By Debbie Gregory.

Part 1 of 3

Starting a business isn’t easy – it involves very careful planning, evaluation, and a bit of cash to get started. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 30% of all businesses fail within their first year, approximately 1/2 close their doors within 5 years, and only 1/3 will make it to their 10^th anniversary.

The reasons the businesses fail vary but often they revolve around lack of funding or lack of profits. Before starting a new business, you must spend the time and energy to build a solid foundation in order to survive and thrive.

Necessary Essentials:

1.) Evaluate yourself and your business idea

Before you start a business, it is an excellent idea to take stock of all of your own personal strengths and weaknesses. What are your skills? Where is your expertise? What are you passionate about? Why do you want to start a business?   Then look at ideas for the type of business you want to start. Are you improving on something that already exists or providing a new product or service?

2.) Do your market research

Once you know what you want to do, it makes sense to spend the time doing some in-depth exploration and analysis of your target market. You don’t want to launch a business blindly. Conducting research will help you determine whether or not your idea will be viable in the marketplace.

3.) Write out your business plan and make it official

After you have conducted your market research and you find that your offering will potentially be successful, you want to write out the blueprint for starting the business. Your business plan should detail the purpose of your business, your target customers, your long-term goals, and how you plan to finance the business until you are successful and profitable.  You will need to determine the right legal business structure  (sole proprietorship, LLC, etc), register your business with your local government, obtain any necessary permits/certificates/licenses, as well as trademarks/copyrights/patents (if applicable), you will need to open a bank account, and setup your legal team and plan (just in case).

4.) Get your business rolling

Once all of that is in place, select the location for your business, setup your location, and staff it. Make sure that you choose a location that is convenient for your target customers and not too close to your competition. Train your staff properly and make sure that you give them the tools they need to make your customers happy.

Regardless of how successful you become, never get too complacent. Your market and target audience will change over the lifetime of your business. Make sure that you devote the time and energy into regular evaluations of your offerings, your market, and your customers to see where you can improve.  Often you will need to hire specialists to help you and this is money well spent.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this 3 Part Series.

By Debbie Gregory.

Small business owners will face the threat of a lawsuit at least once over the lifetime of their business. The financial impact of such a lawsuit can be devastating and can even put the company totally out of business. The lawsuit can also damage the company’s reputation, place stress on you and your employees and take valuable time away from other important parts of your business.

Small businesses are sued for a variety of reasons which are usually dependent on their industry.  Some reasons for lawsuits include but are not limited to product defects, noncompliance with regulations, breach of contract, and more.

Unfortunately, most lawsuits against small businesses are from unhappy employees. Employees that feel they have been treated unfairly, terminated unjustly, or disciplined in a way they felt was too harsh are more likely to sue if they feel they can gain financial compensation for their perceived mistreatment.

The most common employee-led lawsuits include:

• Discrimination (age, sexual orientation, gender, religion, etc)
• Harassment
• Injury due to negligence
• Wrongful termination
• Salary and/or compensation violations

Occasionally the lawsuits will come from an unhappy customer. Most are legitimate claims against the business but of course occasionally you may run into a frivolous lawsuit.   There are some people who make a living out of filing lawsuits.  Regardless,  the negative impact to your business will be the same.

The most common customer-led lawsuits include:

• Discrimination
• Personal injury
• Refusal of service
• Unlawful activities (such as a hidden camera in the bathroom)

How can you reduce the threat of a lawsuit?

1. Protect your assets with the proper insurance coverage. Business liability insurance can protect your personal finances as well as the business finances. Seek the advice of an insurance professional to find the right coverage for your business.
2. Make sure you have good legal help ready and waiting just in case. It is always best to get to know a good lawyer that you can turn to for advice or representation when needed.
3. Be careful with what you do and say. Never over promise, don’t make ludicrous claims, try to avoid saying anything that may harm you in the future, and never make overly specific claims about your products or services. This includes what is said and done with employees. Make sure all of your policies are clearly written out, easily accessible, consistent with federal, state and local laws and are followed.

