Business Ideas

How is your business doing? This is fair question to ask yourself on a regular basis. For instance, if business is slow, you can take the time to catch up a favorite business book or watch a business video.

Tough Times and Your Business

Times are tough. There are massive weekly layoffs, budget cuts, and high living costs. As a business owner, you may be frustrated and tired of marketing for new business, looking for payment for services performed, and researching new ways to add/improve your products and services. However, each of these activities is needed to stay current and maintain your competitive business edge.

If you do find yourself looking for a part-time job to stabilize your business income, I have written a general guideline for interview outfits at the following address: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/35478_tips-for-choosing-an-interview-outfit

Business (Are You Doing Too Much?)

As a business owner, you are responsible for typical tasks like bookkeeping, marketing, researching products/service, and dealing with clients/customers/vendors. To add to this, a chronic health problem can make these tasks harder. You must learn to pace yourself to maintain your business and allow for possible growth.

A for Automation-As a blogger, you can devote an evening per week to prepare, produce, and proofread your posts then determine future post dates. For example, use Sunday/Monday as a guide then post Tuesdays and Thursdays.

D for Delegation-If you do not have the funds for a full-time employee (Not hard to imagine) maybe you can contact your local college for an intern who will accept college credit instead of pay. Reminder, he/she is will still need general instruction but you may gain 10-15 hours each week.

T for Technology: Use a computerized calendar so weekly/monthly changes can be made automatically. Reminder to print a copy (power outages/computer mishaps)

It takes time to develop a system based on your family/lifestyle/business model. Each month I will post a few suggestions.

Business (Start Ups)

Deciding on a business can be both exciting and scary. You must have an independent nature, a risk-taker, motivated, and flexible. Some of us view a business as an alternative to constant traffic, crazy workloads, unforgiving bosses, and unsatisfactory pay. Remember, it does take hard work and determination particularly if you decide to be a full-time business owner. However, you must take the time to determine the best business based on your education, skills, abilities, desires, and lifestyle.

For instance, a 30-year-old woman with no spouse or children with ten years experience as a travel agent will find it easier to switch to a travel writer position whose primary coverage areas include monthly trips to the Caribbean. On the other hand, a 45-year-old single woman with 3 small children has to consider who will watch her babies if she travels. Yes it does take a strong person to become a business owner but you can review your options to determine the best option for you.

The following may be some resources/guides for your use (Remember, I can not guarantee you will find the perfect business but this information may help):

http://www.sba.gov/

http://www.hbwm.com/

http://www.wahm.com/

Business (Women Social Networking)

Take a peak at the folllowing websites: http://www.cafemom.com/, http://www.sisterwoman.com/ and http://www.thewahmspot.com/ What do they have in common? Each provides the opportunity to network with other women. Women tend to feel guilty when we network personally or professionally because it feels like we are forgotting our families/responsibilites.

However, it is critical for our emotional development to have our own network of friends. In the upcoming weeks, I will present online social networks for women based on the ease to join (I do not believe in 10+ individuals approving an application (its not a job), the diversity of the women (Its important to gain insights from different women), and cost (it should be free/low cost unless it can provide extraordinary networking benefits including business coaching, radio, or television options).