Posts from the ‘starting a business’ Category

Jan 22

5 Necessities to Quit Your Job and Open a Company

Want to live the American dream of entrepreneurship? Well, eventually you’re going to have to quit your job. Though, there are right and wrong ways to make that initial stride and ensure success following resignation, here are just 5 necessities you need to quit your job and effectively open a company:

1. Gaining the entrepreneurial mentality. You must have a true desire to become a successful entrepreneur or you won’t make it. Don’t kid yourself, by all means entrepreneurship is tougher than being an employee and, thus you must become tougher both mentally and, to an extent physically as long hours can hurt your health and stress can be a killer.

Owing a management recruiting agency in New York is very difficult and to be successful is much more difficult than people perceive it to be. If you’re quitting your job to become an entrepreneur, your mentality must be stubborn. Once you become an entrepreneur, looking back on the good ‘ol days when you had a paycheck becomes counterproductive as whatever is in the past must be left in the past and you now have control over your future success or….failure.

An entrepreneur must have the mentality that they will do what it takes to succeed whether it be grueling hours or eating pasta for months on end to save money. You have to learn to become self-reliant and need to be fully prepared to do so.

Leadership comes from within and leadership is only spawned from an entrepreneurial mentality.

2. You must open the right business. Owning an executive search firm, I can tell you that if you’re looking around for people to tell you which business to open, then you should remain an employee as you are not ready yet. Entrepreneurs don’t crave direction from others, rather they rely on their instincts and take calculated risks.

Sometimes, entrepreneurs wish they had a boss as being told what to do is a lot easier than figuring it out yourself. When choosing a business be realistic about your competition. Don’t compete with the best and brightest in the world; that’s not logical thinking. Rather pick a field that pays well, has competition, but not in the overwhelming sense and make sure that you enjoy the field and find if personally fulfilling.

Upon quitting a job, when choosing a business take some time to think about it, but don’t take forever, it’s half gut, half intellect. Rely too heavily on one or the other and you won’t do well.

3. Try to save expenses at every corner. For many aspiring entrepreneurs, the thought of having to learn all aspects of business prompts them to run to expensive vendors that produce little and charge a lot. As I stressed above, your self-reliance will prove to be your best friend or your worst enemy.

Saving money means having to learn things that you never wanted to learn nor never thought you would have to. For instance, when I started my recruiting firm, I thought that I would never have to learn how to program and never thought I could.

Ken Sundheim

Also, know how much money you want to make prior to quitting your job. The best companies have fiscal goals that are clear-cut. Your approach should be no different. Once you have that number, relentlessly pursue it.

4. Start building the business for success while you’re working. Many entrepreneurs just quit their job only to learn that their predictions about the business they were going to open were wrong and they find themselves unemployed and often depressed as to their failure which often is not their fault.

Going from 0 to 60 is not recommended. Before you go pro, try it out by spending your free time opening the company. Not only should this tell you whether or not you would like to be an entrepreneur, it will also tell you if the business you’re opening has potential or whether you should look into other options.

Quitting your job to open a business is a big thing and big decisions should not be made on the fly.

5. A positive attitude. Upon becoming an entrepreneur, you must have a positive attitude about you being successful. When we are overly negative, it hurts our performance and pessimistic behavior also drains energy.

If we don’t think we can do something, we are not going to work as hard as we could on the task, thus making the anticipation of failure the main reason something doesn’t work out rather than natural talent or intelligence.

Being an entrepreneur is competitive. There are other firms that will not like you doing business in their space once you become successful. People will always want to take your head out of the game, therefore keeping a healthy attitude means a much better chance for survival.

Sep 25

5 Important Facets of Business

Even the best business owners mull over the things that they are doing correctly and the areas in which they can improve upon; improvements and consistent growth are conducive to a successful career.

Therefore, it’s important to touch on a few things that should be taken into consideration for any level of business owner:

1. Don’t have regrets, rather have learning experiences – Many times, when we make mistakes as business professionals, we tend to get down on ourselves too much and get overly pessimistic regretting our actions that probably were not as bad as we think they were.