If you do happen to get sued, or are threatened with a lawsuit, stay as calm as possible. Your first step will be to contact your lawyer and let them know the situation. Your legal counsel may be able to help mitigate the matter before it goes to court. After speaking with them, if necessary, your second call will be to your insurer to make certain you know the process to file a claim should you need to do so.

Facing any sort of legal matter can be incredibly difficult and highly stressful.  Try to keep a cool and level head about the situation. Keeping calm and optimistic can help you focus on the task as well as help you continue to run your business while the matter is handled.

Being prepared is always the best route to go. Make sure your assets and company are protected well before there is a problem and you will be in a better place to either curb a potential lawsuit or tackle it quickly.

By Debbie Gregory.

VAMBOA hopes you will enjoy these quotes from famous and successful people.  We hope they will motivate you and help you achieve success in your business.  Often failure will lead to success and many highly successful entrepreneurs have failed a few times before reaching their goals.

We need to learn from our failures and not quit because of them.  There is a saying that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of madness.  By recognizing the things, we do wrong and acknowledging our failures, we can achieve success.

Please enjoy and give each one your consideration:

1. Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.” —John Wooden
2. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” —Thomas Edison
3. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” —Albert Einstein
4. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” —Winston Churchill
5. “A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.” —Alexandre Dumas
6. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” —Napoleon Hill
7. “You build on failure. You use it as a steppingstone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” —Johnny Cash
8. “It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.” —Zig Ziglar
9. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” —Jack Canfield
10. “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” —Coco Chanel
11. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” —Robert F. Kennedy
12. “The phoenix must burn to emerge.” —Janet Fitch
13. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” —Ken Robinson
14. “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.” —Charles F. Kettering
15. “Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” —Oliver Goldsmith
16. “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.” —George Eliot
17. “A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.” —Elmer G. Letterman
18. “You’ll always miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” —Wayne Gretzky
19. “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.” —John C. Maxwell
20. “There are no failures–just experiences and your reactions to them.” —Tom Krause
21. “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.” —George Bernard Shaw
22. “When you take risks, you learn that there will be times when you succeed, and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” —Ellen DeGeneres
23. “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” —Ellen DeGeneres
24. “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” —Chris Bradford
25. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas Edison
26. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” —Bill Gates
27. “Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.” —Richard Branson
28. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” —Winston Churchill
29. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” —Paulo Coelho
30. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” —Mark Zuckerberg
31. “No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.” —Chris Hardwick
32. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” —Elbert Hubbard
33. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” —James P. Lewis
34. “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” —Lance Armstrong
35. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” —Winston Churchill
36. “I’d rather be partly great than entirely useless.” —Neal Shusterman
37. “We are all failures–at least the best of us are.” —M. Barrie
38. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” —Henry Ford
39. “I think you have to try and fail, because failure gets you closer to what you’re good at.” —Louis C.K.
40. “I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time, but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed.” —Dolly Parton
41. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” —Steve Jobs
42. “Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can’t go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else’s success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.” —Kevin Bacon
43. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” —Michael Jordan
44. “Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” —Gena Showalter
45. “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail…it takes backbone to lead the life you want” —Richard Yates
46. “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead-end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” —Denis Waitley
47. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” —S. Lewis
48. “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” —Robert T. Kiyosaki
49. “Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.” —K. Rowling
50. “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” —James Joyce
51. “Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.” —Charlie Chaplin
52. “Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.” —Amelia Earhart
53. “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes–understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” —Arianna Huffington
54. “The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.” —Frederic William Farrar
55. “You have to be able to accept failure to get better.” —LeBron James
56. “I don’t want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about.” —Emma Watson
57. “Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.” —Benjamin Franklin
58. “When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures. So I did 10 times more work.” —George Bernard Shaw
59. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” —Henry Ford
60. “With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.” —Criss Jami
61. “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” —Abraham Lincoln
62. “Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.” —Sumner Redstone
63. Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.” —Mia Hamm
64. “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” —Eloise Ristad
65. “What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?” –John Green

By Debbie Gregory.

