So you are giving serious consideration to starting a business and running it from home. Thousands of people just like you make that big move from the corporate office to the home office. While this is a great move for quite a number of those who do take that decision, the fact is the majority of small businesses fail in their very first year of operation, as much as 80%.While there are numerous reasons for this, one striking reason is an inadequate skills set of the business owner. In a home business environment this is even more crucial as there is usually only the owner running the business. So a critical question you should be asking yourself if you are thinking of starting a home-based business is, are my job skills transferable in a manner that will benefit my business?Obviously you would have to do a match between what you believe your business would need in terms of a skills set to execute your business plan effectively and your own skills set. So one of the first things you really need to address is your own skills inventory. Basically you will want to answer two questions with your personal skills inventory exercise – what are the work-place skills you now have, and at what level of competence each one is.Your next step is to go through your business plan which should give you a good idea of what skills you will need where and when. Determine those tasks that you will need to perform as the business owner, how often and in what time frame. Your objective here is to come up with a skills requirement chart outlining the requisite skills, how critical each is to achieving your goals, who will be carrying out the tasks, how often the particular task will have to be done, and over what time frame.You now have a fair idea of what your business require in terms of skills and what skills you have to bring to the business. It is now time to find the critical skills gaps that you will need to fill somehow. Once you have identified the skills gaps, you need to give some consideration how these will be addressed.Some steps you can take to fill the skills gaps identified are:* Take additional training to upgrade your skills.* For those tasks where you do not have the necessary skills set to perform, consider contracting these out.* Take on a partner to complement your skills set.Ensuring that you have the requisite skills in place to make your home-based business a success is one of the most important things you can do for your business. It will save you a lot of unnecessary headache and frustration as you are now much better equipped to execute your home business plan.
Your Home-Based Business – Do You Have the Requisite Skills Set?
Yellow Page Advertising For Lawyers – Where Have All The Calls Gone?
I get calls every week from lawyers saying they’re not getting calls anymore from yellow page advertising. Having done quite well in the past, they’re afraid to discontinue the advertising. They want to know what’s going on and what to do.
Apparently, lawyers are not the only ones. In his article “Quit wasting money on Yellow Page advertising” by Peter Fernandez, D.C., a yellow page, print advertising and practice management consultant for chiropractors, Dr. Fernandez answers the question, “Why has advertising in the Yellow Pages changed from one of the best ways to advertise to one of the worst in just a few years?” (See 1, below)
This article will attempt to explain where all the calls went. I believe lawyers began advertising in the Yellow Pages much earlier than on TV because of the cost; most lawyers were reluctant to become pioneers of TV advertising; and lawyers were pursued by yellow page salespeople, but not by TV salespeople. Since 1976 through the mid-1980s, the Yellow Pages and classified newspaper ads were virtually the only place a potential client could find a lawyer advertising. Consequently, lawyers advertising in the Yellow Pages did not have much competition and had very good results.
Many more lawyers flocked to the Yellow Pages which then became very crowded. In the last few years, and after a few pioneers, many of the lawyers advertising in the Yellow Pages discovered what every other business has long known, that TV is by far both the most effective and cost-effective media. According to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, from January 2004 through September 2004 lawyers have spent $287.3 million on TV compared with only $71.3 million on print media, $11.4 million on radio and $4.1 million on Internet advertising. According to research done by the Television Bureau of Advertising, the public’s perception of television gets the votes for Most Authoritative and Most Exciting. Both influential and persuasive, TV wins over other media, in both categories, by a wide margin among Adults 18+. TV scores 81.8% in the Most Influential category, with newspapers a distant second at 8.5%. TV scores 66.8% Most Persuasive with newspapers, again a distant second at 14.2%.
