Sometimes you know that you are ready for something new, even when you aren’t quite ready to quit the job you have. Working on your new career while continuing to keep your current job can help you to get started without losing money or taking on too much risk too quickly. There are many things you can do to make this dream a reality if you are willing to be flexible with yourself and your schedule.
Start Something on the Side
Your first step can always be to pick up a side gig doing something you love. Since you would only be doing it on the side at first, you will be able to figure out how to make things work on a small scale. Then, if you find that things are going well and that you are ready to start increasing your time on your side gig, you can make adjustments to your regular work life. For example, you could try transitioning to part time at a certain point or shake things up so you have more room in your schedule for your new pursuits.
Take Online Classes
If you feel that education is the best way for you to start working towards your new career goals, you might want to consider taking online classes. With online education you have the ability to work around your current job schedule and you don’t have to relocate or go into campus. Online classes offer more flexibility in terms of scheduling. And that means you can build a schedule that limits stress and keeps you moving forward.
Seek New Skills in Your Work
If you know that your company offers other career paths that you are more interested in, you can start working towards those things. You can start by attending training sessions on new skills that may even be sponsored by your job. Talk to your manager about other opportunities so they can help you to expand your role and change the capacity you work in. This method can help you to move forward, and is especially great if you love the place where you work.
Finding joy in your work is important, and sometimes that means changing careers. But that doesn’t mean that you have to let go of your current job right away. As you think about your goals for the future remember that you have the power to make your life different if you are willing to try.
There are few industries or financial sectors that offer such a massive opportunity for everyday people to grow their wealth and gain financial independence other than real estate. Real estate has, year after year, continued to grow in value, and even with crashes like in 2008, real estate remains one of the strongest financial investments in the world. There are a lot of different ways that you can make your living in real estate, some which are common knowledge, and others that may be news to you. Here are a few careers in real estate that you should investigate.
Real Estate Agent
The first career in real estate that you should investigate is one that you have likely heard of, that of a real estate agent. Real estate agents represent homeowners or home buyers on the market and help them get the best possible price for their sale or purchase. When selling a home, real estate agents are responsible for listings, open houses, and leading the homeowner through the negotiation process to help get the best offer as quickly as possible. When representing buyers, real estate agents are responsible for finding potential houses for sale that meet their clients wants and needs in a home and helping them get the best price possible. Real estate agents need a real estate license which requires the passing of the real estate exam in your state.
Mortgage Loan Originator
The next career in real estate worth looking into is one that is likely less familiar to you, becoming a mortgage loan originator. Whenever you purchase a home, unless you are going to pay the full price in cash, it is going to require a mortgage loan. And a mortgage loan originator, or MLO, is an individual who helps guide you through the mortgage loan approval process, gathering paperwork, giving you estimates on your interest rate and loan amount, all the way through closing on your loan. Being a mortgage loan originator requires a license.
Property Manager
The final career in real estate worth looking into is that of a property manager. Property managers are typically hired by property owners and real estate investors to manage the daily operations of a property. When renting units in a property, it is the owner’s responsibility to take care of maintenance and emergencies. Hiring a property manager allows them to transfer that responsibility to the property manager. Being a property manager does not require a license.
Working in real estate can be a very lucrative career opportunity. And there are many ways to make a living in real estate. Consider these three careers in real estate to find the career that is right for you.
When running your business, there are many “top priorities” for you to manage. However, safety is an element of your business that truly needs to be a priority. Creating a safe work environment is required by law, but putting safety first can also benefit your business in a variety of ways.
Reduce Your Insurance Premiums
It’s important for your business to have insurance in order to cover any unexpected circumstances. This insurance can often be expensive and you may be looking for ways to lower your insurance premiums. In addition to many other methods, creating a safe workplace is a great way to lower these premiums. If you have more accidents and injuries at your business, your insurance premiums will be raised. A safe work environment with better safety measures in place can get you better insurance premiums.
Prevent Lawsuits
When accidents happen at your business, it can cause a lot of problems. One of the biggest issues that arise from workplace accidents is lawsuits. These lawsuits can be from customers who were injured on your property or employees who were injured. Lawsuits can create negative perceptions of your business and they are very expensive. If you emphasize safety, you can prevent these lawsuits from happening. One way to keep your workplace safe is by following widely recognized standards. For example, you can review the standards created by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). NFPA is a consensus standard rather than a legally enforced standard. You aren’t required to follow these standards, but doing so can create a safer work environment where accidents/injuries, and lawsuits, are less likely to occur.