In business, the name of the game is to learn. Being overly tough on yourself does nothing to solve the problem the next time around.

2. If you dream, you can do – Sometimes, the only things that prevent us from becoming truly great is the lack of confidence and vision that we possess. This is as opposed to intelligence or our perceived natural ability.

It took Thomas Edison and Henry Ford more than one try, but like many others who have achieved great things, they kept at it and relentlessly pursued their dreams.

3. The money comes only if you don’t prioritize it – The best business professionals are not driven by money, rather they are driven by the love of what they do. When we are fully engaged in our everyday work, the money naturally flows in.

Conversely, when all we think about is how much money we are making, our abilities become hindered by a motivation that is not sincere.

4. Things come in due time, don’t push – Many business professionals are impatient which is a natural human thought process, however the business professional’s actions become overly pushy which gives an outward appearance that seems too eager and can appear fake.

Have faith that when it is time and if you work towards your goals, they are going to happen. It may not be tomorrow, but the work will pay off.

5. Don’t judge as none of us are perfect – The best business professionals spend less time judging themselves and others and more time upgrading their skills. To focus on our own shortcomings or someone else’s doesn’t always put us in the best frame of mind.

If we quickly glance at all of our mistakes, we will surely find out that we are not perfect and therefore, should not expect others to be. While breaking this habit takes practice, it is well worth it.

In the End

Business professionals should want to consistently get better and, although improvement is tough, it is the price we have to pay to be successful. Keep at it as the rewards are well worth the work.

Recommended Articles

How to Think Successfully

Why People Don’t Get the Jobs They Want

About

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement marketing recruitment and is a known leader in the executive search world. When it comes to sales and marketing recruiting, sources like WSJ, NYTimes, Fox Business News, AOL, MSN, Chicago Tribune, BusinessInsider, About.com, CBS MoneyWatch, MTV, San Francisco Chronicle, Monster.com and many more look to Ken Sundheim for job search advice. Ken also helps recent college graduates find marketing jobs as a consulting function through KAS which can also be found on the KAS site.

Aug 28

"ken sundheim google, salary negotiation"

When We Dream Big

When we dream big and believe in ourselves, we become resilient to adversity and we push ourselves to achieve things that we never thought possible of us. It’s our dreams and relentless goal setting that makes us better.

Every business professional knows that it is easier to become negative and freeze when things don’t go our way, but there are the few that embrace it as a challenge. Some learn while others stay stagnant.

Personally, I’ve been hit by such a mass amount of adversity in my career as a young entrepreneur that I’ve had times where it has been difficult to get out of bed, though I’ve done it and I have made a pact with myself to always do so.

When we see our future, we must ask ourselves as to what we see. Is it positive? Does it drive us or does it allow for improvement or does it hinder our abilities to achieve what is necessary?

Negativity can bring all the wrong friends. It is easier to remain negative than to think positively when analyzing the prospect of achieving our dreams, thus the masses take the easy way out and tilt the majority of people to the “it’s never going to get better side.”

Chasing our dreams can be lonely, yet not doing so can leave us feeling empty. When all is said and done and our time on this planet is up, would you rather be one who chased and fought for their dreams or one who simply thought that the possible was impossible thus making it so.

About

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement, an executive search firm specializing in sales and marketing recruitment for organizations around the globe.

Help others learn by sharing these articles!

Aug 26

Recruiting 101 for the Small Business

Running a small business is great; it has its perks which are beyond monetary (i.e. learning and experiencing the business world from its purest state), but what happens when a small business gets busy enough and the entrepreneur needs to hire employees? How do they do so successfully?

For many, this is a lot harder than it sounds as most don’t know where to begin and how to be successful at recruiting. As the CEO of an executive search firm and the employer of multiple people – some who have worked, some others who have not, I have some advice for you:

- Recruit employees only when absolutely necessary. Too many times, young entrepreneurs recruit employees when they are not overly stretched and spend a ton of money in salaries and employment related insurance costs not to mention taxes when they could have done the job themselves.