Just as buying something wholesale or in large quantities, your cost per person reached from advertising is reduced when you buy media that reaches more people. Broadcast TV reaches many times more people than a county-wide yellow page book and therefore costs much less per person reached. In the New York DMA (broadcast TV market), there are 29 counties reached by TV. If there was only one yellow page book in each county, you would have to advertise in 29 yellow page books to reach the same geographic area as TV. Unfortunately, there are several yellow page books in each county. Smaller community yellow page books produce even less of a return on investment because they reach even fewer people. Many lawyers have found out that for the cost of a full-page advertisement in just two county-wide yellow page books, you can advertise on TV with a respectable budget and reach the population of an entire DMA.
Today, due to the large number of lawyers advertising on TV, potential clients are being diverted away from yellow page books. Additionally, in the field of personal injury, the problem is compounded. Seriously injured people are usually in bed in a hospital or at home watching TV. Lawyers advertising on TV reach potential accident clients long before they can even
get to yellow page books.
When lawyers first began advertising, there was only one yellow page book. Now there are commonly three, four or even five county-wide yellow page books and several village, community or neighborhood yellow page books as well. Some advertisers have even lost their position in the Yellow Pages because they signed a contract with another yellow page book not realizing it was a different book and they couldn’t afford two books. Because a consumer will typically keep one yellow page book and throw out the others, the question an advertiser faces is which yellow page book to advertise in or to advertise in all of them. Will your advertisement be in a yellow page book that’s thrown in the garbage? I keep only one book and it stays in the closet, rarely used. Today, I use the Internet instead of a yellow page book.
While there was once only one Yellow Page book in town receiving 100% of yellow page advertising revenue, they are now losing a large share of that revenue to several competing yellow page books, but their operating costs remain fixed. All of the yellow page book companies must print and distribute the same number of books. Unless all advertisers advertise in all three yellow page books, the publishing companies have to increase advertising fees thereby increasing the cost of reaching a yellow page consumer. In an effort to increase revenue, yellow page books have even begun creating new real estate to sell including advertising on the covers, spine, tabbed pages and even Post-it Notes style ads. These high visibility advertisements also divert yellow page consumers from regular full-page advertisements.
Simply stated, there was once only one yellow page book in town; it was cheaper to advertise in the book; there were fewer lawyers advertising in the book; there were few lawyers advertising on TV; the Internet was not what it is today; and there were far more people using the Yellow Pages than there are today.
So what’s a lawyer to do with yellow page advertising? If you’re one of the three or four largest advertisers in your market with an advertising budget large enough for a substantial TV advertising campaign including billboards and radio, you may want to consider advertising in all of the yellow page books. If you’re not one of the largest advertisers in your market, my suggestion is to discontinue advertising in yellow page books and to spend your money on TV. If you have a 1-800 vanity telephone number available and extra money in the budget, you should also advertise on billboards and radio.
Transforming Education to Meet the Needs of a Business Climate
Seeing Education Differently
At one time in California, education was a two-track structure. One track led to college, the other track to a vocational career. Of course some students, after exiting high school with vocational skills, entered the work market and chose to return to college. But, what of those students who never learned a vocation because they were on the “college” track? When California went to a one track system, it failed to recognize that students who had a vocation were more likely to succeed in college. And, that students who had no vocational training were very likely to fail in the business arena if they dropped out of college (as many do). However, for some reason, we have continued to minimize the importance of such skills as balancing a checkbook, paying taxes, maintaining focus and a work ethic in lieu of raising our academic bar.
With the economy in a major dip, as happens every few years, education in California is taking another hit in terms of rising class sizes, fewer educators available to meet student needs and fewer vocational subjects being broached because vocational skills do not get the school the scores they need and many schools are barely able to provide the minimum services that students need.
Education as a Business
Whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not, education is no longer an organism that just lives and feeds and thrives because “it should.” As with any business, if education does not adapt to meet the changing needs of their customers, not only will the students suffer, but our long term economic health and vitality will also suffer.
If a student does not learn a focused work ethic, they may eventually graduate from school with a doctorate. The degree will be of little use to businesses who need that individual to arrive at work on time and be able to work within a company budget. I have seen countless companies hire graduates who, on paper, had received a multitude of accolades in academics. Then, when it was time to put that education to work, find an apartment, make commitments, etc., they had no idea where to start. Needless to say this created a very challenging learning curve for both the company trying to survive visible inadequacies and individuals trying to adapt to the needs, vision and goals of the venture they had entered.