Increased Productivity
In any business, you want increased productivity. Higher productivity leads to more profit for your business, so it makes sense to do everything you can to increase productivity. Safety is one way you can do this. Emphasizing safety can make your employees feel more comfortable and it can show them that you value them. When your workers feel safe and satisfied while at work, they are more likely to work efficiently. You also will have fewer interruptions or turnover due to accidents and injuries. Make safety a priority and you will likely see a boost in productivity.
It is your responsibility to keep your employees safe while at work. Create a plan to improve safety measures and reduce the number of accidents and injuries. Doing so will benefit you and your business as a whole.
A successful business event can promote your company, strengthen your brand, or provide employees with needed training or team building. Whatever the purpose, business events need to be well planned and orchestrated to make the most of your company’s time and investment. The planning process can be complex, but focusing on a few major areas such as the following will make it simpler!
Understand Your Purpose
Before scheduling an event, you will already have a general idea of its purpose, but you may not have thought through the details. Set a list of goals and objectives, and put them in writing. Keep the list small and practical and make sure each objective is achievable in the time allotted. With your objectives defined, you will better be able to decide on themes, speakers, focus group topics, activities, and entertainment. Then, envision what a successful outcome for your event will look like. Plan how each objective will be measured and evaluated. Finally, think about what you will do with the information gathered and how it might assist in reaching your business goals or planning future events.
Secure a Venue
Next, you will need to decide where the event will be held. Consider the size of your business or office space and how many people might be attending. If you have space, you can save money by holding the event onsite. However, larger events and certain special events may require a more spacious, offsite venue. Huge events such as conferences are often held at hotels or convention centers, where you can utilize several rooms and a variety of room sizes. You may need a large banquet room as well as smaller rooms for breakout sessions. Factors to consider include the estimated attendance, the geographical location, available amenities, and equipment and technology. Also keep in mind transportation and parking needs.
Decide Who’s Invited
The purpose of the event will largely determine who will be invited. If it’s a business promotion, you’ll want to invite current and prospective clients, whereas for a company team-building event you’ll invite mainly employees. For conferences, leave plenty of time to contact outside consultants, keynote speakers, session leaders, and vendors. Business-to-business networking events require the most attention to the guest list. To make it easier, narrow your focus based on your purpose objectives and your theme. Invite a mix of people you know well and people you’d like to know better. A few high-profile influencers or a guest speaker may entice people to attend.
Reduce Waste
Reducing waste not only helps businesses achieve their sustainability goals but also saves them money. In ordering supplies for the event, keep environmental issues in mind. When possible, choose recyclable materials or items made from post-consumer recycled products. Specifically, try to eliminate or reduce the use of plastic, such as straws. Straws are the most common single-use plastic and can cause a lot of environmental harm. If you are working with a venue, discuss matters of waste and recycling. Also make your wishes known to caterers and vendors. During the event, provide bins for recycling and label them to encourage attendees to use them properly.
Stick to Your Budget
Once the spending begins, it can be easy to get carried away and go over budget even before you’re finished. There are a few things you can do to prevent this from happening. First, before securing a venue, hiring a caterer, or purchasing supplies, get quotes from several different vendors. You may be able to negotiate with your venue manager for lower prices on vendors they have relationships with. Depending on the event, you may be able to get sponsors. For example, it’s customary at golf outings to ask businesses to sponsor a hole. For other events, sponsors will often provide gifts or pay for a promotional presence. Finally, leave some room in your budget for unforeseen complications.
Create a Theme
A well-chosen theme for your event can generate excitement and inspire people. It can also make it easier to plan the event, as you can choose decorations, food, and speakers based on that theme. Develop a catchphrase that you can repeat throughout the event, from the invitations to the parting gift. The event purpose and attendees will help guide you in creating a theme. You may also be inspired by the season or a holiday, such as the New Year, or by the venue itself. For example, an event held in a historic building or hotel may be based on a memorable time period.
