Monica Behura – Dutch Uncles

How to Take Care of Your Money?

Monica Behura — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 06:05:04 +0000

Practicing good financial health is as pertinent as maintaining great physical fitness. Developing habits that help an entrepreneur to take care of his own personal wealth will aid him to reach his financial goals and teaches how to save money. For example, investing money in conventional methods such as Fixed Deposits, buying government bonds, mutual funds, buying shares of profitable stable companies, etc. Creating a budget, following a debt management plan, having a fool proof retirement plan are one of the several ways to practice financial well-being.

Following are the ways in which an entrepreneur can keep up with his financial targets:

Hire a professional advisor

To increase your wealth, hire a professional financial planner that will help you make intelligent investment decisions. A financial planner makes you aware of the risks involved in a particular investment, the profitable returns on it. He/she draws a futuristic plan for both long-and short-term investments.

Clear the debt

Debt elimination plans are imperative to reach financial goals. It is a burden that can be handled effectively with thorough planning. For example, clear high interest debts in a short term than the small debts. Systematic planning is important to clear off debt which can act as a hurdle to bigger investment plans. An entrepreneur should get its debt under control, otherwise he will continue paying interests on the debt. So, reducing one’s debts should be a part of one’s financial plan.

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Developing habits that help an entrepreneur to take care of his own personal wealth will aid him to reach his financial goals and teaches how to save money.

Budgeting right

The beginning to reaching financial goals is setting realistic budgets. Allocate percentage of your income, toward expenditures, and other financial priorities. At least 30% of your money every month should be saved after all the necessary expenses and paying interest debts. Similarly, 30% of the annual income should go into saving investments and retirement planning. Keeping track of income and expenses, daily, monthly, quarterly, half yearly and annually helps the budgeting flow in the direction that’s planned to achieve the financial goal. Have a personal budget set for yourself, to account for expenses, separate personal from business.

Invest in your future – Make retirement plan

Businesses can fall out any time especially the booming start-ups, therefore, an entrepreneur should take calculated risks in his investments- he/she can invest in retirement plans that yield good returns up to the point of 50% when it matures after ten, twenty or thirty years or more. One should invest in at least 2 to 3 such plans varying in the period and number of investments. For example, Rs 30 lakh invested for 10 years, Rs 40 lakh invested for 15 or 20 years, so on and so forth.

Dissect your spending habits

The pandemic has taught us to be frugal, so no point spending on luxury rather spending on items that will yield great benefits monetarily in the future like investing in art. Introspection on spending habits is not a great trait of a successful entrepreneur. Buy nothing on credit to pile on debt, even if you can pay it without any hassle. Future could be uncertain.

Build a contingency fund

A sound emergency fund should cover 6-12 months of personal expenses as well as cover business expenses to sail through bad times when paying debts. Fixed Deposits that yield 9.5 % interest rates could be detrimental at this point, investments in bonds, will help. But investments in mutual funds that are subject to market risk might or might help with a great amount. Similarly, shares that are subject to ups and downs of the stock exchange will help sail through, but the amount will depend on the stock market strength or vulnerability.

Insurance is a must

Health, and term life insurance is something one should take when one is young, so when one gets older and the hospital costs skyrockets, then the insurance will cover the expense. Purchasing the best health insurance is a must. It should cover your family as well. Building a business without insurance is fine but going ahead as you take the ladder upward towards success, you should have sound health insurance. If your family is dependent on you and your business to provide for them, one should have a reliable life insurance plan, this will ensure they are covered and are safe from taking any burden of the business financial loss. Life insurance is important because your net worth is related to your business. Long term disability plan should also be in place in case of any disability that might happen in the unforeseen future.

Takeaway home

It isn’t a bad idea to take some business funds home when the business is in a growth phase. Use that fund to bolster your savings for personal goals. Because your worth is not the same as the company’s valuations. So, count your money when it is at your table. An entrepreneur should only pay himself out of profits not revenue. Don’t cut a big slice of profit as a pay check or bonus, rather invest that money for it to grow.

A line of credit

For an entrepreneur a line of credit is beneficial because it allows cash to be readily available, without tapping into your personal wealth. A line of credit is like a credit card, because once you pay back, the fund replenishes. This gives you freedom to spend money your way without any hurdles. A line of credit is beneficial as it is in conjunction with other financial options available to business owners.

Replenish, recharge

Having a solid business and personal financial plan in place will let you take a break from the busy life. Going for vacations with friends, family and the like will let you refresh your mind, body and soul. Maintaining personal wellbeing is important to run a successful business.

Invest as per risk tolerance

Once your retirement investment is on its way, along with the contingency fund in place, an entrepreneur should invest in a diversified portfolio of assets that is appropriate as per the time horizon and risk involved. Depending on your investment, personal financial goals, one should invest in stocks, mutual funds, gold, real estate that one can withdraw once the price inflates and re-invest in another portfolio for maximum personal finance. But one must be updated on the price fluctuations.

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An entrepreneur should only pay himself out of profits not revenue. Don’t cut a big slice of profit as a pay check or bonus, rather invest that money for it to grow.

Will making

Making a will before tax implications could leave the entrepreneur’s legal heirs and beneficiaries exposed to tax liabilities that could leave them next to nothing from the total value of assets. So, a solid functional estate planning needs to be done.

Tax benefits

One has to separate personal and business finances for greater tax benefits, and the ability to take advantage of tax deductions is a huge plus for entrepreneurs. Keeping accurate records of personal and business expenses will assist in the event of tax audit, keeping a check will ward off the tax guys.

Fintech, a tool to manage money

Fintech today is transforming the financial management capabilities of entrepreneurs and businesses. There are various personal finance tools and services that are constantly evolving that help manage money better. This trend has been beneficial for businesses, particularly smaller enterprises, making finance automation, data analysis, and flexible financing options within reach.

Manage your personal credit score

An entrepreneur needs to make sure that his personal credit is solid. Paying bills on time, your credit score should be excellent. The percentage of one’s available credit limits that he is borrowing at any given time during the month is the credit utilisation ratio that he needs to pay attention to. If you keep this ratio below 30%, this will help to achieve a better credit score and easier time getting personal loan approved.

Protect personal assets from creditors

Personal assets can be at risk if an entrepreneur is sued for personal wrong doing or as a result of a personal guarantee. However, there are ways to protect personal assets from these types of claims. One can consult with an estate planner or a bankruptcy attorney to prepare a structure to further shield assets from liability of business obligations.

In-sync with trends

An entrepreneur should ensure that all aspects of the plans are regularly reviewed and kept up to date with any regulatory changes that could occur anytime.

Cost effectiveness

Entrepreneurs should use cost benefit analysis before making final decisions when it comes to their personal finance. One should avoid paying more than the expected returns.

Increasing wealth

An entrepreneur’s mind should always keep ticking as to how to maximize personal investment returns. Knowing one’s priority, as to whether to invest the profits or revenue earned from business on a new bond, real estate, or in a company or to buy an expensive car. Maximizing income for the next few years before indulging in luxury should be made clear.

Personal money goals

Having a written financial goal for the targeted month or year-either short or long term to improve personal wealth by a certain amount or percentage gives a direction to your actions. Scattering your wealth in different baskets helps to grow your money as in stocks, real estate, bonds, mutual funds, fixed deposits etc.

Budget spending and plan savings

Budgeting one’s spending and saving is a must. Experts say when you are mindful of both your habits, tracking it will help contribute to wealth growth.

Disseminate risks

With this strategy, entrepreneurs are earning money through multiple businesses and reaping interest incomes through various investments, and with capital gains. In this way, entrepreneurs are diversifying and lowering their personal financial risk. In growing one’s wealth, the entrepreneur needs to consider his objectives, investment timelines, his tolerance to risks involved, in short, choose the most suitable financial plans.

However, note that holding money in stationary form will yield no benefits, investing in mutual funds, fixed deposits, real estate, startups will get interest income, profit percentage.

Protecting personal wealth

Implementing safeguards around wealth that is invested becomes imperative, therefore placing it under an insurance policy that is designed to protect one’s finances – namely, health, life, trauma, and income protection insurance in case of any adverse circumstances

Adopting a frugal lifestyle

Being thrifty is a virtue. Minimizing one’s needs so that he can maximize the amount into investments. Developing a frugal lifestyle is an art one can develop with long term planning, budgeting expenses, finding ways to reduce unnecessary expenses.

Expenses below income

Living below your means is the way one can surplus on savings and cut down on unnecessary expenses. This will allow one to repay debt, save for rainy days, add to the emergency fund or make investment on a lucrative deal.

The post How to Take Care of Your Money? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Entrepreneurship Lessons from Coco Chanel: One of The Influential Name of the 20th Century

Monica Behura — Sat, 01 May 2021 03:35:05 +0000

Coco Chanel, the fashion legend, whose name resonates in the world of fashion even today after nearly a century of the brand’s existence has left an indelible mark in the global fashion business. Looking back at Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel’s career, she rose from being a seamstress to a French fashion designer and a successful businesswoman. Gabriele’s hobby of designing hats evolved into a commercial enterprise in the early 1900’s. She became a licensed milliner (a person who designs, makes, and sells women’s hats) in 1910 and opened a boutique in Paris named Chanel Modes. Chanel’s millinery creations flourished as famous personalities like actresses, models started wearing her hats and popularized it.

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Chanel taught us diversification is not only the best way to expand your product range, it ensures financial stability

Chanel’s journey to becoming a fashion ‘icon’

From accessories to couture, Chanel in 1913, soon launched her clothing line – deluxe casual clothing suitable for leisure and sport for women rep. She ventured on a completely different league, creating a market where no one treaded before and replacing the “corseted silhouette”. Her boutique’s address was a prime fashion high street of Paris that previously housed an established clothing business. She sold hats, sweaters, jackets, and mariniere, the sailor’s blouse. She modelled her clothes on her sister and aunt who paraded through the town and on its boardwalks, advertising the Chanel creations.
The Chanel couture became a profitable business enterprise, by 1935 employing 4000 people. She targeted the rich and wealthy as her products went from street wear to high fashion. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel expanded her creative influence beyond couture clothing, realizing her design aesthetic in jewellery, handbags and perfumes. Her signature scent Chanel No.5, is an iconic product endorsed and loved by A-list celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Charlize Theron. Chanel designed her famed interlocked- CC monogram, which has been in use since the 1920s.
Chanel’s concept of the little black dress (LBD), is cited as a great contribution in the fashion lexicon, a style worn to this day.

