Are You On The Right Track With Your Business

Hi everyone. I hope that you all are enjoying your summer so far. The nice weather sometimes, make it hard to work, but we must keep pushing on. I was in my home office the other day looking at my wall of goals, when I realized that I was slightly off track with my business and the goals that I had set for the business. I have a sheet on my wall called "What My Life Looks Like" This sheet talks about my future life in the present. I try to remember to read it every day, but sometimes I get caught up and forget. Any way I was reading it and I realized that it was slightly off. I had to rewrite it because my business had changed somewhat which caused the my goals to change. So my question to you is "Is Your Business On The Right Track?" If you are not sure if it is here are few things that you should. 1. Make sure you have a mission statement. 2. Make sure that you write down your goals. 3. Write out your "What My Life Looks Like" statement. If the things that you write in these three statements does not match, then your business is not on track. If your business is not on track it will be very hard to make that business become successful, because you are not clear about what you are supposed to be doing with the business. Just remember in order to be successful in any business, you must be focused and if you don't have clarity, you will not be able to focus on what is important to your business. Until next time continue to enjoy the summer. Sisterly Yours, Audrey

Don't Start Another Business To Fund Your Business

Don’t Start Another Business To Fund Your Business
By Audrey Bell-Kearney © 2006

I often talk to women who want to start a business, but they just don’t have enough money, so they decide to start another project on the side to earn enough money to kick-start the business that they really want to do. What I don’t think a lot of them realize is that whatever project they decide to start is just like starting another business. You still have to plan and market this project. So why you’re starting something else to earn money for your main business, you are really taking time and energy away from you main focus. The only way that you are going to take your business where you want it to go is to stay focused. Your business has to be your main focus. You should not start any side projects until your business is where you want it to be. Also, if your goal is to build a brand, then everything that you do should be geared toward your business. You have to think outside of the box. You have to be creative. I was in the same boat. I really wanted to do my business, but the money was not there. So I decided to start something on the side to earn the money, and what I found is that even though the money is there to be made, I had no passion for the side project therefore, I did not focus at all on it nor did I earn the money I needed for the business that I really wanted to start.

My suggestion to anyone starting a business, but are short on money is to find a silent partner that will give you a small start-up loan. Enough to get business cards, register your business, get your website up and running and to send out press releases for electronic newswire. These are small steps, but big things happen with small steps. You may feel like this is nothing and you are not making any progress, but you really are. Let me just tell you some of the things I did to start my magazine with no money.

I registered the business as a LLC $125
I built the Sister INC. Website $8.95
I got 500 business cards made $15.00
I ordered 500 postcards $60.00

To make some side money to help me get started, instead of starting a new venture, I created products surrounding my core business. My goal is to build a brand, so here are some of the things I did.
I made t-shirts to sell at Spring festivals where I bought a table for about $20-$30
I got three drawings done so that I could create greeting cards and t-shirts
I am also going to put those same drawings on collector’s plates.

Everything that I develop to sell has my company name on it. This way I am earning extra money and building a brand at the same time. Your focus has to be clear and you have to be creative. You will see your business start to take off from the little things that you do.

Audrey Bell-Kearney is the successful author of The Sister INC. Blueprint To Starting & Running A Successful Business, with 2 other books in The Sister INC. Blueprint series. She is also the Publisher of Sister INC. Magazine. Audrey is a speaker and home-business coach. To contact Audrey visit www.SisterINC.com or email her at Audrey@SisterINC.com

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Sister INC. mission is to empower Black women by helping them to become business owners, financial literate and educated. We will work to create unity among Black women so that we can create support networks across America and Africa.
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