I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year – here’s to wishing you every success in business for 2012 whether with your eisting business or if you decide to start a new business or buy a business.

Time to reflect…

2011 was a good year for me and the business I purchased in late 2010, which had the best year it has ever had with two absolute record months for October and November 2011! I am looking forward to 2012 and taking this business forward.

I have also started to look at property again and just had an offer accepted for a property in Poole, which will be my second Dorset property, so this is a good start to the New Year.

Best of luck and I look forward to your comments over the next 12 months on my business blog, plus reading your threads in the business forum.

With Christmas just around the corner, perhaps it’s time to reflect on your business and how it has done over the last 12 months and how it might do in 2012.

Is it time to look at what you could do to expand, by looking at your business plan and preparing new cash flow forecasts. Keep in mind that you should take a positive outlook on things and see things how you want them to be rather than how you don’t want them to be.

Think about getting yourself a mentor for 2012 – most people who mentor do it for free because they enjoy it!

Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year from in-business blog, Russell Bowyer.

I took over a business in October 2010 and in that month it made sales of £126,000, whereas in the last month we acheived £271,000!

I acheived this by applying some of the 7 ways to grow a business and, just in case you are reading this and thinking turnover is all very well, it is not just about turnover, as within this larger turnover figure, I have increased prices also (sometimes by 40-50%) to make the business more profitable also.

I am looking at putting together a business seminar on how firstly to go about buying a business and then on if you have one, how to grow it by applying the 7 ways to grow a business and will be titled ‘Success in business’.

If you are in the UK and are interested in these business seminars please post a comment on this article or email me at info@in-business.org.uk.

Good luck with your business in the present economic situation.

Is the fear of failure in business holding you back?

Please don’t let fear of failure stop you from starting a small business or from buying an existing business.

I am convinced the biggest thing that stops people from going into business is ‘The Fear of Failure’, this is usually dressed up as ‘I don’t have the money’; ‘I don’t have the time’; ‘I don’t have the experience or tallent’; or ‘I’m not very good at selling.’ But in reality these ‘excuses’ are no more than fear dressed up. Look a bit closer and delve a bit deeper inside your thoughts and I’d be willing to bet that a stronger reason always emerges to the top ‘FEAR!’

Other comments that people say are “I’d like to start a small business but I don’t know if there will be enough people that would buy my product.” Or “I have a mortgage to pay and a family to feed and I don’t know if I could make enough money to live on.”

All the above obstacle to starting a small business are all about fear of failure and, whilst fear is designed to save us from physical harm, such as an attack by a grisly bear, it will be holding you back unnecessarily. The primal fear of an animal attack is a good thing, but the fear that prevents you from doing things that you want to do are not.

So if the fear of failure is what is preventing you from starting a small business you will need to overcome this and use some positive thinking. This fear is usually broken down into two halves:

 - If I fail I will be a loser and others will look down on me.

 - If I fail I will lose all my money and my home.

Let’s take a close look at these two…

If I fail I will be a loser

You will only be a loser if you tell yourself this, whereas in reality you are not at all. Most people will admire your spirit and hold you in higher esteem than you might think. I know when I bought my last business people would say to me how they admire what I have done. Of course if your business were to go wrong you might not feel good about it, but it is all about what you tell yourself, as to how you will feel about it. So tell yourself a different story and you will feel different.

If I fail I will lose all my money and my home

You might well lose the money you have invested within the business if it fails, but if you set the business up in the right way in the first place, like incorporating your business, you will protect your personal assets, so you will not lose all your money nor your assets. The only exception here is if you have secured any of your assets on any loans you might take out to set the business up.

If you never try you will never know and something I heard Sir Richard Branson say “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

With the present economic turmoil it could be argued that success in business right now would be difficult.

This might be true and you might have to approach business in a different way, but I believe that there are too many business owners that are focusing on the present economic conditions too much, and if we become what we think about most of the time, then what’s the betting, if you worry about your business then your business is likely to reflect this.

I recently wrote an article about the power of the subconscious, which explains just how powerful the subconscious mind is, but also you might be interested to learn that where your logical mind is in conflict with your imaginative mind…imagination wins through every time. If you don’t believe me then explain that to the millions of people who suffer the fear of spiders or the fear of flying etc.

In reality (or the logical way of thinking) a spider is thousands of times smaller than we are, so to be scared of such a small creature is not logical, except for some healthy weariness of the really poisonous spiders of course. Which points to something much more powerful at play in the mind, which is partly linked to the persons imagination. This irrational fear (or imaginative fear) can be totally debilitating at times, so to underestimate it would be foolish.

However, this is the good part…

If you harness the power of the imagination by thinking about good and positive things happening, for example - imagine your sales going though the roof; imagine record sales and a healthy cash flow; imagine your business growing over the next 12-18 months and beyond; etc. You will find good things starting to happen, as your brain goes to work to find a way.

You might find this difficult to believe, but in order for this to work you need to keep focused and to remove any negative thoughts. Spend say 90% of your time thinking positive thoughts and you will be guaranteed to have a positive outcome. I say 90% rather than 100%, as I appreciate that even for the best of us thinking 100% positive all of the time might be unrealistic.

Another thing to realise is that the brain loves to solve questions and let me also explain this by way of an example:

You will probably have come across many people (which might include yourself) who use the expression ‘I can’t afford it’. This phrase is extremely negative and in itself is extremely limiting.

However, if you were to replace this phrase with questions like: how can I afford it; what can I do to make the money to do it; what would I need to do with my business or what money do I need to earn and how, in order to afford it; etc. your brain will want to come up with solutions. If you do this in a brain storming session, you’d be surprised at how many answers you will get.