Coco Chanel became a prominent designer around the world as her brand mirrored the image of the new age women: confident, independent, provocative and rebellious. She started selling clothes made from cheap jersey material for exorbitant prices and targeted women with money as her audience. Since she was offering something new, and aspirational they were willing to pay a premium price. Her brand created an aura that her customers wanted for themselves. The reason she became an iconic designer of her time.

Facing the Competition

Post World War I, Chanel was the undisputed queen of Parisian fashion. She captured a major share of the market with almost no competitor for over two decades. For the first time in 15 years she faced a real competitor by the name of Elsa Schiaparelli and later Christian Dior and Cristobal Balenciaga among many others. Schiaparelli’s style statement in couture was innovative and surreal, won critical acclaim and generated enthusiasm in the fashion world. But Chanel’s fashion stayed intact – functional, simple and modern.
Chanel collaborated with theatre, ballets and movies, and created designs for artists which was mocked by critics. Chanel’s place on the throne of haute couture was threatened by her contemporaries. In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Chanel closed her shops, as a result of which 4000 female employees lost their jobs.

The Battle over Chanel No. 5

There was a legal fight to take control of Parfums Chanel – Chanel No. 5 between French businessman Pierre Wertheimer and Chanel. Finally, Wertheimer and Chanel came to a mutual agreement on renegotiating the original contract wherein her future share would be two percent of all Chanel sales worldwide. Wertheimer also agreed to pay all of Chanel’s living expenses for the rest of her life. In 1947, Chanel received wartime profits to the tune of $5 million from the sale of Chanel No.5. Her earnings were projected at $25 million a year, making her at the time one of the richest women in the world.
Gabrielle Coco Chanel had an incredible business sense and the way she built her business is still applicable to young entrepreneurs starting up today. She was a shrewd businesswoman and very hardworking. She learned all the business tricks first hand from scratch.

Lessons Entrepreneurs can learn from Coco Chanel

Find the market gap and fill it

In her shop in Deauville, she offered luxury clothing for leisure and sport. She created her own unisex, easy going style and turned into contemporary clothes for women. Swimsuits for women that were non-existent at the time, Chanel invented it and created a huge demand in women. This was the gap she found and fulfilled it. Chanel had a keen eye towards seeing such opportunities and providing for it. She became a style icon that many emulated, be it her hair cut, or her dressing style. She became more visible in the media, party circuit to flaunt her look to lure and widen the customer base. She even started giving away her clothes for free to induce a sense of desire in people.
Therefore, one needs to find a niche in the existing market and fill it with your strength. Building mysticism and curiosity around the brand is pertinent to draw an audience.
Chanel was creating a demand for something that was new, made from inferior material but she still managed to create a want. The lesson here was build demand and attraction around what you sell. Influencer marketing and blogger outreach in today’s social media generation.

Innovation needs a vision

Chanel gave women of her times the chance to see the other side of clothes and fashion. At a time when corset and tight dresses were norm of the day, Chanel made people realise there was a different way of dressing. Women fell in love with her ideas, brand. Innovation works when you make people see the world in a different way.

Name is everything

When people see the Chanel brand, they think of the women behind the brand, the reason it happens is because Coco Chanel put in so much effort into creating her brand, she became a popular personality hobnobbing with the upper echelons of the society. She positioned her brand into a luxury one targeting the ultra-rich people.
The lesson is, focus on why your product stands out. Your name is what you make of yourself so put in all efforts into making one.

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One needs to find a niche in the existing market and fill it with your strength

Power in diversifying and perfect integration

Chanel taught us diversification is not only the best way to expand your product range, it ensures financial stability. If one of the multiple things you are working on falls through you will always have a backup.
She ventured into perfume making, she got herself involved at every step of the making of the iconic perfume which was named Chanel No.5. From the choice of fragrance to the shape of the bottle. From its making to designing of the bottle to naming it, from marketing to its selling she was deeply involved in the entire process ensuring the integrity of the brand. Chanel partnered with a French businessman who was expert in the field of making perfumes. Therefore, even today after 100 years, Chanel No.5 is the most selling perfume in the world. According to statistics, it sells one bottle every 30 seconds.
Diversification doesn’t necessarily mean success at every product line, but as long as you take quality control the chances of success gets higher. Unlike many designers of today who dilute their brands either by not getting involved into the last detail or by licensing to people who don’t understand the essence of the brand.

You can rise from the Fall

Coco Chanel reigned at the top for two decades, then she remained in a self-imposed exile for 14 years. At 70, she made a comeback but by that time she was out of the business and had to start all over. Other fashion houses had gained popularity in France, so she was panned out by critics for getting her same old style. Chanel then decided to target the American market, as the rich women in America resonated her style profile that was- athletic, easy, practical. Her new line created a huge sensation and she re-established herself within a year of her arrival. Known personalities like Jacqueline Kennedy wore her trademark simple and classic suits, Chanel was reclaimed and came back strong.
The lesson here is Ideas can change lives. Know your target audience, an intensive market research is what sets a powerful brand apart from the rest.

Creative Advertising

Chanel No.5 was, “A very improper perfume for nicely brought-up ladies.” This tagline goes with the rebelliousness of the brand. Invest time and money into developing a great advertising- a good catchline for your brand that goes with the essence of the brand.

Do the unexpected that wows all

Chanel took the color black- a color of mourning and turned it into a glamourous evening dress. What can you do that is unexpected? How can you take existing resources and use them in a different way to provide a product or service that no one has thought before? Invest time in thinking how you can flip the table.

The power of a good story

Gabriele Chanel’s personal story draws sympathy and inspires many. Her background of living in an orphanage and being abandoned by her father is what people feel sorry for and at the same time take inspiration from. So invest in your story as the founder of your company and the company story that you communicate to the market. A compelling story that one wants to be associated with.

Long term plan

Chanel No. 5 perfume remains the major source of revenue for the company. Chanel was farsighted. She knew this product would yield massive profits in the longer term. Chanel had the deal renegotiated multiple times but still ended up earning 10% of the profits, 70% goes to Wertheimers whose factory produces the perfumes, they continue to control the perfume company today. The rest 20% of profit is shared by department store owner, Theophile Badar. The lesson here is no matter how great the equity seems at the start of a business, only make a deal you can live with long term.

Take Risks

Chanel initially started out selling women’s hats in her high street Paris store. She then ventured into clothing, which soon became very popular with women. She never tried to fit in on the old-fashioned corseted clothing that was the trend at that time. She took risk by introducing something that was never seen before. She always ventured territories nobody treaded before- swimsuits, signature perfumes. She took the risk by entering these segments without testing the market and succeeded.

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Entrepreneurship Lessons from the Business Magnate Elon Musk

Monica Behura — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 03:35:03 +0000

Elon Musk, one of the richest men on the planet, needs no introduction in the entrepreneurial world. The billionaire was recently in news for Tesla’s purchase of the controversial cryptocurrency- Bitcoin worth $1.5 billion will give Tesla liquidity in the cryptocurrency once it starts accepting it as a payment mode for its cars. He created a flutter on twitter on the Bitcoin shopping, raising Tesla’s stock price as well as the cryptocurrency’s market price and demand. Musk has taken a risk in investing on the Bitcoin that has so far not found acceptance in many markets, governments and companies.

Musk never fails to draw attention of the regulators, investors, all stakeholders and the media alike with his tweets that often land him in the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) office. Coming back to Musk’s entrepreneurial skills, he is a visionary, a chief executive officer extraordinaire, of iconic cult brands like Tesla and PayPal. Musk has revolutionized space travel, online payments and electric cars. With a futuristic mindset, he is aiming to develop supersonic electric airplanes as a part of his dream to travel to Mars. Musk is the man behind SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Hyperloop, and SolarCity.

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Elon Musk co-founded, funded and ideated SolarCity which became the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States.

Elon Musk: The Entrepreneurial Journey

Elon Reeve Musk, is a South African born American business magnate, industrial designer and engineer. He started his entrepreneurial journey at a young age of 24. He gave up studying in Stanford University after receiving his dual bachelor’s degree in Economics and Physics from University of California. This bright young mind pursued his business career by co-founding a web software company Zip2 in 1995, four years later it was acquired by Compaq for $307 million. Musk co-founded Paypal in 1999 which was subsequently bought by eBay, three years later in 2002 for $1.5 billion. This young billionaire and a serial entrepreneur had nothing to look back. He looked way forward into the future. This young visionary went on to form SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is the CEO, CTO and lead designer.
Musk in his heydays as a dreamer was fascinated by the Silicon Valley, the success stories and innovations. He visualized that the future lies beyond the internet, artificial intelligence, space exploration, renewable energy and reprogramming of human genetic code.

In 2004, he joined as Chairman of Tesla Motors, an electric car manufacturer and led a series of funding of the newly formed company. In 2008, Musk took the leadership mantle up his sleeves following a financial crisis engulfing the company ousting its founder Martin Eberhard. Being the product architect, Musk produced the world’s first all-electric car using lithium-ion battery cells. Musk took Tesla public in its Initial Public Offering (IPO) making it a valuable company.
Musk co-founded, funded and ideated SolarCity with his cousins in 2006. By 2013, it became the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. Three years later in 2016, SolarCity was acquired by Tesla for $2 billion following liquidity issues with the company. But not without Musk facing multiple lawsuits by the Tesla’s shareholders who claimed being kept in the dark about SolarCity’s liquidity crunch.

The same year, the serial entrepreneur co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup that would create devices that will integrate human brain with Artificial Intelligence (AI), to improve memory and invent devices that could cure paralysis, deafness, blindness and other disabilities. Neuroscientists have however rubbished such claims describing it as ‘highly speculative’.
Musk however is unperturbed by criticism as he continues to invest in companies built to help humanity upgrade lives through technology. The year 2016 seems to be the busy year for the tech billionaire as he continued his quest for founding companies- The Boring Company, Hyperloop – a vactrain, a high speed transportation system incorporating reduced-pressure tubes to move pressurized capsules on an air cushion making driving cheaper at half the time.

Ten Takeaways from the Life of Elon Musk

To innovate use “first principle thinking”

The tech billionaire’s ability to use “first principles thinking” to solve problems simply means stripping things down to their fundamental principles or core elements and reasoning up from those principles to create something new. For instance, expensive batteries are a limiting factor to electric car companies like Tesla Motors. However, using first principles thinking, Musk was able to find an innovative solution to this problem- he stripped the battery down to its material costs- the cobalt, nickel, aluminium, lithium) and reasoned up from there to create “the best and cheapest battery cell.”

