Daniel da Silva Lay
Mar 4, 2016 | Non Fiction, 1st pages, Business
Introduction.
Hey, it’s Daniel…
Before we begin our journey together, I just wanted to let you know that the world needs you! Everyone has something to offer and it would be a shame to waste your unique gifts and talents by doing anything other than what you were created to do. The number one thing that stops most people from realizing their dream of running a successful business is fear. But I want you to know that a business is no different to a car, it can be tweaked, upgraded, modified and even turbocharged and if it ever goes off course, it can be steered back onto the correct path.
Every story has a hero and I’m here to help you make your dreams come to life by being your guide. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker had Yoda. In the Hunger Games, Katniss had Haymitch. Even Daniel-san from the Karate Kid had Mr Miyagi! My goal for you is to make this book the most exciting and fun experience you’ve ever had in setting up a new business. I’m going to show you how to go from brainstorming an idea right through to launching your very own business. Let’s go and have some fun.
Dr. John P. Hayes
Jan 6, 2016 | 1st pages, Business, Non Fiction
Seven Dirty Little Secrets of Franchising
At any given moment, thousands of people across the world are thinking about buying a franchise business. Impressed by a business idea, or encouraged by a family member or friend, or possibly persuaded by a franchise broker, or dazzled by a franchise expo, a sizable percentage of these folks will buy a franchise opportunity with the hopes of achieving financial success, if not financial independence.
Good for them, except for those who will lose their money and may, in fact, ruin their lives financially and emotionally. Sadly, not all franchise investments turn out the way everyone involved had hoped at the time of signing the franchise agreement. Too many franchise investments go bottom up. It doesn’t need to end that way. Most times, in fact, it doesn’t end that way. Even if the franchise investors don’t become financially independent, or wildly wealthy, they achieve some degree of success, freeing themselves from jobs they hated, and building for themselves assets that they can one day sell.
So why do some franchise investments fail? Everyone involved in the process – the franchisor, the franchise advisors, the franchisor’s sales representatives – want the best for the new franchisee, but sometimes that’s just not enough. It’s not enough for everyone to be forthcoming, or for everyone to do proper due diligence, or for everyone to admit that certain circumstances may not be exactly as they need to be, or as they appear, for the franchisee to succeed.
That said, I don’t want you to reconsider your desire to buy a franchise, or your decision to buy one if you’ve already made it. Franchising is fabulously successful, and for most people, franchising is the only way they can succeed as business owners and operators. However, before you invest your money, which may indeed represent your life’s savings, you need to grasp the fact that all franchise investments do not succeed, but more of them could succeed if only the investor was better informed prior to the purchase.
And just to be sure that my position is clear, I believe most franchisors are honest; they want their franchisees to succeed, and succeed beyond everyone’s imagination. Think about what that success does for the franchisor’s ability to sell more franchises and build brand name value!
But at the same time, many franchisors, depending on the circumstances (e.g. how badly they need to sell a franchise), will intentionally withhold information that they are not legally required to divulge simply because they want to grow their network of franchisees. Of course, there are fraudulent franchisors who withhold information knowing full well that it will likely result in failure for their franchisees. In other cases, franchisors unintentionally withhold information that could make a difference to a franchisee’s performance as a business owner and operator.
What to do? It’s fairly simple. Before you buy a franchise, do your homework! Do the due diligence that’s required. It’s required of you! It’s not the franchisor’s responsibility to look out for your best interests. Even if a franchisor wanted to look out for your best interests, it’s not possible, because the franchisor will never know enough about you, and can’t know for certain how you’re going to perform as a franchisee until you become a franchisee. This is not about the franchisor!
American franchisors in particular are under intense scrutiny by regulators. They have been for years. They are required to comply with the most onerous franchise laws in any nation. They are required to disclose a couple dozen points of information about themselves and their businesses to help prospective franchisees make an informed investment decision.
Robert L Bloch
Dec 18, 2015 | 1st pages, Business
Over a decade ago, I had the good fortune to meet Warren Buffett when he became a major shareholder in H&R Block, the tax preparation company my father, Henry Bloch, co-founded in 1955.
