The world of business startups is rife with option. You can buy a franchise or start your own business from scratch. Different approaches suit different people.
There are many franchises available to buy. Many companies you use are probably franchises, from restaurants to cleaning services. A key benefit in buying into a franchise is that you essentially get a readymade business. When you buy into a franchise, many aspects of the business including marketing are taken care of off. There are many different franchises available. Some will give you the business name, equipment and everything you need for start up, others only give you the basics and you still have to buy or lease a location, purchase equipment and the inventory you will need.
The negatives of buying a franchise however are that they are typically inflexible in terms to making it your own, and of course the initial outlay. Visit the Key Mergers website for more information or if you would like to f you would like to buy a business or even to sell one.
Building your very own company from the bottom up however means that you can grow the business organically over time, you can limit your initial outlay and you can be as creative with the direction of your business as you like. Depending on how novel your new enterprise is, it is possible that your will have a steep testing curve and will have to make all of your own connections.
At the end of the day, the rational for choosing whether to buy a franchise or go it alone are dependent on what your want to get out of the enterprise. There is a trade-off between creativity, fleximility, risk and reward.
There are dreams, there are goals, and there are MIBAG’s. What’s a MIBAG? It’s an acronym for Magnificent, Inspiring, Bold, and Audacious Goals. In other words, it isn’t your normal everyday, dull, yawn-inducing goal.
Example - let’s say your company has a problem with staff members continually arriving late, leaving the company short staffed at the start of many business days. Not only is this annoying personally, but it limits productivity, customer satisfaction, and morale. The typical way to address this problem would be to talk to those who are the primary offenders and see whether that will eliminate or reduce the problem. But, using the MIBAG process you would introduce a Magnificent, Inspiring, Bold, and Audacious Goal by announcing that the company would be 100% staffed at opening every day and would work hard to eliminate the problem - then talking to the offenders and putting them on notice.
Normal Goal - Increase 2006 Sales 12%
MIBAG - Increase 2006 Sales 50%
Normal Goal - Decrease Shipping Errors
MIBAG - Eliminate Shipping Errors
Normal Goal - Introduce a new product
MIBAG - Introduce a new LINE of products
MIBAG’s shift company focus and light fires under it by committing new resources, in fact, committing the whole company to extraordinary achievement. MIBAG’s are not for the faint of heart because they create quantum change and I am certainly not advocating them for every company or every business owner. But for those companies that have large ambitions and appetites for achievement, using the MIBAG process can be the spark that thrusts the enterprise into hyperspeed.
Take your current primary goal and ask:
Is this goal Magnificent?
Can we make it the beacon of the company’s focus?
Is this goal Inspiring?
Can we get everyone inspired to achieve it?
Is this goal Bold?
Can we make it bolder?
Is this goal Audacious?
Can we get everyone to understand what we all have to do to achieve it?
Do we have (or can we get) the resources to achieve it?
Do we really want to do this?
Then, if the company commits to the MIBAG - hold on to your hats - it will be quite a ride!
Larry Galler coaches and consults with high-performance executives, professionals, and small businesses since 1993. He is the writer of the long-running (every Sunday since November 2001) business column, “Front Lines with Larry Galler” Sign up for his free newsletter at http://www.larrygaller.com Questions??? Send an email to larry@larrygaller.com
Not 1 in 10 people can tell you where money comes from, what it is and what it is good for, let alone how and why we get it.
The most common error that most people make is to equate money with wealth. That is, they believe that if one has a lot of money, one is wealthy. The following little story will show clearly that money does not equate to wealth.
Street people are today a very common site in our wealthy society. However, when I was a teenager, growing up in Calgary, there was only one visible street person. A man, who had lost both legs in WW2, sat, on his modified mechanic’s dolly (kind of a wide skateboard), in front of a downtown department store every day, begging. He looked pitiful, no legs, dressed in rags, no wheelchair, no sense of usefulness or purpose. People gave him money every day.
One day, he died. Several hundred thousand dollars was found in his squalid and rundown home (given to him by the Government when he returned home from the war many years before). No relatives were found to give the money to. No friends were found to bury him.
Lots of money. No wealth at all.
You probably know this already: money is nothing more than an agreed medium of exchange that allows people to trade one perceived thing of value for another perceived thing of value. You trade your sweat, energy, time, creativity, productivity, skill or talent for an agreed upon amount of money and then you trade agreed upon amounts of your money for those goods and services that provide you with survival, security, comfort, pleasure, self-esteem, self-actualization and personal fulfillment.