Musk claims to have left his competition behind on two of the most important factors for batteries- cost and energy. He has since ‘reasoned up’ by building a Gigafactory that will produce batteries to power over 1 million electric cars per year at full capacity. He aims to capitalize on economies of scale to further reduce battery prices to as low as $100 per kilowatt hour by 2020, beating industry projections by five years.

Musk has used the first principles thinking in every industry- e cash, energy services, electric cars and rocket technology; that is why he has been able to provide innovative solutions to all these industries.

How to apply the first principle thinking in your business?

The first step to applying first principle thinking is identifying your business’s core value proposition, you need to clearly outline yours. Once its done, find a way of reasoning up from that principle to provide value to your customers in a unique way. Using this principle leads to unique business ideas that makes your business innovative and competitive.

Make problem solving an upmost task

Musk is trying to make the world a better place to live in. Environmental problems are being sorted by him through innovations. He is known to solve problems that are affecting the present and future of humanity. Tesla Motors for instance, solves the problem of limited fossil fuel supplies. Musk capitalized on humanity’s need to have more sustainable and less fuel intensive transportation. He fulfilled this demand of the market as opposed to simply focussing on profit. He found an untapped business opportunity. He believed if you solve a problem first earnings and profitability will follow.

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Persistence is important, you should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

-Elon Musk

Perseverance is key

Musk’s entrepreneurial journey hasn’t been a bed of roses, he has had to overcome numerous obstacles to get to the top. He was demoted to chief

Technical officer (CTO) from CEO by investors at Zip2, the first company he started. He was again thrown out by the CEO of PayPal. Musk put his entire life’s savings to start Tesla when it went into bankruptcy to keep it afloat. He faced multiple lawsuits.

Musk faced numerous challenges with SpaceX as the company’s first three rocket launches failed and drew eyeballs from his investors. SpaceX had to bootstrap for its third launch which was finally a success and received a contract from NASA for $1.6 billion.

Hire best minds not big numbers

Musk hires the best talent in numbers that is needed to build a team and does not believe in hiring big numbers to bulk up. Musk once said that it is a mistake to hire huge numbers as it will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer, numbers will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.”

Musk, however, added that talent cannot compensate for a lousy personality. So, hiring the best mind combined with a good heart is a must.

Execution of an idea is vital

Musk is a visionary that we all know of. His ideas are revolutionary and transformational and powerful. However, he believes that the success of an idea is in its execution. One that receives no action simply remains an idea while one that is executed effectively can grow into a profitable business. He says that hiring an innovative team that will come up with solid business models to execute your ideas is key. This will lead to healthy financial returns and successful execution of your vision.

Practice integrity

Musk led rounds of funding from financial institutions to fund Tesla Motors at its inception. After a few years, the electric car company was in a deep financial crisis. But Elon got his act together and borrowed heavily to get it back on its feet. The company became a huge success and started selling 2400 units from its first batch of electric cars produced. After which Elon paid back his $400 million loan money. He cleared his debt. Conducting honest business, practising integrity as a part of company policy yields long term goodwill for the company.

Consider failure as part of your plan

Being afraid of failure only restricts us to pursue our dream. We let our fear stop us. Musk says instead of fear lets you take a back seat, you should acknowledge it and come up with a plan to handle its effects. Before he started the SpaceX project, Musk dedicated $100 million to the endeavour. He said if he failed to launch a rocket into space with that budget, he would shut down operations. His first two launches cost him $90 million and failed. The third one cost him $10 million and it succeeded- he was not afraid of failure for the third time and went for it.

No alternative to hard work

Musk has been a hard worker ever since he started his company back in 1995, he worked round the clock. He says he has worked 100 hours a week to reach where he has. He says if you work 100 hours a week while others work 40 hours a week, it will take you four months to achieve what they can in a year. Whatever great idea you have, you can meet your fortune only through hard work

Focus on quality of your product

Elon Musk, runs billion dollar enterprises and understands the power to focus on quality. They believe that it is better to focus your effort on making a product better instead of focusing your effort on how to sell it to the market. Musk says that he would rather under-market a revolutionary product than promote a mediocre one.

Accept challenges

The most revolutionary inventions of Musk is Tesla Energy– an initiative that creates battery packs which have enough power to sustain homes- an idea his engineers rejected. He found ways to adjust the parts of the battery such that it was cheaper to produce and store more energy. Musk challenged the methods of doing things and emerged with an innovative affordable new result.

The post Entrepreneurship Lessons from the Business Magnate Elon Musk appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

As a startup and small business owner, How Can You Protect Your Intellectual Property Rights?

Monica Behura — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 10:33:32 +0000

With India witnessing the burgeoning of the startup space, it makes it corollary the rise of IPR infringement cases in India, wherein nearly 50% of all Intellectual Property (IP) cases being trademark infringement cases. Startups will collapse if they do not protect their Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), as it gives them the legal right to prevent companies from stealing the intangible assets that is the core of their businesses affecting its success and failure. India is home to over 73,000 start-ups, these startups contribute substantially to India’s economy. With over 35 unicorn startup companies, India is home to the third largest startup ecosystem, behind only the US and China. By 2025, India could be home to over 100,000 startups, employing over 4 million people and have over 100 unicorns with a total market value of $500 billion.

The above numbers are the reason for India to have a strong intellectual property system in place. But that is not the case with India, as it was placed 36th out of 50 shortlisted countries in the International Intellectual Property Index, scoring a low of 16.22 out of 45 identifiers. The indian government is therefore making an effort to spread awareness about the importance of IPR amongst the startups by offering incentives for startups to protect their IPR rights such as giving tax rebates. With its new National IPR policy, it aims to push IPRs as marketable financial assets, promote innovation and entrepreneurship, while protecting public interest. This policy helps in promoting technologies in startup culture.Intellectual Property Rights are reasons for fast innovation especially in the Tech startup industry.

The ministry of commerce and industry, for the purpose of ease of doing business, has stated that the businesses now have to get a certificate of recognition from DIPP which will be sufficient to avail all benefits pertaining to IPR provided by the Startup India programme. It is a welcome move as earlier startups had to go through an elaborate and lengthy process of approaching inter-ministerial boards to get the IP benefits. Start-ups are now eligible for expedited examination of patent applications. To avail benefits startups need to get a certificate of recognition from DIPP, the process which has been simplified for those who have applied for a patent.

As part of its policy, the Indian government in its “Scheme for facilitating Start-Ups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP), is meant to nurture and mentor innovative and emerging technologies and assist them in protecting and commercialising it by providing them the access to high quality IP services and resources.

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Your “intellectual property or asset” will be your competitive edge that will get revenue and drive profits for you.

Intellectual Property Rights and Startups

The asset of a startup is its innovation, its unique idea or its business model. It becomes imperative to protect the “intellectual assets”- that differentiates from your competitors. It is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), in front of your prospective clients, customers. Your “intellectual property or asset” will be your competitive edge that will get revenue and drive profits for you. It needs to be protected in the form of patents, copyrights, trademarks, design rights. The three basic types of intellectual property that startups need to know are:

Patent
Trademark
Copyright

Not all startups need to invest its resources in building a patent portfolio, but it requires to know the role of IPR not only to protect its innovation but also to have the knowledge of the risk involved in not protecting its assets. Knowledge of IPR and its role is critical to avoid risk of being exposed to assertions of IPR infringement by competitors.

This is where the root of all problems lie- lack of education when it comes to IPR practices. Startups are busy in growing their company that failure to exercise IP rights often leads to the persistent problem of trademark infringement. Not filing for its intellectual property for trademark, copyrights or patents at the right time will results in giving birth to copycats imitating company’s trade name or a variant of it, cyber/domain squatting, widespread confusion about the actual service provider, and facing the music targeted at a copycat. Established entities like Sony, Apple, Tesla, Samsung among many others therefore spend a fortune on their Intellectual Property Rights. A significant portion of their budget goes into protecting their products; they have spent billions in its R&D.

Recently, many trademark infringement cases have set precedents for startups. Flipkart, has been bitten twice in the Intellectual Property Rights infringement cases- One from Electric appliance manufacturer Marc Enterprises, accusing the e-commerce marketplace of naming its private label MarQ, that sounds similar to the later’s brand name. Earlier, Metro shoes filed a trademark infringement case against the unicorn startup of its private label Metronaut. Delhi High court fined Policybazaar of Rs 1 million in a Intellectual Property Rights infringement case by Acko resurfaced. Hyderabad based startup GrabOn won a trademark infringement case against it by Bangalore based rental platform GrabOnRent, in a case wherein the former accused the rental company of using its goodwill for its own profit and even targeting the branded keywords on Google Adwords.

Need for Intellectual Property Strategy

The challenge for founders of startups is that resources both financial and physical are mostly limited, and so, hard decisions need to be made about how to allocate them. This makes it crucial that startups link their IP strategy starting early and be smart to keep their costs down. For instance, by keeping their details of their innovation confidential, an inventor can p[rotect it as a trade secret, and so defer the costs of applying for a patent until the startup is funded. By checking the assignment provisions in their agreements with consultants, a founder can ensure that the business owns the IP rights in the materials it pays for. It doesn’t mean that if you pay for something to be developed does not mean one owns it. Formulating a clear and practical strategy to manage and protect your IP and aligning this with your business plan is key.

A well thought out IP strategy is based on the needs not only of the business in the present, but also provides a framework for protecting the business as it grows. It will put simple processes in place to identify a business’s IP as it is created, then capture it and finally protect it. It will also help a startup business in taking measures to check and make sure that it isnt infringing on someone else’s IP. Protecting IP will mean different things to different businesses. It could mean protecting software, or AI technology, designs, or brands logos. It may involve preserving copyright and trade secrets, or perhaps registering patents, designs, domain names or trademarks.

Many startups will not have the resources to apply and protect all of their potentially registrable IP rights at the outset. Financial constraints will mean that difficult decisions will need to be made regarding which IP right or rights to prioritize. This is where a clear strategy comes handy as it enables a startup to plan step by step, and budget sequentially. When the budget is low or insufficient and hard decisions need to be made, so long as this is recognised at an early stage, strategies can be employed to limit, or delay. So the lesson learnt is spent until the business develops.

Therefore, developing a diligent and an intelligent IP strategy at an early stage is imperative.

Hire a IP law firm or General Counsel
The law firm or a General Counsel will help the startup to consider their general strategies relating to six IP concerns commonly encountered by start-ups. They are:

Choosing outside IP counsel
Protecting company’s innovations
Trade secrets
Copyrights and the internet
Protecting company’s brand name
Enforcing its IP rights

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Startups should beware of over-reliance on “fair use” because the exception is narrow.

