you to make it work.

I don’t know of many entrepreneurs who are just staring out who work from 9-5, 5 days a week and take 2 weeks of vacation a year. They have no sick days, no holidays or even days for bereavement. So when you transition from being an employee to entrepreneur, just keep in mind that these are just a few of many sacrifices that you’ll have to make but the list is endless! The question is are you ready?

What Creates Entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurs do not emerge by themselves; they are created through a strong urge to achieve success. Success rarely happens by chance and it will not last long if it does happen in this manners.

To be successful as an entrepreneur is not by chance, it will not happen this way.
However, success can almost be guaranteed if you have the correct entrepreneurial mindset in place, this is the first step every entrepreneur must have.

Investing in yourself

After having the correct entrepreneur mindset, you are set to achieve great success?
Unfortunately, life is not that simple. It takes more to achieve success.

A lot people are willing to invest time and effort into their current jobs, hoping that their boss will appreciate it and get promoted. However, that is not the key to become an entrepreneur. People fail to realize that they need to invest in themselves, their greatest asset of all.

Start to invest in yourself doing research and acquire the proper knowledge. If you need to invest some money, go do it. A successful entrepreneur made decision fast base on calculated risk and are dare to take risk trying different things to become successful.

Accept Failure

Unfortunately, life is not as smooth as one would like to be. In the process of building a business, you are bound to face a lot a failure along the way. You must treat every failure as a lesson and you must learn from every failure you face.

You must have the desire to succeed, persistence and an unwillingness to quit. The more you fail at the start, the more you will achieve success at a later stage as you become smarter.

Benefits of being an Entrepreneur

Why people want to be an entrepreneur?

There are a lot of benefits associated if you are a successful entrepreneur. It will change your lifestyle completely.

- People will look at you as a leader to follow

- You will achieve financial independent

- You will have a sense of great satisfaction

- You will have flexibility in your time with your family

There are a lot more benefits that you can imagine….

Action speak louder than words

Today, I would like to share with you my personal MOTO that keeps driving me towards success and I hope it will benefit you as well.

“Success starts from a dream and it take actions to realize it…..”

Just by having a big dream is only the first step to success, nothing will happen if you just sit on it doing nothing. You need to have strategies and plans moving towards your big dream. In having a clear picture of where you are heading, you need to draft out a plan on your drawing board and take one step at a time. Be patient and do the right things, result will certainly comes at a later stage if not sooner.

So take your actions NOW, I mean “Today”…..