Warren and my father have much in common. Both entrepreneurs were born before World War II in the Mid-West and came from middle class families. They are extremely down-to-earth and have loads of good common sense and honesty. Without a doubt, both enjoy “the process more than the proceeds” of business and investing.
Buffett's investment principles are “simple, old, and few.” Much like my father, most of Warren’s success is due to his personality, character and willingness to learn from and teach others. Of his many outstanding qualities, the role as teacher is the one Warren states for which he would most like to be remembered.
Recently I have made Warren my teacher and mentor by reading and re-reading his quotes until it has become a part of me. As the “Oracle of Omaha” said, “It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.” As investors, we should all strive to drift toward Warren's direction.
There have been dozens of books published that have attempted to capture the philosophy and personality of Warren Buffett; but words cannot really describe this amazing man…except maybe his own words. Buffett does Buffett better than anyone. Since Warren has never written an autobiography, the quotes in this book are the most direct and unfiltered source we have.
After experiencing several bear markets over his lifetime, Warren has learned to stay the course and stick to his investing principles, when other investors were selling or rethinking their strategies. Therefore a proven discipline is an essential element in becoming a successful investor. This book has helped me become a more disciplined investor.
I am confident it will not only help you become more disciplined but also a more RATIONAL, OPTIMISTIC and LONG-TERM investor. The ultimate act of generosity is Warren Buffett sharing his genius with the individual investor!
Laurence Ainsworth
Dec 17, 2015 | 1st pages, Business, Non Fiction
If you search the term “business vision statement” you get about 44 million results. Despite this, the term “business vision” is not well understood. I know many people struggle to identify their vision. It happens in all walks of life and most notably George Bush Senior, former president of the USA, is identified with his problem with the “vision thing”.
Bush’s lack of “the vision thing” as president, was seen as a key factor in his defeat in the 1992 presidential race and even today, the vision quote is still commonly cited in biographies of Bush.
The official U.S. Senate website says:
“Bush…suffered from his lack, of what he called ‘the vision thing’, a clarity of ideas and principles that could shape public opinion and influence Congress. ‘He does not say why he wants to be there,’ complained columnist George Will, ‘so the public does not know why it should care if he gets his way.’ ”
“The vision thing” has gone on to become a shorthand figure of speech. It is now used as a description “for any politician’s failure to incorporate a greater vision in a campaign, and has often been applied in the media to other politicians or public figures.”
This could easily be applied to business owners thus: “for any business owner’s failure to incorporate a greater vision into his reason for doing business” because to paraphrase George Will on George Bush “if he does not say why he wants to go there, why should his employees or customers care if he gets his way.’ ”
The problem with vision is that it is such an abstract concept to grasp and certainly when I first confronted it I had no idea how I could go from the blank screen in my head to something that answered the hardest question you could ask. Why?
It's always interesting to see people’s responses to the “Why” question, many look at you and you can just see that they are thinking “what’s he on about” or “how is this relevant to my business success?” When they do answer, too often the response is about customer service and good value. Valuable those these things may be, they do not constitute a vision.
Laura Maya
Nov 23, 2015 | 1st pages, Business, Featured, Non Fiction
Introduction
Will you believe if someone told you that most of what we have learned in school about Money is wrong.
Most people often will make this mistake of thinking that in order to grow rich you need to head off to university and get a degree
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the wealthiest people in the world have no formal education. With that said, we give respect to Napoleon Hill’s famous quotes of which was mentioned :
“Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.”
Life is your education. On your road to riches, you might stumble and fall not once but many times and you need to stand up, dust yourself off, and try again taking away the lesson from your past failure. The education you need to grow rich is learning how others have become rich in the past. Discovering how they have achieved wealth.
