Category: Business

By Donna Knight

Every business owner knows that setting goals is crucial to business success. If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? More importantly, how will you know when you’re heading in the wrong direction?

If you’re the owner of a small business, what is your goal? To make it to the end of the month with enough money in the bank to cover the payroll? To take a holiday for the first time in five years? To make X amount in sales this month? To acquire X amount of new customers?

Here’s one goal that every business owner should have right from the start — to become independent of the business. Small businesses turn into big businesses only when they are able to operate smoothly without the owner being present. When you can stay away for a week, or a month, or a year, and return to find the business running better than before you left, you now have the opportunity to follow your dreams – sell the business and start a new one, retire, buy a yacht and sail around the world or even think of more ways to expand the business if strategizing is your idea of fun.

True financial independence is the ability to live your life doing what YOU want to do. Do you really want to show up for work an hour early every day, leave late at night and never take a holiday for the rest of your life? I certainly don’t.

What is the solution that will allow you to build a business you can walk away from?

It’s simple. You need a system in place so that everyone in your business knows exactly what is expected of them.

When you take on a new employee, how do they learn what they’re expected to do? Does an existing employee take around and explaining how things work? How can you be sure that the new employee is learning what you want them to know?

As the owner of the business, it’s your job to ensure that a system is put in place as the business grows. The system will ensure that everyone knows what they need to know to do their job effectively. To start with, this system will include job descriptions and a training plan for each job.

Let me give you an example. How do you think companies like McDonald’s are able to manage thousands of restaurants across the planet? McDonald’s Head Office doesn’t sell hamburgers. They sell franchises, and their customers are the franchisees. The most valuable asset they have is their system. It regulates everything from what employees wear, the words they say to customers, how many seconds a patty is left on the grill, to variables within their business. Every single detail is dictated by the system.

The system makes it possible for new employees to fit in. They are educated on ‘how we do things around here’. They are taught the specifics of their job.

This is not to say that there is no flexibility in this system. In a well-designed system there is still room for individual creativity. Better ways of doing things should always be encouraged, and then and written into the system in the future after a trial run.

The system provides the framework for ensuring that the business is never entirely dependent on any one person, including you. As a business owner, your future satisfaction with your business depends on the quality of that system.

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Donna Knight is a Computer Trainer and Website Promotion Specialist. She has built over 200 websites and helps new site owners promote their site cheaply. For tips that will help you save money and save time when marketing online, visit her Internet Marketing Tools and Reviews blog at http://www.DonnaKnight.com
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Copyright (C) 2005 Donna Knight. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted to post this article in newsletters, free ebooks or websites as long as the article and resource box remain intact. For product reviews, you may substitute your affiliate referral link for the product URL.

By Donna Knight

15 years ago there were only two ways to learn a new subject. You could go to a trade school, college or adult education school. Or you could study a book on the subject on your own. If you didn’t have time to travel back and forth to school, especially after a long hard day of work, the first method was too time-consuming. If you weren’t very disciplined, learning by book wasn’t right for you either.

With all the technological advances in the last decade, including but not limited to the internet, you now have a bevy of ways to learn something new. In addition, you can now learn more subjects than ever before. One cutting edge way to get an education or even teach others is via teleseminars.

Teleseminars are classes that allow a room full of people to learn over the telephone. What’s more, each teleseminar attendee can attend without leaving the comfort of their own home. You can even stay in your pajamas! How it works is that each participants is given a phone number to dial at a specific time. This allows them to listen to and even speak to the teleseminar holder and others attending. Teleseminars usually last anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. If you’re looking for a business to start, this is a great business you can run right from home.

There are also classes called webinars which are more of a website-based classroom. The disadvantage of webinars over teleseminars is that they require technical savvy both from the person who holds the webinar and from the attendees. With teleseminars, the only equipment attendees need is a telephone. Everyone knows how to use one of those, right?