Prior to hiring, you must be stretched absolutely thin to the point of exhaustion. I was one who made this mistake and who hired prematurely at times. The outcome was having very expensive employees who also had little to do on a daily basis.

I found myself spending the majority of my day figuring out what they should do instead of focusing on the core business.

- Write a Clear Job Description Outlining the Following: What you would like the employee to be doing on a daily basis, what you would like to pay the employee in exchange for their services, the short-term goals for the employee as well as laying out the long-term goals for the employee.

- Figure Out a Pitch. Think about why the employees should work at your firm. You’re inevitably going to see hurdles that include employees not wanting to work for a start-up as start-ups can leave them unemployed in 6 months and you must give enough compelling reasons as to why they should take the chance on you instead of going the safe route.

What makes me great at recruiting is a true belief in my clients and their ability to provide a great experience for those who work there. This passion comes through when speaking to the job seekers.

- Figure Out the Questions You Want to Ask. Never just “wing” an interview. While the interviewer should always come prepared, you should as well. Find out about the potential employees both as people and as workers.

The one thing that is essential to ask is why they are leaving their current job and, once you bring up the subject, dig and dig deeper. At this point, you’ve done your speaking; let them tell their story and LISTEN!!

- Make Sure You Like Them. You’re going to be working in very close quarters with these individuals and you have to like them as people or the employee / employer relationship can never truly blossom.

There is liking the individual on paper then there is the belief that your personality and his / her personality will click and form a positive, productive and lucrative relationship.

One Last Thought

Know that recruiting is an uphill battle. It is just a fact that companies like Google and Microsoft are going to get the best employees and you’re going to have to work with the people who are willing to work with you.

Don’t get discouraged and always interview multiple times before you pull the trigger. There is a difference between settling on an employee and holding out until you can find someone whom you trust and can really mold to be a leader of your company.

Finally, never give out equity in your firm; you will most likely come to regret it. Think profit-sharing if you wish to give performance based incentives.

About the Author

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement, an executive search firm specializing in recruiting sales and marketing employees. Ken has been mentioned by such sources as MSN, AOL, Chicago Tribune, CBS MoneyWatch and many more. Follow Sundheim on Twitter.

Recommended Articles

Entrepreneurship as a Successful Career

Writing a Job Description That Attracts

Aug 22

Entrepreneurship as a Successful Career

Entrepreneurs come in all sizes, all nationalities, all have unique outlooks on both business and life, but when you define the true entrepreneur, you actually come up with a lot of similarities between those who run a successful business.

They do it as their career and they do it well. When we analyze their ability to be successful, we can come up with the following:

Entrepreneurs take the limited resources that they have and spin gold out of a bad situation. They understand that nothing is perfect and it never will be, but this drives them rather than gives the entrepreneur a pessimistic attitude about their current situation.

Entrepreneurs look at hurdles as problems to be solved not game ending events. This breeds a resiliency that is able to shine through even during the toughest of times and also instills a great deal of confidence during the times that revenue is being readily generated.

However, these individuals manage the ups and downs of business to where their mood is generally separated from their logic.

Great entrepreneurs can adapt to the situation rather than expect the situation to adapt to them. In conjunction with this ability, they have a passion that allows them to convey the benefits of their product or service in a clear, direct manner to clients.

Passion comes out in speech patterns and a belief in something gives an added punch in one’s voice. To the entrepreneur, this comes naturally – the majority of – while the others make sure that they learn this key business point.

Successful entrepreneurs continually learn and are never satisfied with their current performance always looking to upgrade their abilities whether it be through finding the right mentor or locating the right books to read. They view satisfaction as complacency…a word that is held in very negative regard to this bunch.

Want to Make Entrepreneurship Your Career?

Successful entrepreneurship starts with a change in habits and beliefs. