Apple Capital Group Blog

Tag Archive: business_opportunity

8 Tips for Starting A Business

Seniors start more businesses than people under the age of 30! I know, I was surprised, too. It may surprise you even more that the ones started by seniors have a greater chance of success than those started by the young. These two facts taken together should show you that you are never too old to start your own business, and should also suggest that there may be more opportunities for seniors looking to fund a new business.

 

Here then are 6 tips to help you get started:

 

1. Pick something you are passionate about. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon of a product or service that is supposed to be “the next big thing,” instead, pick something you are passionate about. A new business will take a lot of time if you do it right, and you want to spend that time doing something you love.

 

Steve-Strauss--in-article-Medium.png

It is also true that if you are passionate about something and you know that area well, then that experience will be a big leg up. It is also a major reason why senior entrepreneurs are so successful.

 

2. Don’t take a big risk when funding the business: When you are older, you have less time to make up for financial mistakes. Because a startup is, of course, somewhat risky, one way to hedge against that risk is by being prudent where

possible.

 

So, for instance, don’t look to take out a second mortgage on your home to finance your venture, and you shouldn’t tap into your retirement account. Instead, consider these options:

  • Talk to your state Department of Commerce and see what grants and loans may be available to senior entrepreneurs; you might be surprised.
  • Also, consider crowd funding sites like Kickstarter. If you have a unique idea, getting friends, family and the public to fund it is a more preferable way to go.

3. Come up with a strategy and/or business plan: Even if your plan isn’t to become a major global corporation, you need to treat your business venture as a serious proposition. This means that you need to sit and come up with a plan and a strategy. Your business plan doesn’t need to be elaborate, but you do need to have a strategy for how you plan on getting from A to B to C.

 

Click here to read more articles from small business expert Steve Strauss

 

4.  Learn to love the Internet and social media. Like it or not, the internet and social media networks have become the place for word of mouth marketing and business promotion. Forget placing ads in print magazines or making flyers, because that is yesterday’s news. You will get a far better response using, for instance, a Google or Facebook ad. So, take some courses online or at your local community college, and research just what is available to you in internet marketing.

 

5. Embrace the mobile revolution. I was recently at an Internet marketing event and they said that 60% of all email is now read on a mobile device. Similarly, almost half of all searches now are done on a mobile device. Whatever business you start must be searchable and findable by a mobile device.

Mobile is not only the future, it’s also the present.

 

6. Become a lifelong learner. One of my favorite business authors (Barbara Winter, author of Making a Living Without a Job), says that one of the best parts of being an entrepreneur is that you have to become a lifelong learner. If you develop the habit of always learning about business and what is coming down the pike, you will be well prepared to serve your customers.

 

The bottom line is that as a senior, you have valuable experience that translates well into the world of entrepreneurship. Use it wisely.

 

About Steve Strauss

Steven D. Strauss is one of the world’s leading experts on small business and is a lawyer, writer, and speaker. The senior small business columnist for USA Today, his Ask an Expert column is one of the most highly-syndicated business columns in the country. He is the best-selling author of 17 books, including his latest,The Small Business Bible, now out in a completely updated third edition. You can listen to his weekly podcast, Small Business Success, visit his new website TheSelfEmployed, and follow him on Twitter. © Steven D. Strauss.

http://www.smallbusinessonlinecommunity.bankofamerica.com/people/Steve%20Strauss/content

You can read more articles from Steve Strauss by clicking here

 

November 4, 2014 Today's Business, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0 Read more >

5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs

5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

by Erin McDermott.

5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.. It’s cap and gown time. Another generation faces the daunting question: What on earth should I do now?  Rest assured, America’s entrepreneurs were there once, too. So what would this wizened and battle-hardened group tell an ambitious young person if they could? We offered a few business owners the chance to proffer some smart advice to future head honchos. 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

What do these entrepreneurs wish they knew when they were leaving school?5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

1. Capitalize on your freedom

Most new grads have life’s weightiest matters still ahead of them: marriage, kids, mortgages. So if you’re looking to strike out on your own, now may be the time—before decisions become more complicated and the risks too great. Twentysomething Nick Ramil and his business partner, Tim Nybo, finished college and headed to Guangzhou, China, to teach English part-time—and start up their consultancy on the side to pursue international opportunities. 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs. Now they’re running Royal American Wines, an importer and distributor, and coaching Chinese and global entrepreneurs. “The majority of people are too scared to take action,” Ramil says. “Over time, these people’s dreams and ambitions are slowly extinguished. Even if you fail, you played the game… this will only be a positive or sign of strength on a resume.” 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

2. Build something

Create a website. Or, better yet, an app—it’s a skill that’s in high demand. Along the way, you’ll learn things that are indispensable, like how to code, manage a project, study analytics, or a thousand other tools, says Gabriel Mays, the 28-year-old founder of Justaddcontent.com, a San Diego-based website maker for small businesses, and a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs. The bottom line: Work on something that solves a problem in your industry. “If this isn’t your background, it’ll make your mind work in ways you never thought it could,” Mays says. “Can you image someone who conceived of, designed, built, marketed, and supported something completely new? They understand every step of the process. Talk about marketable when you throw that on a resume.” 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

3. Your early relationships matter more than you think

Everyone has to start somewhere, but don’t make the mistake of believing that any task is beneath you. Vannessa Wade, now the 32-year-old president of her own Houston-based public-relations firm, Connect the Dots PR, looks back at her early work days and cringes a bit. “You have to learn to volunteer for projects and to be a team player,” she says. 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs. On one job, “my mind was always ‘Get me out of here,’ not realizing it was coming out in my actions.’” Instead, learn how to take disappointment and keep adding more skills. “You don’t have to show that you’d rather be out trying to be an entrepreneur,” Wade says. Instead, become a magnet for a mentor: “Work hard and people will want to look out for you.” These days, she often taps into that early network she built for advice. “People actually want to help you,” Wade explains. “I can reach out to other entrepreneurs to pick their brains about what does and doesn’t work, or get an honest answer about what I might be doing wrong.” 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