What you will find is that most people will then be either too lazy to go ahead and do any of the tasks listed, or use further negative comments like, I can’t do that – which in many instances will not be true.

So to truly find success in business then harness power of your imagination and ask yourself some powerful and searching questions..then act upon the solutions and answers to your questions today!

Having just returned from a trip to the Red Sea in Hurghada, I am all too aware of the Egyptian hard selling style!

The strange thing is that this seemingly desparate method of selling really puts the punter off, well certainly if you are British, we hate the hard sell. I am sure no one likes to be put upon and forced into a shop or to buy something we don’t want, but the Egyptians don’t seem to understand this concept.

It dawned on me that, having read books and having been on selling courses, you are told that you must not come across as being ‘desparate’, as this will be picked upon by the buyer. This all made sense, but finally made complete sense in Egypt.

I was talking to a travel rep on my last day and she was asking us whether we would be coming back to Hurghada and, apart from the usual Pharos revenge which is almost as hard to avoid, I mentioned the hassling by the Egyptian shop owners….

Firstly, I apologise for my absence on my own blog – I have been away investing and would like to discuss with you what to invest in now, with interest rates still at an all time low across the globe.

I have just invested in a new business and this has taken up my time – I bought a new business back in October 2010 and will admit that it has taken all my focus for the last 6-8 months. The industry was completely new to me and the learning curve extremely steep – the business designs, manufactures and installs fitted furniture, mostly built in bedrooms and home offices – so it is not only and industry I don’t know, but also I have never run a manufacturing business!

The big topic and discussion right now is where to invest cash – it has been reported in the news that the Governor of the Bank of England is encouraging people to spend their cash!

So what are the options open to investing your cash?

- Put it in a deposit account and earn a very low amount of interest?
- Invest in property?
- Invest in a business?
- Invest cash in stocks and shares is a possibility?
- ISA’s, Pensions and other investments or what about government bonds?

The above are a few ideas of what can be done and in many cases for most people this is a bit of a dilemma! A colleague of mine is trying to raise a significant amount of capital for business investment purposes, and it seems as though the majority of the people he has approached are wary of the ‘Double Dip’ potential, so are holding on to their cash right now.

One of the problems with cash is that, certainly with interest rates so low, the amount you will earn with it sitting in a deposit account will not keep up with the rate of inflation, so that in the long-term the buying power of your cash will lessen over time.

However, this is not to say that you should rush out and spend it all, however, having said that I can quite understand where the Bank of England Governor is coming from, if people don’t spend because of their worry about a ‘double dip’, they will inadvertently bring about the ‘double dip’ anyway, as the result of holding back – a kind of self fulfilling prophesy as it were!

So if cash is not a good option, then what about the other options open to investors right now. Well the good news is that it is extremely cheap to borrow right now (if you are able to obtain the loan in the first place and if you shop around), so if you decide to borrow to buy property or to buy a business, then this is can be extremely exciting and highly rewarding.

Right now, that is exactly what I am doing – I am combing some of my cash with a loan from the bank (at the rate of just 4.59%!) to buy a business. The return on my cash investment is looking like 105% in the first year, which to my way of thinking is an excellent return on capital, and way in excess of what it will earn in a deposit account or in property and is well in excess of the UK’s rate of inflation right now!

I would always recommend that you do your homework, but don’t be blinkered – there are too many people that say I can’t do this or that, or I don’t have the money etc. Instead of telling yourself ‘I can’t do this or that’, ask yourself questions using the word ‘HOW‘; like how can I do this or; how can I do that; Your brain likes questions like this. If you ask the right questions your brain can set about to answer them, whereas if you tell yourself it can’t be done, well guess what – ‘It Can’t!‘ and you will be right.

This article is not meant to be about investment advice, as I am not regulated by the FSA, but it is about making you think about other ways of using spare cash to invest in other areas that you might not have done before.

It might be worth your reading my article about the ‘Power of the Subconscious Mind’  if you want help with your thinking on this subject.

If you are a business owner and looking for a good business development system you might be wondering what to look for.

This article is aimed at helping you make that decision, by firstly explaining what we understand by ‘Business Development’.

So what is Business Development?

- It involves profit improvement or profit increase.

- It involves improving business processes in order to reduce costs.

- It involves looking at the systems within the business and then reviewing ways of improving those systems together with adding in more and better systems.

- It means looking at the involvement of the business owners and how to help make them less involved in the day-to-day running of the business and of how to make the business less dependent on the owners, thereby making the business more valuable.

- Essentially business development is about creating value from an already existing business both in terms of profits and in terms of shareholder value.

Now that we have defined business development what is a business development system?

Simply answered it is a system that would help a business owner look at all or some of the above areas and one that is designed to help focus on different aspects of the business.

Some of the process might involve using business performance management software, whilst others might include employing business consultants or specialists in this field.

One important aspect never to be overlooked is the involvement of the employees of the business, as they are the ones on the ‘front-line’ as it were and possibly more importantly, are the ones that will be operating the systems to be implemented.

Web business development is at the top of the list of things to get right with your business and even today it amazes how many businesses still operate without a website or with one that does not work.

The balance to get right with any website is the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the design of the site so that it looks pleasing to the eye.

So to optimize your website for search terms for your business you need to incorporate those words on your pages, in the title and in the description. Web Business Development is an ongoing process – so even if you have optimized once you will need to keep working on your site. One important side to website development is link building as this is one aspect of SEO that all search engines take account of.

Using blogs to build links is one good method as this can build ‘link-power’ if the links are ‘follow’ links, but even if they are not then you will help to build your Alexa rank by having people visiting your site from as many places as possible.