The best starting point is to find a boutique IP law firm, or a law firm that has an excellent IP team. Look for firms with industry or sector focuses that align with your business. Since many startups revolve around innovative technology, the more experienced the firm is in your technology the better. Consider hiring different firms for different matters with sensible pricing structures. Patent law is niche even outside IP law, so hire a dedicated patent attorney in the company’s particular industry sector.

Not every invention qualifies for a patent, even if it does, startups may not want to pursue patent protection for every invention. The patent application process is expensive and time consuming, so outside counsel should be hired to conduct searches on the relevant field of invention to know what other patents exist, to monitor the competitive landscape, to file the patent application.

How do startups protect trade secrets?

Trade secret protection is very different from acquiring a patent or a trademark. Companies do not apply for or register trade secrets, they formulate Non disclosure agreements and labeling documents “confidential” or “trade secrets”. Therefore, general counsels help the company carefully develop contract documents with employees that will maintain reasonable and effective safeguards for its confidential information.

When using works copyrighted by others, the marketing team should identify what copyrighted works you need in your everyday basis so that the IP counsel or law firm hired can acquire necessary permissions and attributing authorship. Startups should beware of overreliance on “fair use” because the exception is narrow. Just because an image, article or content is available on the internet does not mean that it is free for all to use. GCs should enter into a strong licencing agreement for the company’s own copyrighted works and educate the team on why they should be seeking copyright protection for works they create.

Trademarks – your brand name and symbol gain significant recognition with time and resources spent on the same. Telling the marketing team the scope of trademarks protection you want to achieve, is vital. As with patents, startups may want to consider hiring outside trademark counsel that has expertise in its market and can provide strategic advice on which marks to file for and how to prioritise them, advice on designing an effective trademark strategy.

Start-ups should register domain names as soon as they are identified including prior to applying for a trademark—to ensure that they are available.
There are many options to enforcing IP rights besides filing a lawsuit that may be more effective in certain circumstances. The first step is to assess the potential costs of an IP dispute. Costs of IP litigation can quickly escalate and drag on for years. It can also have unexpected repercussions on a company’s public image.

A startup GC is well advised to assess all options with outside counsel before taking action that includes doing due diligence to make sure the company is not violating someone else’s rights. In-house counsel must educate their management about litigation costs, monetary, and non-monetary. IP infringement lawsuits should be initiated with careful deliberation because in some cases, a cease and desist letter or licensing agreement can be a cost effective alternative.

There certainly are additional IP considerations that GCs at startups will need to consider which may include joint development agreements, IP strategy development. But in terms of getting started, making sure the six core aspects of IP are addressed early gives a startup the best chance of avoiding costly IP related missteps in the company’s formation period.

The post As a startup and small business owner, How Can You Protect Your Intellectual Property Rights? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Entrepreneurship and Motherhood: How can a Mompreneur schedule self-care?

Monica Behura — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 00:35:04 +0000

Being a woman entrepreneur and a mother at the same time, especially to young kids, is the toughest job in the whole wide world. Balancing both worlds that need your undivided attention, full time, is the most arduous task but achievable with a schedule in place along with some self-care. To be more fulfilled in work and life becomes imperative for running a successful business venture and living a healthy family life.

Time management skills realized through mindful scheduling, although daily routines should be scheduled habits are built on a few universal principles like keeping a flexible work routine, sharing meaningful time with people who are important in your life, making time for yourself and prioritizing health and wellness.

Being a mother and doing motherly chores is the hardest, and yet the most rewarding job out there. But when team it up with entrepreneurship, you get the most overworked professional- A Mompreneur.

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Most mompreneurs throw away self-care strategies out of the window to care for their families and kids.

How mompreneurs can achieve both professional and personal goals along with some self-care

An improved work-life integration that can be tailored to fit the lifestyle of mompreneurs will help them achieve goals in their professional and personal space. Following are the few tips:

Prioritize work schedule
Diligently following a daily schedule is more than creating a plan and following it. It is developing a system that suits your work and life circumstances. For example, utilize your extra time after finishing your daily chores in doing the most significant office tasks first followed by the insignificant tasks scheduled for the day. Your schedule should be strict and flexible which could be implemented appropriately.

Self-care strategies
Self-care strategies are critical to your health and sanity. Most mompreneurs throw away self-care strategies out of the window to care for their families and kids. If you work till you drop, being the queen of multi-tasking, if you are always tired and exhausted and your body asks for more sleep, then you should listen to your body, and mind. Lack of self-care strategies will only disrupt your mental and physical health. Self-care strategies work brilliantly if you divide business tasks with mom tasks efficiently so that none suffers, and you can serve both clients and family happily. Most mompreneurs pride themselves as being ‘multi-tasking’ masters. Managing many tasks and the ability to rapidly shift between priorities is a success indicator.

Fix time to work- And stick to it
If you have fixed 10am to 1pm as work time, then stick to it. Work during those hours with a focused mind. Mompreneurs can do so much within limited times because of their ability to focus and get things done without distraction. Your help can take care of kids while you finish that zoom meeting or in-person meetings over coffee, lunch or high tea in your office boardroom or somewhere else. Limit your social media time, shut down any distractions, manage interruptions, so that you stay focused on completing your business work.

Keep leisure time as leisurely as possible
Do not mix them with business work. Whether it’s a game nighttime, movie time, park time with kids or play date keep them intact, honor them. Keep your phone and ipad into silent mode. Keep your social media browsing time out, don’t let your gadgets, emails, creep in during your gym, yoga or work out time. Make a list of what activities you love to do and plan to do one daily for the next one week, month or a year. This way you make space for self-care and self-love which will keep you in a good mood.

Make time for yourself
In tandem to making quality time for work, kids and family, it is time to make time for yourself. It is not selfish to carve out time for your own needs every day, it is necessary to rejuvenate in that time that you get for yourself. If you take that time to re-energize your mind and spirit through experiences in nature, meditation, pursuing a hobby, reading, dancing you will be more efficient and productive for business work.
Without devoting meaningful time for self-care, you will find it difficult to have those quality conversations with family or create positive connections with employees, partners, co-workers.

Eat Healthy
What you eat is how you behave, working lunch occasionally is fine- like a sandwich and cup of cappuccino, but that cannot be an everyday food. Therefore, make a conscious effort to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet. Hire a dietician that will help you go for well-rounded food choices- including the right amounts of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates- that will balance your energy levels and helps you tackle your daily schedule leaving you feeling invigorated and accomplished.

Get Enough Sleep
Ironically, sleep deprivation is one of the most parts of our lives. “When my children were younger and I needed to work longer hours to get the business off the ground, I used to cut off sleep time, that didn’t augur well for me in the long run as it made me cranky, irritable, and unproductive,” says a Mompreneur. A mompreneur should work smarter not harder and prioritize getting enough sleep. Sleep allows our bodies to rest and repair, which not only improves our overall health and quality of life but also benefits work-essential functions like memory and alertness.

Spend quality time with Important people in your life
Prioritizing in sharing time with children, family, friends, becomes essential. It is important for them to know that you are available to them when they want to interact and talk about life, and for those moments to be meaningful. Invite them to your workplace and introduce them to your work colleagues so that they know that this is where mom spends time to make money and give them a comfortable life. Peace in familial relationships reduces stress and distractions, which inspires me to be more effective in business.

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The secret to finding the right kind of self-care is to find the things that make you happy when you do them.

Focus on you
It takes a lot to focus on ourselves Mompreneurs live a frantic life where we lose ourselves, forget even looking ourselves in the mirror, we lose the sheen on our face we had one day; therefore, we need to make consistent effort to put ourselves on the list of priorities in order to replenish ourselves and renew our own resources. Mothers forget taking care of themselves by caring for their kids and fending for them through her business work so focusing on herself will improve her lifestyle that will yield good for her. Go for the spa treatment you’ve been yearning for. Or a vacation to a beach or mountains with your friends, or social circle. Join a gym, yoga class together with them.

Finding the apt self-care
The secret to finding the right kind of self-care is to find the things that make you happy when you do them, i.e. when your body, mind and soul are happily engaged in any task that brings a sense of relief when we are feeling overwhelmed is self-care. Self-care is different for different individuals.

Breaking down your needs
The four different categories of self-care are: Emotional, Physical, Mental and Social. Emotional self-care activities let you touch base with your emotions and let you process feelings you are having. Be mindful of your feelings you are presently experiencing and then get busy with activity that makes you happy and content. For mental health, sign up for an online tutorial to learn something new, listen to a podcast, on a subject that interests you, read books you’ve bought and never read them. Physical health means resting, rejuvenating, or healthful for your body. For physical exercise you can run, hike, walk, do pilates, yoga, bike riding or playing a physical sport. For good health, drink plenty of fluids, eat healthy food, a plan you can stick to so it becomes a habit, sleep as much as you can realistically to rest your body, mind and soul. Set aside time to rejuvenate in a solitary environment where you can relax knowing there will be no disturbances as you recharge your batteries. Schedule a set date and time to meet with friends as often as possible- biweekly, bi-monthly whatever that suits your timetable with friends, family. Join a support group, book club, go to painting, pottery, cooking classes or any other activity that let you be creative and interact on a social level.

Never feel guilty
Amid all your home and business chores, it’s hard to schedule that guilt free time of pure fun, me time, of bliss and relaxation. But Self-care is very important and your ability to function in both your roles depends on it. Stop over burdening yourself with tons of responsibilities as it will do more harm to your body, mind and business than good. Schedule, shut down days- times when you switch off all the notifications, put on your headphones and disconnect from the world, focusing only on key business tasks at hand.

Build a Support system
To remain productive and in the right mind frame, you will need to build a strong useful, resourceful support system around you. Because so many people are dependent on you- your family, your clients, your team, employees, business partners. For this, learn to effectively delegate authority, choose a reliable person who can fill in for you in time of need. Give that veto power to someone.

Find your work-life balance
Find out an arrangement that works for you- to get that work life equilibrium because there will be never enough time to finish all your tasks- both business and at home with kids. Without establishing a proper work life balance one will constantly feel stressed about either aspects of life. If it means more time for your kids, so be it, never feel guilty.

Be Attentive to both sides
Whether you spend time with your family or grind at your work hours in office, your physical and mental presence in full is essential. Create a schedule to ensure that no side ends up with the short attention span.

Expand your team
Hire the best professionals to handle every aspect of your business. Have an incredible team to help you run your business successfully.