Starting and running a successful business takes a lot of personal fortitude and discipline. Whether you are a solo-entrepreneur or you have a large team at your back, your ultimate success will come down to whether or not you can set and achieve your goals.

A great way to put together and stay focused on achieving your goals is using the SMART goal setting technique. SMART is an acronym that stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-sensitive.

• Specific – Exactly what you want to achieve.
• Measurable – How you plan to measure your goal.
• Achievable – Is your goal realistic?
• Relevant – How does your goal relate to your business?
• Time-sensitive – When do you want to achieve your goal?

With this information in-hand you have a very clear plan of action. However, there are still challenges that can arise and can lead to failure in reaching your goals and having a successful business. The main roadblocks to SMART business success include:

1.) You don’t commit.

You cannot sit around hoping that your dreams will fall into your lap. You MUST create a deliberate and concrete plan for your success and stick to it.

2.) You don’t factor in problems.

Regardless of how well you plan, problems will arise. Try to be flexible and factor in obstacles that may derail you for a bit. Your plan may even need to be revised from time to time due to unforeseen problems, as you move toward your goal.   The important thing is to be flexible and adjust to current circumstances.

3.) Your goals aren’t realistic.

You need to make sure that you have set reasonable, realistic, and manageable goals. You cannot change everything all at once. It is nice to dream big but try to tackle the dream one small piece at a time.

4.) You are afraid to fail.

Failure is an important tool to learn and failure provides you information on how to refine your strategy and move forward in obtaining your goals. Your missteps will provide you strength to overcome obstacles. Try to see failure as a stepping stone rather than an end.  It is said that failure provides you the proper perspective for success

5.) Your plan is vague.

Your plan must be as specific as possible. It helps you to focus on the individual parts and helps you identify the next steps you need to take.

Developing a SMART plan is an excellent way to help you foster discipline and focus on your goals with strategies and tactics to achieve them. Never allow yourself to become derailed by outrageous dreams, roadblocks, fear of failure, or fear of commitment.

By Debbie Gregory.

As a small business owner, you every decision you make directly impacts your business and your bottom line. Did you know that certain times of day are better for work and making decisions than others?

People are naturally wired to be the most productive during the first two hours after we wake up. We make our very best analytical and reason-based decisions at this time of day.  For most of us, this is early in the morning. It makes a great deal of sense to get a good night’s sleep and wake up and then make your decision.

In general, we typically start the day strong and refreshed, by mid-afternoon we hit a slump or wall, and then gain a “second wind” around dinnertime. That mid-day lull is when you are more likely to be irritated, sluggish, or simply feeling drained. This is one of the worst times to try to make important decisions of any type. If you can put the decision off until the next morning you will be refreshed and better able to handle it.

How to take advantage of this information?

Prioritize those precious productive morning hours and schedule any important tasks or meeting during the first few hours of the day. This is the best time to review financials, take care of staff evaluations or go over important contracts.

If your business is conducted during off-hours, place these important activities into a time slot right after lunch when you are feeling rejuvenated by your meal. Keep all quick decisions that will not harm your business for the late afternoon or early evening. If the timing for your meeting or decision just isn’t right for the morning hours, try taking a walk or short break beforehand to clear your head.   These activities can provide you much needed perspective and renewed energy.

Making important decisions for your business is something you do, as a business owner, almost every single day.  Small business owners find themselves making a lot of decisions. It is important to take care of them in the best way possible to achieve the best outcome for everyone involved. It is also a good idea to keep in mind that your employees and customers follow these patterns as well; so try to make requests of them, or tailor your expectations, when they will be at their best too.