Plan the Food
The food for a business event can include casual snacks, formal hors d’oeuvres, grazing tables, and full meals. Coordinating the food with the theme can make planning the menu fun. You may also choose to source foods locally or play up local cuisines. Whatever you plan, make sure to give attendees choices, especially if full meals are involved. You’ll want to accommodate dietary differences, such as vegetarian and vegan, gluten-free, or religious needs (such as avoiding pork). Also it’s a good idea to ask attendees, perhaps on the RSVP, whether they have any serious allergies.
Know Your Technology Needs
Nothing spoils a business event more quickly than malfunctioning technology. A bad microphone, a faulty projector, missing cords—so much can go wrong when planning a big event. Yet, the right technology—and enough of it—is essential for accomplishing your event’s purpose. An event venue will likely have the technology infrastructure you will need, and there may be a dedicated technician available for assistance. Discuss your needs with the booking manager and understand what they will provide and what you or your attendees may need to supply. Also inform any speakers, guests, sponsors, or vendors.
A successful business event begins with good planning and anticipating the needs of the people attending. Events should be productive and beneficial to all, but they should also be enjoyable. With effective planning, you can create an event that achieves your goals and leaves people feeling renewed and inspired.
If you have started your own business, your goal overall is to have financial independence. It’s important to be able to be an independent adult, and also to be able to retire someday! You want to know how to save for your own life and to provide what your team needs in income as well. How can you achieve financial independence as an entrepreneur?
Build Residual Income Streams
SoFi tells us that residual income streams are the kind which you can set and almost forget; they keep making money for you even if you’re not actively working with them. This can include things like real estate, affiliate marketing, peer to peer lending, freelancing and contract work. This kind of work gives you a chance to work fewer overall hours while still building your income streams.
Save in a Retirement Plan
You need to be able to retire someday, and the only way to make that happen is to save in a retirement plan. If you aren’t great at financial work, find a financial planner to help you with decisions to know how best to save. For example, you can choose a 401K, which is great for both financial needs in retirement, but also the chance to save to support your business. According to Franchise Gator, a 401(k) plan can also be used to start a whole new business. Savings alone, without diversifying into stocks, might not be all that you need, however, so practicing finding an expert can help considerably.
Know your Goals
In order to be able to save as much as possible for retirement, you need to be aware of what you have and know what goals you have for the future. This includes knowing what you would like to do during retirement, and also what you want to be able to do in the future. This gives you a baseline for how carefully you need to save. The F.I.R.E. technique can give you a basis of how quickly and carefully you can save while working.
You know that you’re going to need financial independence in order to be both an excellent entrepreneur, and to be prepared to retire in the future. It’s important for you to make a plan in order to be able to build passive revenue, and to begin saving in a retirement plan if you have not already. Pretty soon, you’ll have the financial freedom you desire in your life!
There is a tenant of business that is one of the keys to maintaining a stable business – it is easier to keep customers than it is to gain new ones. But more important yet than keeping customers and doing right by them is finding ways to get them to return to your business frequently. Repeat customers, and frequent repeat customers, are the true key to long term business success. But getting repeat customers can be a difficult endeavor for many business owners. Here are a few strategies for you to employ to create more repeat customers for your business.
Deliver a Great Experience
The first and foremost thing that you need to do to create more repeat customers is to deliver a truly great customer experience. People like to do business with people who make them feel good, who make their shopping experience easy and stress free, and who listen and offer solutions to their needs. If you have any hope of building a customer base of repeat customers, then you need to be delivering an exceptionally great customer experience. Do everything you can to make your customers feel special and happy with their shopping experience and watch as they come back for more.
Create a Rewards Program
The next most crucial thing that you can do to create repeat customers for your business is to start a rewards program. Rewards programs are any customer loyalty program that offers bonuses, discounts, or rewards to customers who shop at your business. Loyalty rewards can entice customers and increase engagement. After you get that first sale, if your customer knows that every time they shop with you they are earning rewards that will offer them benefits in the future, it makes sense for them to keep coming back to your business. Rewards programs often generate more revenue than they lose in offering discounts, so what are you waiting for?
Email Newsletters
And finally, another great way to create more repeat customers is to start an email newsletter. An email newsletter for your customers that is sent on a weekly or monthly basis is a great way to keep your business in the minds of your customers. Sending them updates about what is on offers, discounts, and what’s new at your business. At the very least, it will remind your customers that you are around and doing business.