Solve big business problems first
For mompreneurs, it’s important that you do one major task first thing in the morning, so you feel accomplished on a daily basis.

Celebrate your success
By focusing on solving bigger business problems, you can see tangible results. Take time to celebrate those small and big wins, before you proceed for another big task, or finishing a minor one. It’s fine to postpone less important tasks for later or assign them to someone else.

Remind yourself why you are doing this
Remind yourself frequently why you are running your business- to grow professionally, improve your families income/ lifestyle, or enjoying the process of doing what you are passionate about.

The post Entrepreneurship and Motherhood: How can a Mompreneur schedule self-care? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How to Build Traction for Your Business?

Monica Behura — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 11:40:46 +0000

Starting a business in India is easy but building up clientele is a tedious well-planned task. Execution is key post planning how to draw traction. Startup traction is described as having as many numbers as possible of end users or potential customers who would use your product and are willing to pay a certain amount for the product or services. Getting traction for your small business or startup is important if you want to scale up to achieve product market fit.

So, now coming down to getting customers after you’ve launched your product, is getting to the pre-launch strategy, this phase is often the hardest in the life of a startup. Once the launch phase strategy is executed, it is time to build something that has a strong market demand. Getting traction could be easy and difficult both depending on the demand for the product.

One of the most challenging aspects is that no matter how innovative your product is, you won’t have any customers if they are not aware of your startup. Even more challenging is figuring out how to attract your first customers when your budget and resources are limited. But the best way to start gaining traction is by building an awesome product. Other elements like packaging, customer service support systems will also help determine the success or failure of your startup. But half your hard work put in developing the product is done when your product is so incredible that it sells by itself. Growing customer base may seem challenging and many questions may arise:

- How to identify your target audience?
- Where to find them?
- How do you get them to sign up to learn more about your product or service?
- How to get them to pay for it, on top of that, could be another challenge.

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If you are a serial entrepreneur and want your business to be bought by a giant at a great value, then create awesome product that is worth more than the money you spend in marketing & advertising.

What is The Right Content for Traction?

Educating customers through written, visual or audio content could be one of the strategies to get traction quickly. Lots of businesses are generating content for their business but have failed to see results from implementing this strategy. The reason for this is not producing the right content through the right channel and what the audience is seeking. In order to generate and create content for startups that drives growth, startups need to create content that supports the business, content that educates the end users, content that establishes the business as a competition to watch out for in their respective industries.

A potential customer will need to find your website for all the relevant information about your product or service. The website is an interface of the company. Therefore, creating an attractive user-friendly website with all the relevant content upfront would be beneficial initially to gain traction for your business. This is the first stage.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the second step and an important traction method. It helps in improving the visibility of your website on Google, Yahoo, etc.

This has become the norm for startups as it creates a level playing field for the brands with their competitors. But creating an attractive website and gaining traction through SEO is only the beginning, there’s a long way to go. This is one reason why most startups lose their battle of traction; it is not because of a bad product but bad distribution.

What you need to win the battle of traction?

You will not experience success from the word go. you will have to use techniques that may vary depending on your product or services to gain initial traction. Following are some ways to gain traction and get to a sustainable point as fast as we can:

Create an incredible product

Build a product that is something to reckon with, wherein you can disrupt the competitors. Whatsapp became a disruptor for Facebook and Google chats. Instagram disrupted Facebook to the extent that the latter bought Instagram at much higher valuation, for $ 1 billion way back in 2012, at that time for a company with 13 employees. Instagram today has over one billion users and contributes over $20 billion to Facebook’s annual revenue.

If you are a serial entrepreneur and want your business to be bought by a giant at a great value, then create an awesome product that is worth more than the money you spend in marketing and advertising. Because the fact is that the better your product, the more you will be able to align all your business functions to drive growth- be it sales, marketing, product design and long-term goals.

But if your product is average then you end up overplaying marketing and advertising to cover up for your not-so-great product. It will augur well and gain traction for a short term but in the long run, you will end up losing customers.

Define and quantify your goals

Having a clearly defined goals by breaking things down to smaller goals will make things achievable for you. For example, quantify your goals as to:

– How many customers per week do you need?

– How many emails need to be sent per day.

– How many meetings need to be conducted.

– What features need to be added to generate more customers?

– How many potential clients can we draw if we partner with a certain person or company?

– How do we get more users to pay yearly/monthly?

– How do we retain existing customers

Don’t scale up yet

In the initial days, you should have a sharp focus on getting those first customers using your product, or those first customers paying you money. Things don’t take off easily or by themselves, so you need to do things that don’t scale to give your product the best chance of long-term success.

At this point, you can consider becoming a unicorn or a forever company. This is hard work where you are starting up with no presence. If you’ve put in effort into your pre-launch then this first step should be easy, but if you haven’t, then you will need to do things that don’t scale up instantly:

– Reaching out to the press

– Start cold emailing or calling potential customers

– Give people free access to your product in exchange for promotion to their list

– Have numerous meetings- Meet investors or potential partners

– Hire the best professionals

– Organize parties

– Do user testing with real people

– Get customer feedback

– Learn every detail that sets you apart from the competitor

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When you make marketing a priority since the beginning, you are accelerating acquisition by proactively building awareness and interest in the product you’re creating.

Track your customers

There are various data tracking tools like Google Analytics or Kiss metrics to collect data around customer behavior with your product or service. By tracking the data, you will be able to make better informed decisions and understand where you need to focus to fix issues or where to put in extra effort.

Marketing efforts

Marketing channels and initiatives created to build an audience makes it easier for entrepreneurs to find ideas worth pursuing. Startups that launch with an established audience can generate revenue quickly and build better products by engaging their subscribers.

Events

Organizing events is one form of marketing channel. Events have become imperative because all stakeholders gather in one place and this gives an opportunity to build relationships, and introduce and sell the products. Events help create a network by leveraging audience and followers of your attendees, experts and partners. An event can grow quickly just by seeking the promotion of influencers.

Paid Advertising

Building a community through paid advertisements. The challenge is turning visitors into followers, fans, and converting them into end users.

E-Newsletters and more

Building a community to continuously drive traffic and referrals- in the form of email newsletter, private groups on social media or social events.

A simple marketing effort shows how potential buyers go through several stages before making a purchase. Starting by becoming aware of the product followed by building interest in it, wanting to try it, and finally, converting into paying customers. When you make marketing a priority since the beginning, you are accelerating acquisition by proactively building awareness and interest in the product you’re creating. By the time the app is ready to go to market, people will be lined up to use it.

Brand your product

Branding is an important aspect that can be leveraged for growth. Branding not only means logos, voice and tone, website design, and social media presence, it should go deeper than that- with all the Above and Below the line activities in tow. Getting a massive social media presence is the key, getting that top of the mind recall by the customer is difficult with so many competitive players making a beeline to get customer attention. Branding your product sets it apart from another player.

Partnership

To gain initial traction by teaming up with other brands- a simple rule that gets your startup get existing customers of another brand. Integration: this is when your product plays with another product to highlight the features of both companies. Syndication is where companies team up with and combine their products together to showcase each other’s products to their audiences. Referral- this can be either an affiliate, reseller or organization that uses your product. Collaborate on marketing and minimize or eliminate your own marketing expenses. Cut a limited time exclusive deal if someone can connect you to a whole store of customers. Exchange content to benefit from that online traffic or consider licensing or affiliate arrangement where you only pay out for leads that are closed. Finally, finding powerful organic distribution channels is the best way to grow your company and give an unfair advantage to those competitors that are relying on advertising.

Test the waters

For startups, entrepreneurs need to pay close attention to content analytics that reveal who your visitors are, how long they stay on your site and what they’re doing on your site are essential. Advertising analytics that track your conversions from marketing channels like Google Ads. Email analytics that will measure opens and conversions. Qualitative analytics dive deeper into the wants and needs of customers.

Go offbeat

Take your products to the customers instead of waiting for them to come to you. Attending events to showcase your products, demo at any popular event was not only a good idea, it also attracted thousands of potential new customers without having to spend an exorbitant amount of money in marketing. But these are traditional methods of getting traction. But you need to be offbeat sometimes to gain publicity. Publicity stunts and unique marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to introduce your startup to potential customers and attract media attention.

The post How to Build Traction for Your Business? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Why should women entrepreneurs understand the importance of personal finance and business finance?

Monica Behura — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 00:35:04 +0000

Women Entrepreneurship has been recognized as an important source of economic growth and as an effective method to achieve a democratic society based on women’s empowerment and gender equality values. It is imperative to provide jobs to more women to build an entrepreneurial society centered on gender equal opportunity. The main strength of women entrepreneurship is its transformative power over the economy and society as it brings job creation potential, new sectoral opportunities, innovation, creativity, and diversity to the economic arena. Women entrepreneurs should have a deep understanding of personal finance and business finance. A woman in all forms of business- whether sole proprietorship or a partnership should be aware of the fundamentals of financial planning.

As an entrepreneur, it is imperative that women separate their personal finance and allocate a separate fund to refinance their current business and finance their new business. By doing so, it will minimize the personal liabilities and not pass on to family members who are dependent on your business financially. Secondly, it helps you seek external funding as investors see your business as genuine, and credible.

As a woman entrepreneur, you should have a clear assessment of your business’s financial position, understand your net worth, savings and investment potential when deciding to invest into a new venture. Therefore, a detailed financial plan acts as a road map to take calculated decisions and enable women entrepreneurs to gain knowledge of the different sources available to fund businesses. Financial planning ensures cash flow into the business, helps improvise on strategy whenever required for prompt decision making for the growth of their business. A good finance plan will let a woman entrepreneur do much more with the resources in hand as it helps to prioritize their financial resources and utilize them to full potential. It also helps the women entrepreneurs to stay focused on their business and personal goals, and targets. It will also assure minimal risks and profitable returns on investment. Women entrepreneurs should know where the investment opportunities are available for operating the business.

Women need to have a complete understanding of their existing and required financial health and must plan it thoroughly as it will enable them to realize all business goals, gain knowledge about investment opportunities and their sources of funding, manage risks effectively, minimize debt, be ready to finance future growth and expansion plans with the returns earned. Therefore, women entrepreneurs should not shy away from taking expert advice from best financial advisors. Women entrepreneurs should break through the challenges underlying their entrepreneurial aspirations and become better managers of their finances. In order to achieve these, they need to start taking control of their finances, gain confidence in financial knowledge.

As a woman leader in the organization, you need to display full knowledge and understanding of your finances and tax planning. This reflects on your confident personality, it, therefore, bolsters your image in front of investors, and important stakeholders, it helps finance and tax employees make smarter financial decisions.

