With today’s fast-pace living and business environment, there are more people who sink into day-to-day routines. Very early in the morning they have to wake up and go to work, facing busy traffic along the way. In the office, they are back to do the entire routine job like making reports, attending daily and weekly meetings, and so on. When the sun sets, they go back home, have dinner, rest and sleep. The next day, they are back doing all the same things yet again. And so on…

These routines will even be increasingly more mundane and boring if their work and office environment are just “so-so”, without variation. The office becomes identical with long sleeve, tie, shoes and other things that are formal in a corporate environment.

Now, imagine how exciting it will be if once a week you can dress differently and come to office, let’s say with cowboy dress code or beach wear. Unconsciously, these small things will affect the working spirit of the people and interestingly, the company does not need to come out with any cost at all to these kinds of variation. What is needed is only creativity and initiative.

You do not have to think very hard on how to make the environment and the working atmosphere in your office to be more exciting. Just do all these simple stuff, like to have an outing together with all employees, give bonus to the employee who work well or to choose an employee as “the best service provider” and give him or her one extra day-off, or just to have a lunch or dinner together once a month with “unique” dress code. Besides giving a special touch to the working environment, this kind of activities can be the drive that pushes the spirit and enthusiasm of the employees.

As you can see, those stuff mentioned above do not need a huge amount of money to be implemented. With creativity and unique ideas, you can turn your working environment into a more exciting and refreshing place, not only an office with routines that are boring and tiring!

As I learn from doing home business, I get to meet and learn from a lot people. Being an individual who loves to reach out to people, I love meeting and learning from people especially business owners and entrepreneurs. Why do I mention business owners and entrepreneurs? I felt that business owners and entrepreneurs have huge responsibilities. I mean really huge responsibilities in making a successful business.

I felt that entrepreneurs have huge task of playing roles such as leading a team, investing wisely for the business, taking care of the financial cash flow of the company and selling to attract the market.Entrepreneurs need to have great leadership qualities. One of the roles that entrepreneurs might do often is to raise money for the development and progress of the company. When they need to raise money, they need to impress the investors. I was sitting down the other day and I was thinking that one of the strategies that entrepreneurs can use to impress their investors to raise money is to have an excellent team of board of directors. Who would be in my board of directors’ team?

The first person in my team is the experienced wise man. He would be someone with vast amount of experience. When he speaks, the team members listen attentively as he shares his knowledge and experience. Second person in the team is the smart aleck guy, the individual with great technical knowledge who would look into the nitty gritty details of potential problems of the business development.Third person in my team is the extremely hard worker.He is a self driven and motivated individual. His motto: Commit to win! He is someone who would go all out and do his utmost best for the team. He works hard and normally accomplishes his task well for the team. His action motivates others to work hard for the team.

Fourth person in the team is the feedback guy. I realized when I sat with my good friend over a cup of coffee, we do love to complain about things in life. I also realized that every time when we complain, we realized the mistakes, pitfalls and feedback from our complaints that we can gather to learn from and develop and improve ourselves better. Thus, it does help to have a feedback guy in the team who would provide great feedback about any shortcomings in the running of the business. The fifth and last person in the team is the playboy. The playboy is the individual who loves to network with people and have a lot of contacts in his list. These are some choices of the team members of the board of directors.

According to US Small Business Administration, more than 50% of small businesses fail in first year of business while 95% fail within the first 5 years.

Brian Hazelgren, author of Tactical Entrepreneur says, There has to be a solid, sound strategy in mind of taking care of the short term aspects of business, but also keeping enough focus on the future of how do we actually grow this business. Get everything lined up now, so that you are successful and have good solid foundation to operate off of.

Brian has experienced the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Learning from his failed business ventures, he has developed proactive tips and strategies to assist others taking the leap to becoming successful entrepreneurs.

Avoid the pitfalls of operating a business:
1. Use mentors and coaches. Find successful people who have been in the frontlines of operating a business.
2. Read as many books as you can on entrepreneurship, marketing, and business planning. Gather as much information as you can.

A combination of different resources is available for successful business startup:

1. Use tools and technology to help setup your business.
2. Decide on what kind of people you are going to employ and what job skills you are looking for.
3. Keep up with what other companies have done and what business practices are out there.
4. Research buying patterns and mind set.
5. Constantly research competition and buying trends of the competition.
6. Keep in mind what is unique about your business, who your buyers are, who your competitors are and what is your distribution strategy.
7. Use software to help compile a strategic business plan.

Some of the simplest ideas are the most beneficial: 1. Open an email account, and develop a website.
2. Business cards and brochures are simple, yet powerful tools.
3. Develop marketing strategies by compiling data about buying patterns of people, what they like, what they are buying and where they are buying it.

Use promotional programs to create a unique selling advantage. Explain why your business is unique. List your products and how they are made.

Creating the right type of advertising scheme will make clear to you where to spend your resources.

A solid business plan is needed to present to potential investors. Present them with a plan they can read through to get a better understanding of your business.

Keep to the point and convince the investors that they will get a substantial return on their investment.

The investor ready business plan will keep the investors involved, engaged, and leave them wanting more call to action. If you can present this type of business plan, you will have a high chance of getting the capital you need.

Any business can be successful with determination and a solid action plan.