Creating repeat customers is the most essential thing that you must do if you want to run a successful business. But building a customer base of repeat customers is easier said than done. Try utilizing these three strategies and watch as your customers return time and time again.
Work can be a means of accomplishing big life goals (or, at least, providing the means to accomplish big life goals). However, your work life can also take a major toll on your mental and physical health! Here are a few ways you may see work negatively impacting your life, and ways to improve those negative effects!
Stress
Stress can stem from multiple points of your work life. For one, deadlines and pressures from accomplishing work tasks to a high quality can increase stress levels significantly. Knowing that a person or a project’s outcome relies on your efforts induces a heavy “perfectionist” anxiety. Furthermore, the amount of time you spend at work takes you away from other elements of your life, like family and friend relationships, hobbies, and personal goals or self-care. The less time you are able to spend on these rewarding, relaxing activities, the less relief you can find! It is important to find a healthy balance between work and social life balance, so that you are able to vent some of that unhealthy work stress through positive, productive outlets.
Back Problems
Doing any one thing for hours on end will put some substantial strain on your body! Your back is especially susceptible to being overstrained or under stretched throughout the day, leaving it sore and cramped by day’s end. You can help your back out by implementing routine stretching through your work day. Improving your back’s strength will also help it be able to maintain the positions or muscle tension it is sure to sustain, regardless of your occupation. If you are experiencing particularly bad back pain, consider physical therapy! Physical therapy uses a number of techniques to restore your functioning. This can save you a ton of residual pain and problems outside of your work life.
Poor Diet
Busy schedules often mean that a healthy diet is, unfortunately, put on the back burner. It is easier and faster to just stick to, well, fast food! However, this means that your body that needs to work hard is not getting the nutritional boosts it needs to perform its best. Poor food decisions leave your body unenergized and more prone to illness and stress! Take the time to meal prep at the beginning of the week, meals that are quick for you to put together or grab on the go, but that provide those essential macro and micronutrients you need for the best productivity possible.
Don’t let this core part of your life become a reason your life feels overly exhaustive, stressful, or even painful! Prioritize taking care of yourself, and you will find that your work life is subsequently improved also.
When you are starting a business, there will always be stresses that you have to deal with. Your best solution is to find ways to cut down on unnecessary stress so you can take the time to focus on managing the stress you have to deal with. Here are a few factors that you should try to account for so you don’t have to deal with more stress than necessary.
Poor Diet
Many entrepreneurs forget to take care of themselves because they get so caught up in running their businesses. That can lead to them forgetting to eat a nutritious diet that helps them stay healthy and able to manage stress. If you find that your nutrition is falling to the wayside as you try to run your business, take a minute to reset. Don’t rely on snacks and fast food to get you through the day. Instead, take some time and plan ahead. Not only will taking less than 60 minutes each to week plan help you open up more mental space. It also builds in your own “wellness” plan. Planning your lunch and mid-day breaks, along with meal planning so you can make sure you are getting all the nutrients you need to stay sharp and accomplish your business goals.
Not Enough Sleep
If you are so busy doing your business tasks that you don’t get the sleep you need, it is sure to cause you more stress than you need to deal with. Having the right sleeping situation can help you to decompress and get the sleep you need to function well. An air mattress can relieve you of bedsores and other pains that can cause sleep issues. Having the right mattress will help you to get good sleep and come to work each morning with the energy to be successful.
Too Much Caffeine
Some entrepreneurs rely on caffeine to get them through long days at work. But that method can actually cause you to have more stress in your daily life and take a toll on your ability to sleep and function optimally. It’s important to be careful of your caffeine intake so you can manage your stress more effectively. Even just making an effort to stop drinking caffeine after a certain hour of the day can help to make you better prepared for the unexpected stresses of entrepreneurship.
Increase in Alcohol
The pandemic was a prime breeding ground for many folks to stretch the limits of daily and weekly use of alcohol. When stressed we often will rely on externals to help us decompress. Be aware of how much and how often you reach for that drink. If you are concerned see support or help with local substance use resources to help you evaluate your usage.
Managing stress is always a difficult task, but it gets even harder when you’re running your own business. When you put your health first you can decrease stress and work harder. That is the key to enjoying your life as an entrepreneur, no matter what stress you have to face.