Even with present updated educational system around the world, there are still many people who do not know how to save or invest and most people are over leveraged on their credit cards. In fact according to statistics, the average household credit card debt stands at $15, 705 in the US in 2015, while globally millions seek the help of credit counsellor each year, in the US itself, statistic shows roughly 2.0 to 2.5 million Americans are having similar financial issues
Practically all of these people went through the educational system yet they are still financially in trouble and in debt because they were never truly taught about the process of getting Rich in school. While many may have learnt many valuable things in college, there are some crucial subjects for your success both in business and in life, that were never taught, and these are skills, attitudes and habits which can help one to excel at what you do.
They don’t teach you how to become rich in school … Truer words were never spoken and while you might have heard about saving on your tax, investment options and borrowing to make money, assuming you were fortunate enough to take some basic business classes, these methods won’t generally make you rich on their own. If it were as simple as this, there would be a lot more wealthy people on the planet so you would be correct in thinking that there are some missing factors.
In our new world economy, the biggest factor in your success will not be based on academic learning but whether you develop Life influenced success skills
These missing factors are the ones you will not be taught in school but the good news is, you can still learn about them. It is as simple – look at the wealthy, observe how they think about money, and look at how they manage it. How the wealthy think about money is the key to unlocking the mystery as to how you too can become wealthy.
There are many differences between how the wealthy and regular working class Joes think about money and we will be looking at these differences in detail so that you can consider changing your thinking to encompass a making money mindset.
If we look at the past 50 years, large organizations dominated the path of social mobility and employment from early school age to retirement. Almost every bit of society will guided with assumptions which over time, become traditional and were almost taken for granted. The most common being quoted: – “If you wanted to be successful and or be popular, You studied hard in school, got into a good college, progress to have an entry level job of a multinational corporation, or a government bureau, rose through the ranks of middle management. You’ll get There!
But with present timeline, the concept and this traditional assumption about getting an entry level job and rising through the ranks is also disappearing as fifty years later from then, the society has progressed into another era, call the World wide web – Internet Era.
Now Job security is dead, One is not limited to just get fixed with one job, but has options for many different jobs, employers and even careers in life, now this brings downs a school’s academic credential, as it becomes less relevant but the real world which changes almost every hour with new technology almost evolving at a few fast pace seeks real world results and impacts that one can create over time becomes more and more upfront with relevance.
With Internet mobility integrated with smartphones, the world has now even more new opportunities for flexible Self created, independent careers, this trend has been boosted along with the gathering of a new massive group of young savvies, who are hungry, highly educated young men and women in India, China, eastern Europe, Asian pacific rim and almost every countries, all eager to do the work that basic entry level organization at fraction of the cost of what was formerly offer in the industry.
Dr. Jacent Mpalyenkana, Ph.D. MBA
Nov 12, 2015 | 1st pages, Business, Non Fiction
I’m certain that you know the saying: “The proof is in the pudding.” Well, the truthfulness of the content in this book is in the doing. No matter what you think the words mean, until you have tested the ideas included in here, you will not truly know how they work. This book is designed as a self-paced learning program. I recommend that you only go as far as the exercise or activity in front of you and that you do that all the way through to the end of the book. From that point on, the suggestions in the book will be yours to use as you like for as long as you like.
Although this book is not a comprehensive treatment of the communication domain, I share a lot of useful communication tips and techniques that businesses can harness to achieve sales success. In the book, I use a lot of personal stories to emphasize points. I’ve also done my best to provide examples to clarify my meaning on key ideas. You will find a lot of examples used throughout the book. However, the most important point is that you do the activity or exercise included after every key idea – which is how you will understand what it means to communicate your way to success and how you will learn why persuasion is the most powerful art of all.
I have written this book after many years of research and after failing miserably in my career. After studying and acquiring a number of degrees, I now realize that success in life and especially in business isn’t only founded on education. It is also based on the ability to communicate, influence, and persuade others.
In this book, I share sales success guidelines based on influential psychology and the art of persuasion, which when followed, are guaranteed to earn your business more sales, better relationships, and overall business success. It is advisable that you don’t rush through reading this book but rather focus on harnessing the techniques in your business framework as you read along. And of course, you will find that some of the guidelines are applicable to your business and others are not. But either way, please take the time to analyze what could work for you and your business.