Money is the agreed upon mechanism that facilitates the flow of wealth. You trade your wealth (value) as a human being (even if it is as basic as your physical labor) for some money that you then trade for something of value (wealth) like food and shelter.
The more value that you are able to create and contribute, the more money you can gain and the more things of value you can accumulate and enjoy (be wealthy).
Nothing that you can accumulate, however, is of any value unless you have the time freedom to enjoy it. Many people often make the mistake to trade ever greater amounts of their ever dwindling time in order to get more money. Some stop here, like the person in the story above, just keeping the money without actually exchanging it for something of value. A poor trade, indeed. Many do trade the money for valuables like a nice home filled with all the modern conveniences and toys. But how valuable is a top-of-the-line stereo system and 1,000 great music CDs in your fancy home, if you have no time to enjoy them because you are forever working (trading your time) to get more money?
Since the most valuable thing you will ever have is your time, the more time you have to sacrifice (give away) to get money to have the time to enjoy what life has to offer, the less wealthy you are. The less time you need to give away in order to have the time to do the things you want to do, the more wealthy you are.
If you have managed to create a situation (the circumstances) where what you want to do with your time also produces the money to allow you to do what you want to do, then you are truly wealthy.
If what you do with your time to produce money is not what you want to do with your life (your time on planet earth), then you are impoverished, no matter how much money you make/earn.
Let’s say that what you want to do with your time (life) is create music. Let’s imagine that your music is so good that millions of people around the world buy your CDs. You end up with a lot of money. But is that the true measure of your wealth? No. The true measure of your wealth is that you have the complete time freedom to spend your life (and your money) doing what you’d like to be doing; i.e. making music (and whatever else suits you on any given day). To quote one famous wealthy musicologist (Bob Dylan)… “What’s money? A man is a success (wealthy) if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”
How did you gain this extraordinary wealth? Simple. By providing real (or perceived) value to the lives of other people. Want more valuables? Become more valuable. Or, provide more value to other peoples’ lives. Spend your time being a contribution. Your true wealth is not measured by what you are able to accumulate, but by what you are enabled to contribute. Become more valuable and you will be able to do or create more value and will end up having more valuables.
The amount of money that passes through your hands is just a measure of how open you are to the natural flow of abundance…the exchange of one form of wealth for another.
Never make the mistake of equating money to wealth. Your wealth is determined by who you are, what you can contribute (create) and the amount of time freedom you have to enjoy your life and all it has to offer. The how of life may be complex, but the why is simple: it is to revere, relish and contribute. If you choose to be free to do those three things with all your heart, you are indeed wealthy. To what purpose do you journey through life? Why do you do what you do with your time?
Time is money? No! Time is wealth. Spend it wisely. Waste or squander your time and no amount of money will ever buy it back.
Some questions to ask yourself…
What would you do with your life if money were not an issue?
What value are you creating with your time?
What value are you trading your time for?
Are you reverent? Sacred?
Are you relishing? Enjoying?
Are you contributing? Creating?
Are you wealthy?
© Leslie Fieger. All rights reserved worldwide.
Leslie is the author of The DELFIN Knowledge System Trilogy: The Initiation, The Journey and The Quest plus many more success publications. He also the co-author of The End of the World with Hugh Jeffries and Alexandra’s DragonFire with his daughter Ashley. Subscribe to his free and ad-free eZine at http://www.ProsperityParadigm.com or http://www.LeslieFieger.com.
Reprinting and republishing of this article is granted only with the above credit included. Permission to reprint or republish does not waive any copyright.
Converting PowerPoint to Flash would be absolutely a good choice to distribute your bulky PowerPoint Presentation. You can do the whole PowerPoint-to-Flash conversion manually or by related softwares.
First, you’ll need to prepare the PowerPoint document. Make sure you are not using any complicated gradients or animations. These will be interpreted poorly when they are brought into Flash. Also, make sure there are no objects that fall outside the confines of the slide area.
This will ensure that all the slides align correctly when they are imported to Flash. Now, save a copy of your presentation without any background images. You may want to also choose a contrasting background color to easily see the content of each slide. You all import the background images into Flash at a later time.
Second, choose File > Save As… from your PowerPoint document and save the presentation as a Windows Metafile (*.wmf). This will save your entire presentation as a sequence of files. WMF files keep all text.
Next, create a new Flash Document and resize the Stage to 720 x 540. Change the background color to black. Choose File > Import > Import to Stage… and import the first WMF file. When asked to import all of the images in the sequence, choose Yes. This will place each slide from your presentation onto a sequence of frames.