Starting your own teleseminar business does have some requirements. Here’s what you need to know to start your own teleseminar business:

1. You must have access to a teleseminar system that will allow multiple parties to connect via a single line. There are lots of companies offering this service that you can search for online.

2. You need a subject that people would love to learn about. Examples of popular topics include starting a business, making money online, offline marketing, as well as highly specialized skills that require expert knowledge, such as taking care of pets or plants.

3. You should prepare an outline of all your lessons ahead of time. This outline will allow you to practice the teleseminar and determine how long it will take, how many individual sessions it would require, and how much time per session.

4. You must prepare each lesson beforehand. You can list everything you want to discuss. Make sure it is interesting and easy to understand over the phone. Remember that attendees don’t have the benefit of visual material as they would in a classroom. There are two alternatives though. You could mail handouts to attendees before the teleseminar starts. Alternatively, you could direct attendees to a website, where there are links to different graphics to illustrate your points.

5. You don’t have to be the expert on the subject of the teleseminars. You could simply interview others who are well-known experts in your chosen field. You could even have the interviews pre-recorded and then use the teleseminar to discuss them and answer questions. Attendees will like it more if the teleseminars are interactive.

6. You will need to determine how to price your teleseminar series. The answer is simple: The price should be what you think the information is worth. Using the internet, you can look for eBooks or classes on the subject and see what their pricing is.

7. Like any business venture, you will need to advertise your teleseminar in order to gain attendees. You can market both online and offline and you should. If possible, advertise in places where your target market is most likely to be. For example, if your teleseminar is related to children, pass out flyers at a PTA meeting or little league game. Make enrollment as easy as possible for attendees. If you make it difficult, potential attendees won’t sign up even if they’re dying to learn what you can teach simply because they’re turned off by the sign-up process. The easiest sign up process would be a simple opt-in form on a website.

8. Integrate a simple payment process that accepts multiple forms of payment. I recommend PayPal (http://www.paypal.com ) or ClickBank (http://www.clickbank.net ) both of which I have used extensively. Both allow you to accept echecks from people who don’t have a credit card. Both are secure payment systems using encryption so that credit card information can’t be viewed by hackers.

9. Decide if you want to conduct each teleseminar live or by playing a recording. A live teleseminar will allow for interaction with students having the ability to ask questions and discuss the subject further. Interactivity is an added value that will allow you to charge more for the teleseminar. If you are insecure about your speaking abilities, you may not want to do it live. Besides, you can ask students to send in their questions ahead of time and then record the answers when recording the teleseminar.

10. When it’s time to go live, be sure to start on time. If you’re charging a high price for your seminar, that’s all the more reason attendees will expect you to be a professional in the delivery of your teleseminar.

11. You must have a good quality phone. A cordless phone or cellphone may be convenient but the sound quality isn’t good enough for a teleseminar. For maximum comfort, you might want to try a headset with a good quality microphone that plugs into the phone. Your neck will thank you!

That’s not all. There’s more than one way to make money from your teleseminars. You could record the teleseminar with a recording device that hooks onto the telephone and convert it into mp3 format. You can find this device at Radio Shack. You can sell the mp3 files as a download. You could have the whole teleseminar transcribed and sell the transcriptions along with the mp3 recording at a higher price. You can print out the teleseminar into a book and sell it offline as a printed course. You can charge even more for this course than for the previous options. You can include mp3 recordings of the teleseminar on CD or DVD.

Teleseminars allow you to get into the information product business using a device everyone has, the telephone! You can start doing teleseminars as a part-time business, and if you get really good at it, it can become profitable enough to become a full-time profession.
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Donna Knight is a Computer Trainer and Website Promotion Specialist. She has built over 200 websites and helps new site owners promote their site cheaply. For tips that will help you save money and save time when marketing online, visit her Internet Marketing Tools and Reviews blog at http://www.DonnaKnight.com
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Copyright (C) 2005 Donna Knight. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted to post this article in newsletters, free ebooks or websites as long as the article and resource box remain intact. For product reviews, you may substitute your affiliate referral link for the product URL.