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As entrepreneurs, it is imperative that women separate their personal finance and allocate a separate fund to refinance their current business and finance their new business.

Advantages of Financial Planning for Women Entrepreneurs

Below are the advantages of financial planning both on personal and business front for women entrepreneurs:

Financial knowledge

A woman entrepreneur should know every little detail of finance- the terms, its meaning and usage in practical business life. Terms like debit, credit, being cash ready, continuous cash flow into the business, tax planning. She needs to sit with the financial planner and learn it all. She needs to keep herself updated about new business avenues, newer sources of finance, etc.

Strong foundation

Making a viable financial plan at the start of the organization will lay a strong foundation of the organisation, you are setting a precedent for your subordinates to follow and to inculcate a culture of savings and making conscious financial decisions, be it at home or at work. It lays foundation for a healthier and productive workplace.

Displays a confident image

When your investors and shareholders see you working on your finances and plan the future, it builds confidence in them that you are a pragmatic and smart leader who can be relied upon. This could get the investors on board; they not only want the trust factor but also the one who is prepared for difficult times in business.

Widen your net

A sound financial planning can help you generate enough wealth to plan expansion, and venture into newer business avenues. With the right financial plan in place, a businesswoman can open a new line of work, expand, or even get into a completely different line of business.

Goals and Strategy

The first step to a solid financial planning is to write down the goals one wants to achieve, the strategy one will deploy to achieve it and the timeline for it. This is important because it will save a lot of capital. A goal-oriented journal to segregate and delegate the work. Hiring the right finance professionals, setting realistic targets and their growth evaluation will be swift.

Risk assessment

Financial planning will help assess the risks that will be mitigated while making an investment into a venture. Your appetite for risk will be known.

Focus on Return on Investment (ROI)

A sound financial plan will make sure you get the profits from the services you give to your customers. This will augur well for increased goodwill for your company.

Anticipating Expenses

Financial planning will help analyze expenditures monthly, quarterly where one can find out what went right and wrong and where. When it has gone wrong, it incurs unanticipated expenses. Analyzing it will help you find out ways not to repeat mishaps if occurred and increase the productivity of things that went right.

Emergency plan

Have a backup plan for your business or your investments, in case things don’t go as planned. Diversifying portfolio, investing in multiple businesses are part of a contingency plan. Keep your personal finances independent, separate from business finances. This helps in keeping one’s personal liabilities on the down, while making the business seem more credible.

Due to multiple roles a woman entrepreneur embraces that of a daughter, mother, as household managers, a sound financial management is extremely important.

Budget

Planning your expenses for a given year, month, quarter and monitor if you have spent more than you originally planned. At the end of the month, make the necessary adjustments to optimize it, daily follow up will help you save money.

Save and Invest

Money too is volatile so you must focus on savings and investments. Aim to accumulate to invest, generate returns and earn more. You should be an active investor and above all to understand the chosen method. Saving and spending sensibly is a habit that is good for everybody. Women entrepreneurs often end up not focusing on their own finances, preferring to involve themselves completely in their craft.

Different accounts for different purposes

Money management is important in generating maximum wealth. One of the ways is to divide the money into specific purposes and relate each account to one area of your life- and use it only for that purpose. Each time you receive money, assign a percentage to each account.

Increase added value

The more value you generate, the higher the price that your client will be willing to pay for the product or service you provide. Investing in your business to grow and creating more capabilities is the best long-term strategy where you can add experience, training and continue to be updated.

Take Insurance

Seek to protect your personal and business finance through insurance on your life and other assets that can adversely affect and impact your wealth. Create an emergency fund (equivalent to three to six times of your income) in order to face any possible problems faced relating to work, production or personal situations that may arise.

Plan for retirement

It is never too late or early to plan for retirement and make savings plans. One should make a perfect retirement plan that will yield higher results and manage costs.

Build and consolidate your credit history

Your credit history should be credible, clean enough for financial institutions to provide you a loan without mortgage. Pay your debts in time, in a systematic way. Clear all debts timely by making a debt management plan. Financial analysts feel having a clear focus on business and planning is essential for efficient personal finance management. It seems simple and even obvious but the truth is that women, due to social and cultural reasons, have less experience and practice with focusing on savings, defining goals and designing strategy.

They indicate that the first step is to make a diagnosis: How much is spent and on what, how much money comes in, how much is left over, if applicable, or in the worst-case scenario, how much is missing. The next step is to establish saving goals that should be used for: first, building an emergency fund, then to meet short- and medium-term objectives such as the purchase of a durable or semi-durable item, and finally, the long term objectives such as the purchase of a fixed asset. When we speak of savings, it is important to consider the idea of investing, since investing makes savings yield better returns.

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Money too is volatile so you must focus on savings and investments. Aim to accumulate to invest, generate returns and earn more.

Financial Plan: Key Aspect in The Lives of Women Entrepreneurs

Money cuts through all aspects of women entrepreneurs’ lives: at a personal, employment, and even at a social level. Focusing on our personal finances means focusing on our lives. There is no overlap but rather integration, managing our accounts is not just another task but a key aspect to all that we do.

Women entrepreneurs need not be an expert, they only need to have a clear idea of their current finances, its situations, both at a personal and professional level, and then develop a plan from there. If decisions become a bit more complicated, whether regarding the business or investments, one can consult with a trustworthy and credible financial advisor with whom to build long-term relationships.

The government of India has come up with schemes that are designed specifically for women entrepreneurs. Various NGOs, state Small Industries Development Corporations and nationalized banks have initiated Entrepreneurship Development Programs. These provide guidance for women entrepreneurs to develop financial planning for both personal and business. Financial schemes like Prime Minister’s Rozgar Yojana provide benefits to women entrepreneurs in terms of concessions and incentives. Since banks are a major funding source for any entrepreneur, the Bharatiya Mahila Bank, with 45 branches, focuses on women entrepreneurship across the country. Loans are provided by this bank for various ventures by women entrepreneurs. Apart from domestic government assistance, there are also financial institutions like the World Bank that are coming up with specific schemes to benefit women entrepreneurs and increase the financial inclusiveness of women. The Women’s Finance Hub, launched in 2013, aims to further the financial access of women-owned businesses.

The post Why should women entrepreneurs understand the importance of personal finance and business finance? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Balancing Entrepreneurship and Personal Life: Why is it Important?

Monica Behura — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 00:35:03 +0000

Work-life balance is the secret sauce for any entrepreneur who wants to accomplish his business goals. The life of an entrepreneur is indeed challenging and full of impediments with a mix of lows and highs. Moreover, if you have just started, the manpower at your disposal is bound to be low and you might have to multitask in many cases. However, that does not mean you should not prioritize your health, family, and social life.

Setting well-defined boundaries in each of these areas help to release the stress of an individual and keep him fresh and active for the upcoming day and bolster the productivity rate. Moreover, spending time with your friends and family helps to de-stress and momentarily distract you from work-related problems and even come up with solutions to combat the challenges faced in business. Not having a proper work-life balance can jeopardize an entrepreneur’s life and business. Overworking and overstressing oneself due to extreme work pressure can take a toll on mental and physical health.

At the end of the day, we all work to gratify from it. The revenues earned from the business will be dud if you cannot maintain a balance between the two. Putting your work before your family can not only be dissatisfying for you, but also your family. Spending time with your family and keeping aside a bit of ‘me time’ is crucial for having a burgeoning business. Maintaining a balance between life and work will not only keep you, but also your family who craves to spend time with you content. “From a personal lens, I would not have reached this stage in my business if I did not know how to balance my life,” said Raj N, Serial Entrepreneur, Angel Investor and Founder of Zaggle & ZikZuk.

So, how does Raj N manage time between work and home, between personal and professional?
“I am a very family-oriented person, I never mix family plus business lives. Therefore, I have my entire day minutely scheduled which I follow religiously. And it works wonders for me! I never let my work-life seep into my personal life. When I am at home, I put all my attention towards my family. Likewise, during my work hours, my business becomes my top priority. One of the things that I follow is that I never carry my work to my home and vice versa. Well, all the troubles begin when you start doing that. The bottom line is, it is, possible to have a clear balance between the two when you know how and when to prioritize these two areas of your life,” said Raj N.

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Not having a proper work-life balance can jeopardize an entrepreneur’s life and business. Extreme work pressure can take a toll on mental and physical health.

Working Long hours

A large amount of time spent at work by an entrepreneur will increase the stress level and harm the health of the workers. According to The Organisation of Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), 11% of employees in the OECD work 50 hours or more per week. Across OECD countries, the average time spent on leisure and personal care by full time entrepreneurs ranges from 14- 16.5 hours per day. Full-time men enjoy 30 minutes more leisure and personal care time relative to women, while the young and old spend 50 and 25 minutes more than the middle-aged, respectively.

Turkey is the country with the highest proportion of people working very long hours, with 33%, followed by Mexico with nearly 29% and Colombia with almost 27% of employees. Overall, more men work very long hours; the percentage of male employees working very long hours across OECD countries is over 15%, compared with about 6% for women.

Work-Life Balance is Crucial for Mental Well-being

It is important to make a balance- for mental and emotional well-being, to keep sanity within oneself. As it is known that if you are healthy inside out, then you have the most important thing in the world, because the greatest wealth is your health. Mental and emotional health impacts your thoughts, belief, behavior and emotions. It affects the way you are thinking, how you act and react in different situations, impacts one’s feelings. It is extremely important to develop the emotional balance so that one is in control of your thoughts, feelings, emotions and behavior and can cope with life’s challenges.

This work-life balance is extremely important to cope with the stresses of life, keep one physically and mentally healthy. If an entrepreneur has good healthy relationships within the family, and community, is socially active, then he or she makes meaningful contributions towards them. One therefore, works productively and realises their full potential.

Managing work and life effectively, efficiently can remove stress from your life and improve the quality of life and work of an entrepreneur. This could mean you have to manage your time, plan your activities, prioritize your life, know what gives you ultimate satisfaction and what doesn’t. Creating that value for your family, clients at equal breath.

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Across OECD countries, the average time spent on leisure and personal care by full time entrepreneurs ranges from 14- 16.5 hours per day.

Steps to Achieve the Work-Life Balance

Work Life balance is a necessity for the mental physical well-being for Entrepreneurs. Achieving it might seem a task for the ever-busy entrepreneurs, but it is not unattainable, following are the steps one can take to achieve that balance:

Discipline your day, start early

Begin your day early, successful entrepreneurs start their day around 6 a.m. Raj N’s daily routine is to get up at 5 in the morning, go to the gym for around an hour, spend 20 minutes on meditation, read newspaper, have breakfast with family and then reach office by 10. His day ends at 7 in the evening. “I play badminton with my colleagues till around 8.30 pm and reach home by 9 pm. Post that I have a light dinner and hit bed early.”