 

4. Be a good observer

Watch how other people operate, what niches they occupy, how their systems and organizations work, and zero in on their motivations and goals. It’s the best thing Matthew Zehner says he’s learned from his business. He takes the time “to read people, interpret this information, and use it to communicate more effectively to create the best possible outcome for my clients, my business, and my employees.” 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs. Zehner, the 28-year-old chief executive of ZehnerGroup, an interactive media agency, now has a staff of 30 employees, based in Los Angeles. 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.The observational skill set becomes essential when dealing with difficult situations. “That life lesson is invaluable in the business world—whether it’s knowing how to word an email to a potential client to get the response I’m hoping for or how to communicate project risk with a client early on.” 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

 

5. Know when to ask for help

Georgette Blau was just out of college in 1999 when she started giving weekend tours of New York’s famous movie and television locations, as a sideline to her job in publishing. “Once I hit about $400 a week, I thought I could make a go of it full-time and make it a lot bigger,” she says. There were plenty of in-demand settings, as Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Seinfeld and others were becoming popular. But for about 18 months, she was doing it all: taking reservations, conducting tours, arranging marketing and logistics, and handling the finances. Looking back, she says monopolizing all of these burdens kept her fledgling company from growing faster. 5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.She added an office staffer and made it through some difficult times after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, then steadily started to build up On Location Tours, learning plenty of management lessons along the way. Now with 50 employees on the job, she’s readying a TMZ celebrity-gossip-themed tour and looking at possibilities for the HBO series Girls. “It’s great to have the experience of wearing different hats, but in order to move forward in a business, you really have to hire at least an office manager to help with more time-consuming tasks, say Blau, now 38.  5 Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

Tips for New Graduates From Young Entrepreneurs.

May 30, 2013 Today's Business, , , , , , , , , , 0 Read more >

Flea Market Q&A: Entrepreneurial Lessons from the World of Secondhand Retail

Flea Market Q&A: Entrepreneurial Lessons from the World of Secondhand Retail
by Erin McDermott.

Flea markets rang up $30 billion in sales last year, according to the National Flea Market Association. Ki Nassauer (pictured) is executive editor of Flea Market Style magazine and founder of Junk Revolution a popular online forum for devotees of tag sales, vintage markets, and “junkers.” She recently spoke with writer Erin McDermott about what small businesses can learn from the tables and stands of these surprisingly big businesses.

EM: We know the old saying: “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” But that could also be called a niche market. What surprises you about what sells?

KN: The most difficult part is finding the place to sell it. So what sells in the West is different from what sells in the East; what sells in an antique shop is different from what sells in a flea market. That, to me, is the most interesting part of it all. There’s a buyer out there for pretty much anything, depending on your location.

EM: The Internet, with Ebay and Amazon, has added so much competition for many of the goods you might see at a flea market. And now there’s Etsy.com, which is so much more visual and appealing. How has this affected flea markets?

KN: It’s a different style of shopping. Etsy came at the right time: Everyone’s used to shopping online and they made it very easy. And in the last year, they’ve really improved their search, which personally has helped me dramatically with shopping online. You can search and go right to the vintage category and call up ‘crocheted potholders’ or ‘comic books’ or specifically search for the item for which you’re looking. And that’s actually easier than shopping at flea markets because you can narrow the search if you’re looking for something in particular. It’s more difficult to browse, certainly. I do it all of the time for magazine articles.

PQ_QAkinassauer.jpgEM: Flea markets are at the forefront of recycling, reusing, and repurposing materials. That’s also often true for entrepreneurs and small businesses when they’re starting out. What are you seeing in terms of a new focus on being green?

KN: It’s definitely a younger demographic than we’ve ever had before that appreciates flea markets. They appreciate recycling. They’ve grown up with it and it’s a cool thing to recycle, whereas, say, 50 years ago or even 25 years ago you didn’t see as many young people at antique shows or flea markets.

EM: What have you learned from flea and antique markets over the years? Are there lessons for entrepreneurs and small businesses?

KN: Flea markets themselves are an opportunity for people to start new businesses. There are people who would have never considered opening a small business, because of financial or time commitments. But here they can stick their toes in the water and try something. I get frequent calls and emails from people who say ‘I want to open a business’—maybe it’s decor or antiques or a vintage shop. I always recommend that they buy a few things, load up a truck, and go to a flea market. It’s the first step if you’re going into the antique or vintage industry.

Flea markets can teach so much to potential business owners. They won’t be isolated. There is competition among sellers and they will be right there with them. They can watch other vendors who’ve been doing it over the years. Be it business practices or their style, there’s so much to learn from the people who’ve been doing it. And it’s all around them.

EM: Have you seen some great success stories?

KN: Oh, absolutely! There have been a lot of small businesses that have started with people opening a booth with a friend. I think a lot of it has happened with women hitting mid-life or couples who are retired, or considering retirement, or, particularly, people who have had corporate jobs with crazy schedules who finally say ‘Enough is enough: I love vintage and go to flea markets as a hobby. How can I turn this into a business?’

And they start by just buying and selling stuff at a flea market, and that turns into maybe a shop, or something larger if they’re traveling cross-country to a show. And you know—people are earning a good living from buying and reselling. There are even people who get a TV career out of it!

May 4, 2012 Today's Business, , , , , , , , , , , , , 9 Read more >