Then, create a new layer under the slides layer and import the images to use for your background. You’ll probably need two images, one for title slides and one for the regular slides.
Now it’s time for some manual labor. You’ll need to go through every frame of the movie and delete the solid background shape from your slides layer. Once this is complete, you should see the content of each slide with the correct background image behind it.
Finally, add a frame to the end of your movie. Place some static text on that frame that says something like “End of slideshow, click to exit.”
Alright, now it’s time to move on to some ActionScript. Create a new layer for your actions. There are a few statements you’ll need to include right away. First, you want this movie to play full screen so add an fscommand. fscomma(”fullscreen”,”true”);To make sure the Stage resizes correctly specify the scaleMode.
Stage.scaleMode = “exactFit”;Finally, you don’t want the movie to begin playing through all the slides right away before the user starts clicking, so add a stop function. stop();You’ll need to include some functions that will be used frequently to navigate the presentation.
function gotoNextSlide():Void {
if (_currentframe < _totalframes) {
gotoAndStop(_currentframe + 1);
} else {
quit();
}
}
function gotoPreviousSlide():Void {
gotoAndStop(_currentframe - 1);
}
function gotoHome():Void {
gotoAndStop(1);
}
function gotoEnd():Void {
if (_currentframe < _totalframes) {
gotoAndStop(_totalframes - 1);
}
}
function quit():Void {
fscommand(”quit”);
}Next, we need to handle all the keyboard and mouse events so that the
user can navigate through the slides. We’ll do this by creating a new
listener object.
var myListener:Object = new Object();
myListener.onKeyDown = myOnKeyDown;
myListener.onKeyUp = myOnKeyUp;
Key.addListener(myListener);
myListener.onMouseUp = myOnMouseUp;
Mouse.addListener(myListener);Here are the listener functions.
function myOnKeyDown():Void {
if (Key.isDown(Key.DOWN) || Key.isDown(Key.PGDN)) {
gotoNextSlide();
} else if (Key.isDown(Key.UP) || Key.isDown(Key.PGUP)) {
gotoPreviousSlide();
} else if (Key.isDown(Key.END)) {
gotoEnd();
} else if (Key.isDown(Key.HOME)) {
gotoHome();
}
}
function myOnKeyUp():Void {
if (Key.getCode() == 27) {
quit();
}
}
function myOnMouseUp():Void {
gotoNextSlide();
}
If that’s too complicate to you, you can try some PPT to SWF software, like SameShow PPT to SWF Converter, MelodyPPT, Arbicate etc, all of them can help you convert PowerPoint to Flash with cool effects.
http://www.sameshow.com
SusanZheng writes, teaches, trains and consults on business and professional presentations and eCommerce related matters. For more information PPT to SWF Converter visit http://www.sameshow.com
The MAN is the person or group of people with the Money, Authority and Need - the decision maker with the ability to say “yes” to your proposition.
Many salespeople spend endless hours with people who can’t say “yes”. The can’t because they have neither their hands on the purse strings, the authority or the position to understand what their company or organisation really needs.
There are few situations in sales that are more complex and easier to botch than the unreachable committee. In no other area will your sensitivity to small clues and the subtle nuances of power be better rewarded.
Organisations have purchasing procedures that involve several people, much time, more paperwork, and they all move through clearly defined and tidy channels. That’s the face the organisation shows to the world, and it has the paperwork in its files to prove that everything has been done according to their books.
In reality, though, very little is done according to their book, and the real decisions are made outside the tidy channels. The paperwork to justify those decisions is then created after the event.
Flexibility is vital in these situations. Sticking to the rules may jeopardise your success!
The gnomes in the back room are insecure, and jealous of the power they wield at the whim of the committee. Make the gnome feel important. Never let a gnome suspect that you’re anything but delighted that you can work with him instead of whoever has the title and the official authority.
You have faith in the value and importance of your offering to that organisation. You need that faith, but don’t let it blind you to the fact that most of the unreachable committee will be too involved with their own pet projects to care very much about yours.
Unless you can somehow reach the unreachable committee and sell it on your proposition (and by definition that’s impossible, or at least impractical), you probably need the co-operation of the gnome to close that organisation. Keep in mind from the first moment you think about selling to them.
Not all organisations are big enough to have gnomes but you will probably see many of the gnome character traits in people in smaller organisations. They are often secretaries or junior staff who may be explicitly tasked with the job of keeping salespeople at bay. And that requires a whole separate set of skills….
Andy Szebeni is a sales trainer and director at A&P. He helps people involved in the sales process to win more business and generate more customers. To find free resources and learn more go to http://www.a-and-p.com.