Schedule your life

Reserve time for any sort of physical activity of your interest- be it Pilates, yoga, aerobics, gymming, swimming, exercise daily to recharge your batteries. Plan vacations twice a year. Have date nights with friends, family and socially. Schedule it so that you look forward to it and not cancel it for everyone’s disappointment including yourself.

Delegate Authority

If you want to grow your business, start delegating, increase the capacity, start resourcing, it becomes easier rather than donning many hats. Do not enervate by burdening yourself with too much work.

48 hours/week

Do not exceed work hours beyond 48 hours a week. Stick to that, even if you can work beyond that time limit. Studies have stated that Indians are the most overworked and laborious population in the world.

Switch off your smartphone

We can’t live without our smartphones, checking emails before going to bed. Entrepreneurs need to keep cellphones at bay at sleep time. Turning off will be a boon to their morning mood, even if the stock market has had a lousy start. Shut off work from your bedroom and see what wonders it does to your work life. Don’t worry about missing out on work, you are your own boss now, you are anyways in-sync with what’s happening when at work, avoid work FOMO or fear of missing out.

Seek help when burned out

If you feel burned out at home, work, then seek help from life coaches who help coach entrepreneurs to seek a quality work life balance. If you feel demotivated, detached, uncontrollable then you must know it’s time to hire a professional to train your body, mind and soul whatever you seek. Listen to your body and mind, rest them when they need one.

Look at the larger picture

Pandemic brought uncertainty to all lives leaving many entrepreneurs to go kaput. So, in these times it’s normal to feel overwhelmed, feel like a loser at a personal and work level. Just sit back, introspect your life at both levels- personal and professional- and plan for a better work life balance in future.

Declutter your life

For all entrepreneurs, it’s stress that keeps them awake at night and deprives them of getting enough sleep. Often, it’s that the mind just won’t stop talking or taking account of the tasks that need to be done. To counter that, many people journal and clean before bed so their brain is cool, calm, and collected when they hit the sack. Good sleep will set you up for success from the moment you open your eyes. A well-rested mind and body are better equipped to tackle each day. It can be hard to put your rest at a high priority, especially with all the work. But, it will be worth it in the long run. In fact, your body, mind and your business will thank you for it.

Sleep well

A sleep schedule is important to ensure a good night’s sleep and afresh early morning for better ideas to pop up while in the shower. To get started, set an alarm at night for a reminder to get ready for bed and one alarm set to help you awake in the morning.

Switch off during work hours

It could be work as usual to reply to official mails, over the weekend or while kids are playing, and you get some free time to sneak out to shoot that mail. It could be all tempting but they soon develop into habits. Now, this habit is something one needs to get rid off. In order to break away from these habits one has to prioritize work. Firstly, complete the most important tasks at hand during the work hours. Planning one’s day, week, month and year as per your goals that you’ve set to achieve is critical for your business and non-business activities. Having said that, staying focused towards your goals will only help you go with the flow of your plan

Motivate

You need to be an organised entrepreneur, otherwise it will be difficult to strike that balance between personal and business activities. Motivation is key. Motivate yourself, your folks, family, most importantly your employees to help you work as per the routine, plan you’ve set for yourself. These are the people in your life that revolve around you, so motivating them that achieving your goals will ultimately benefit them in the short and long run will augur well. Motivate your family about a great vacation in the next few months, employees can get bonuses, or raise in the next quarter if the business reaches its goals.

Be realistic

Life coaches who coach entrepreneurs often make it clear that a perfect work-life balance is not achievable for the busy entrepreneur whose mind is focused on achieving profitable targets. But one can still strive to make their personal life happy. Keep the family in the know-how of your daily work. Communicate to them, never keep them in the dark, let them know you putting in hard work and extra work hours will yield a great improved lifestyle for them, a holiday, a gift promised. Keeping them in the loop so that they know what and when to expect. If you are not able to keep that promise this time, make sure you do that next time.

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Personal Finance Habits an Entrepreneur Should Develop

Monica Behura — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 00:35:03 +0000

No matter how many millions or billions an entrepreneur stacks up, without a solid financial planning in both personal and business front, he/she could end up like Anil Ambani. This pandemic of 2020 has taught us to live an economical life, cutting out the unnecessary stating that frugality is the word for future. Therefore, a prudent finance growth plan, with an imprint that less is more, and that money will multi-fold, securing the future even in uncertain times apart from growing the wealth will be key.

With all the money in the world, a net worth of $87.6 billion as of 2020, Warren Buffett, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway, one of the richest men on earth is well known for his frugal lifestyle. It’s a known fact that Buffett lives in a modest home he bought in 1958 and drives his old Cadillac. He never had the desire to own multiple homes or a fleet of cars. He saved his penny to earn and grow his wealth to billions only to donate 99% of his riches to philanthropy.

Financial planning is an exercise that keeps your business growing in terms of profitability and revenue growth. It makes an entrepreneur’s ability to predict, foresee and plan for potential roadblocks, and helps in evolving strategies to overcome the bumps.

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By looking for opportunities to get more value at a lower price like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.

- Warren Buffett

Devise your Personal Finance Plan

Personal financial planning not just involves investing money, there are various facets to it, that is inclusive of growing wealth, money goals, wealth protection, and retirement planning.

Money Goals

Having written financial goals for the targeted month or year- either short or long term to improve personal wealth by a certain amount or percentage, gives a direction to your actions. Scattering your wealth in different baskets helps to grow your money as in stocks, real estate, bonds, mutual funds, fixed deposits, etc.

Budget spending and plan savings

Budgeting one’s spending and savings is a must. Experts say when you are mindful of both these habits, tracking these will help contribute to wealth growth.

Disseminate risks with multiple income plans

It is just like one’s business diversification. For instance, recently Electric car maker, Elon Musk invested $1.5 billion on Bitcoin, a calculated risk that could yield him either billions more in the foreseeable future or the money could tank. Either way, it is another revenue stream, an additional profit opportunity.

In growing one’s wealth, the entrepreneur needs to consider his objectives, investment timelines, his tolerance to risks involved. In short, choose the most suitable financial plans. However, note that holding money in the stationary form will yield no benefits. Investing in mutual funds, fixed deposits, real estate, startups will get interest income and profit percentage.

Investing in Bitcoin (cryptocurrencies)

Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market value, and it is receiving a lot of support from big companies like Tesla, Paypal and Mastercard. But before investing in this tricky business, do your due diligence. It can be as lucrative or risky as any other investment.

Safeguarding Wealth

Implementing safeguards around wealth that are invested becomes imperative, therefore placing it under an insurance policy that is designed to protect one’s finances- namely, health, life, trauma, and income protection insurance in case of any adverse circumstances.

Debt Reduction

An entrepreneur should get its debt under control, otherwise, he will continue paying interests on the debt. So, reducing one’s debts should be a part of one’s financial plan.

Living a thrifty lifestyle

Keeping expenses below income

Retirement Planning

Retirement planning is an important aspect of personal financial planning for any entrepreneur. A good retirement plan should ensure one’s income requirements at the age of retirement and what measures need to be taken to attain retirement goals.

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This pandemic of 2020 has taught us to live an economical life, cutting out the unnecessary stating that frugality is the word for future.

Keep tabs on business’s money-generating abilities

The ultimate goal of entrepreneurs is to convert sources of business wealth into personal wealth. Therefore, to conduct weekly and monthly check-ups on finances to ensure that one is reaching pre-defined goals. Taking stock of one’s expenses, income, employee hiring costs, and contractor fees is to make sure that business is working for the owner and not for other people.

Be smart about loans

In order to avoid the debt trap, do not overburden yourself with loans that are not essential to run the business, so avoid loans that are not adding to your sales directly or indirectly, and the pandemic has already taught us the importance of debt-free and economical life.

Time Is Money

An entrepreneur has to make sure that the time he/she spends is monetized properly, spending time in marketing or branding activities only or doing real business, needs to be prioritized. It should all result in a real money-making business immediately or sooner than later. Business means profit through legit sources.

Make a will

Tax benefits

One has to separate personal and business finances for greater tax benefits, the ability to take advantage of tax deductions is a huge plus for entrepreneurs. Keeping accurate records of personal and business expenses will assist in the event of a tax audit, keeping a check will ward off the tax guys.

Fintech- a tool to manage money

Fintech today is transforming financial management capabilities of entrepreneurs and businesses. There are various personal finance tools and services that are constantly evolving that helps manage money better. This trend has been beneficial for businesses, particularly smaller enterprises, making finance automation, data analysis, and flexible financing options within reach.

Protect assets from personal creditors

Personal assets can be at risk if an entrepreneur is sued for personal wrongdoing or as a result of a personal guarantee. However, there are ways to protect personal assets from these types of claims. One can consult with an estate planner or a bankruptcy attorney to prepare a structure to further shield assets from liability of business obligations.

Keeping up-to-date

An entrepreneur should ensure that all aspects of the plans are regularly reviewed and kept up to date with any regulatory changes that could occur anytime.

Cost Effectiveness

Entrepreneurs should use cost benefit analysis before making final decisions when it comes to their personal finance. One should avoid paying more than the expected returns.

Pay yourself salary

An entrepreneur should only pay himself out of profits, not revenue. Don’t cut a big slice of profit as a paycheck or bonus, rather invest that money for it to grow.

Making more money

An entrepreneur’s mind should always keep ticking on how to maximize investment returns and knowing one’s priority on whether to invest the profits or revenue earned from business on new bonds, real estate, or in a company or to buy an expensive car. Maximizing income for the next few years before indulging in luxury should be made clear.

The Golden Rules of Warren Buffett

Going back to Warren Buffett, his personal finance habits are as renowned as his investment strategies. From spending wisely to living under your means and developing healthy money habits, Buffett’s thumb rules are textbook stuff for inculcating great personal finance habits meant not only for entrepreneurs but for the layman.

Warren Buffets Rules are as follows that lay groundwork for every entrepreneur’s personal finance habits:

Don’t lose money

Warren Buffett’s number one rule is: Don’t lose money. And this rule applies to investing- if one is working to get out from a loss, it’s much harder to get back from where you started.

Get high value at a low price

Another Buffett principle: “Price is what you pay; value is what you get,” Buffett wrote to his shareholders long back. Losing money can happen when the price one is paying doesn’t match the value you’re getting, for instance, when one is paying high interest on a loan debt.