Education is not a black and white issue. Within the gray area of these extremes there is knowledge that will profit both the student and the business world they will eventually enter. In order for our education system to begin to prosper, we must begin to look at that gray area and adapt some of those vital characteristics that will provide the synergy between education and business that is needed.
Comparing Value Systems
It is important that we understand the disparity of education and business from some of the core elements that are a daily reminder of where we need to start.
- A student is fifteen minutes late to class everyday, but aces papers and tests. This goes on semester after semester. The price the student pays is that they get a “B” instead of an “A.”
- The student then graduates and is hired in a prestigious position because of their degree and GPA. However, they are still fifteen minutes late to work everyday and out the door when their mental bell rings.
How long will that employee keep their job? Would they last for four or six months being late every day, even though they were smart and could produce the expected work? Of course not, my company cannot afford to lose fifteen minutes daily when I am paying someone top dollar by the hour to produce and excel.
- A student, through their entire academic career, has found it easier to pay for papers to be written than to write them on their own. Having never gotten caught the student has excelled.
- Again, my company hires this student who is an absolute brilliant writer. After the honeymoon is over two things will happen. The new employee will find that there are not a lot of co-workers willing to write for them and the company will find it has hired someone who couldn’t put two words together sequentially if they were cut out and glued to a page.
The loser in both of these instances is the business, education’s customer. Education systems should not, in addition to providing academic challenges, fail to provide those tools that students will need to succeed in the real world. Otherwise, we will continue to have very over-educated people working at menial jobs because they were swept away by the culture shock when they entered the real world of work and found that they 1) had to produce every day whether they felt like it or not; 2) had to be on time to work and meetings; and 3) actually had to prove themselves and their skills at some point in their work career.
What Students Deserve and Business Want
Students deserve an education that will transition them smoothly from an academic environment to a business environment with minimal adjustment. They deserve to learn how the interest on credit cards can impact their future and how balancing a checkbook or keeping records is important. They deserve the right to be expected to excel and overcome challenges proactively and be leaders. In other words, students deserve coursework that will actually apply to the business world they will spend the better part of their lives participating in.
As a business owner, speaker and trainer, I learned long ago that if a person has the ability to see obstacles as challenges, has the wherewithal to think out of the box to solve problems and the willingness to learn and share information, whether or not it will make them the focus of attention, they are an asset and can be taught any of the skills necessary to do an outstanding job.
Final Thoughts
It would be to the advantage of schools to ask businesses through surveys or consultants, what they are looking for in students; not just one study every four or five years, but regularly. In this way education processes could be adapted to meet the current and future needs of the companies and businesses that will be hiring those students when they graduate. In addition it would be more advantageous for school systems to develop a “business” mind. To expect excellence, a work ethic and promote real life application to educational theory.
Many students today must pass several exams during the course of their academic career to move from one grade level to another. I liken this to exams required by some companies to get a job or be promoted. Businesses have been doing this for a lot longer than school systems, and if nothing else, we do know that just because someone can pass an exam, does not mean they can do a job.
There are some very bright students out there who just can’t pass a darn exam whether it is because they freeze up or just can’t put pen to paper on demand. These students now have been given fewer choices and options to succeed. It is important that if you are a student who cannot write, cannot pass an exam, or have difficulty in a class, that you get the help you need before you get so frustrated that you quit or find that even if you do manage to get a degree you can’t get a job that will last.
If you are a company who is trying to develop policies and procedures to address the inadequacies of the interviewees you are coming into contact with you do not want to spend valuable dollars on training basic skills. It is not cost effective and has no long term return on the investment that you put in.
It is time for the school system to start functioning like the business it is, meeting the needs of it’s primary customers (the students) and long term customers (businesses). Without a synergy of effort of the part of education and business, we will continue to find that the gaps between educational theory and business needs is a chasm that is very difficult to jump.