Instead, practice frugality like Buffett- “by looking for opportunities to get more value at a lower price like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down,” Buffett had said.

Healthy money habits

Buffett advocates to inculcate good saving habits from early life. He says to pay attention to money habits and work to strengthen those that help your finances and break those that hurt your finances.

Avoid credit card debt

Buffett said in a 1991 speech, “You really don’t need leverage (borrowed money) in this world much. If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing.” Buffett is especially wary of credit cards. His advice is to avoid them altogether.

Stack up cash reserves

Buffett’s key to ensuring security is to always keep cash reserves on hand. He once revealed that Berkshire Hathaway always maintained to the tune of double digit billion dollars in cash reserves. This helped the company sail through the great recession of 2008. He therefore advises entrepreneurs and businesses to maintain cash balance for rainy days such as the pandemic of 2020.

Invest in yourself

Investing in oneself, to improve one’s talent, will yield big returns, tenfold more, Buffett believed. He said unlike any other assets and investments, nobody can tax it away.

Learn, stay informed about money

Warren Buffett might not invest in cars or fostering an expensive hobby but he sure does spend his money on books from where he learns about managing money. Buffett is an institution in himself, an icon for the business community globally.

Buffett advocates learning more, educating oneself about managing money, and personal finance. He once said, “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. The more you know about personal finance, the more security you’ll have as you minimize risks.”

Give back to humanity

Buffett practices what he preaches. The 90-year-old has donated 99% of his wealth to humanitarian activities. He is the Founder of The Giving Pledge along with Bill Gates which is a promise that more than 130 billionaires so far have made to give their fortunes away.

Money- a long term game plan

Buffett, in his 2014 letter to shareholders, said people should “invest with a multi-decade horizon, their focus should remain fixed on attaining significant gains in purchasing power over their investing lifetime,” rather than on moments of stock market volatility or economic crisis.

The post Personal Finance Habits an Entrepreneur Should Develop appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Why is Sleep so Crucial for your Entrepreneurial Success?

Monica Behura — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:35:03 +0000

At the World Economic Forum at Davos, in 2019, Jack Ma the billionaire entrepreneur and founder of the Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba, who was literally on a hide doubt during the pandemic stirring debate on his health once said that sleep is key to handling stress and problem-solving.

Ma said, “If I don’t sleep well, the problem will still be there, if I sleep, I have a better chance to fight it.”

This pandemic has made us realize the importance of sleep and how deprived one was from the corporate genre, especially an entrepreneur running a business, that made them less focused, anxious, and lacking in co-ordination and energy throughout workday factors not optimal for success.

Successful entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple Inc., Bill Gates of Microsoft all advocate a good night sleep of 6-7-8 hour for better brain and body function. Closer home, businessmen like B K Goenka of Welspun Industries, Harsh Marwala of Marico, follow a strict sleep and exercise regimen. Not a quick nap but a 6–7-hour sleep is the norm for most entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have to strike a balance between work and health. Sleep helps them in smart and prompt decision making, boosts memory, keeps the mind alert. An early morning meeting or a speech yields good results when the brain cells take a cat nap.

According to Indian Society for Sleep Research, (ISSR) – Sleep is a luxury gifted by nature but today’s next generation entrepreneurs are abusing it by staying awake disturbing the normal physiology. “Sleep disorders like insomnia, are common among people from corporate world, and entrepreneurs,” said Dr. Hrudananda Mallick, President, ISSR. There are ISSR accredited 160 sleep labs in India. Researchers say sleep is as important as nutrition and exercise needed for the growth and development of brain cells needed to be productive, cultivate effective leadership traits, mindfulness that comes only with 7-8 hours of sleep.

As an entrepreneur who loses practical sleep time, often resorts to poor decision making, sleep deprived entrepreneurs are unable to hold their thoughts together and resort to making risky decisions. In the face of fierce competition, market fluctuations, entrepreneurs have to be on their toes and at the top of the game which needs an alert sharp mind that could be honed only with a complete sleep cycle. Researchers say sleep helps the subconscious mind analyse the task at hand that results in informed choices and decisions.

Entrepreneurs that sleep less can develop cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, asthma, chronic pain syndrome and have anxiety issues. For a stronger immune system, sleep is most imperative, lack of adequate sleep causes negative cognitive functions resulting in premature aging of the brain. So, an entrepreneur cannot afford to lose sleep constantly, causing mental sluggishness.

Bill Gates once wrote in his blog, that in his heydays of his career, he would regularly pull all-nighters. “I knew I wasn’t as sharp when I was operating mostly on caffeine and adrenaline, but I was obsessed with my work, and I felt that sleeping a lot was lazy.” He now values his seven hours sleep and suggested that all of human race needs that much.

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A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

- Charlotte Brontë

Sleep makes you creative

Sleep not only sharpens your mind, memories, hones your brain skills, but also helps the brain think creatively. One third of our lives is spent sleeping which is a major part of our lives, therefore adequate sleep is important to boost creativity, helps in achieving our goals by generating not only creative ideas but implementing them in the most creative method. “If the entrepreneur is creative in his ideas, it will have a ripple effect on other employees to come up with their creative best,” said a sleep analyst.

Bill Gates once said, “Even though it’s fun to stay up all night take a red eye flight, but of I have to be creative I need seven hours of sleep. I can give a speech without much sleep, I can do parts of my job that way, but in thinking creatively, I’m not much good without seen hours.”

Co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, businesswoman, Arianna Huffington started taking sleep very seriously after she lost her consciousness way back in her earlier days of her career due to sleep deprivation, and exhaustion breaking her cheekbone in the process. That inspired Arianna to write a book on sleep later in her life, namely, The Sleep Revolution. She writes that how our cultural dismissal of sleep as time wasted compromises our health and our decision-making and undermines our work lives.

In The Sleep Revolution, Arianna explores all the latest science on what exactly is going on while we sleep and dream. She takes on the sleeping pill industry, and all the ways our addiction to technology disrupts our sleep. She also offers a range of recommendations and tips from leading scientists on how we can get better and more restorative sleep, and harness its incredible power.

Entrepreneurial Insomnia

Being one’s, own boss is a stressful job much more than a 9 to 5 job, handling A to Z of your office in initial days till you establish a full-grown business, stress will be an integral part of it. Losing sleep over it will not help rather derail your growth process. It is dangerous trying to function on no sleep.

Jeff Bezos sleeps seven to eight hours per night. “I prioritize it for better thoughts. I have more energy. My mood is better,” Bezos once said. Bezos specifically ties good sleep to his capacity to make smart decisions.

Entrepreneur insomnia is a real thing. If one finds oneself working constantly, taking longer than normal to fall asleep, or having a hard time shutting down for the day, you suffer from insomnia. Experts say Meditation, setting fix working hours, turning off all the gadgets before sleep will help overcome insomnia.

Ways to help improve sleep hours for Entrepreneurs:

Prioritize work

Whether you’re launching a new business or starting at a new company, it’s vital that your sleep schedule is in place. Evaluate your workload, prioritize the most important things and figure out what you can hold off on or pass along to co-workers who have more time. Prioritizing sleep starts with prioritizing work.

Shut off the gadgets

Whether it’s your phone, laptop, ipad it needs to shut down for you to take a shut eye. Getting devices out of the room is common, though many of these entrepreneurs and executives acknowledged just how hard that can be. Instead, begin by turning off the TV or not looking at your phone for long periods of time beginning about an hour before bed.

Cutting down on sugar, exercise at night and caffeine.

It’s okay to indulge in a cup of coffee in the morning, but it’s important to avoid consuming caffeinated drinks in the noon and evening. Cutting down on Sugars and highly processed foods throughout the day will help you get a sound night’s sleep. These foods do harm to your metabolism and insulin levels, which directly impact your sleep. Also, refraining from any big meals two hours before bed will help you sleep better.

Declutter and preparation for tomorrow

For many entrepreneurs, its stress that keeps them awake at night and deprives them of getting enough sleep. Often, it’s that the mind just won’t stop talking or taking account of the tasks that need to be done. To counter that, many people journal and clean before bed so their brain is cool, calm, and collected when they hit the sack.

Good sleep will set you up for success from the moment you open your eyes. A well-rested mind and body are better equipped to tackle each day.

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” – Mahatma Gandhi

It can be hard to put your rest at a high priority, especially with all the work. But it will be worth it in the long run. In fact, your body, mind and your business will thank you for it.

Decompress Before Bed

As an entrepreneur, if you don’t deal with that stress properly via relaxation and mental processing, it’ll prevent you from getting sleep.

After a hard day’s work and before you go to bed, here’s your chance to unwind a little. Why would you want that? Well, transitioning directly from business to bed doesn’t work if you want to get better sleep. Both are two very different zones and your subconscious mind needs time and space to switch between the two. Since you’ve put your device away, you could read a book.

Alternatively, you could listen to some music, spend some time with your family or just use this time to reflect on your day. Whatever you choose to do, the main goal is spending time on your own, in a relaxed state.Furthermore, you should start dimming the lights during this time, too. This routine will take some practice, but once you do it regularly, it will help you get better sleep.

Create a Sleep-Friendly Environment

Your sleep time is precious and the quality of your sleep will determine your output for the next day. So, you need to create a quiet and peaceful environment that can instantly help you get better sleep.

Furthermore, shut off all noises by wearing earplugs when sleeping. If you have the habit of listening to something while sleeping, listen to white noise or nature sounds. Also, it’s best to have dark curtains (such as black-out curtains) installed in your bedroom to ensure you sleep in complete darkness. Alternatively, you can also consider sleeping with a nice, comfortable eye mask.

Sleep Epiphanies

Does your brain come alive at night? As an entrepreneur, you have multiple thoughts and ideas running at the same time. Hence, it is natural to have bedtime epiphanies.

Your subconscious mind will keep thinking and adding tasks to your mental to-do list. What’s more, these might be some of the best ideas you’ve ever had, coming to you at bedtime. What tends to happen is that you feel afraid you will forget these ideas and hence keep thinking about them. A simple solution is to keep a notebook beside your bed. When you can’t sleep because of a good idea, just write it down. Make sure everything noteworthy is in the notebook. This trick will reduce anxiety and help you get better sleep.

Adopting habits to Boost Productivity

You don’t have to sacrifice a proper night’s sleep to build your business. Instead, improve your day’s processes to increase your productivity. You’ll succeed when you have your time, resources, and mind working together for a better output.

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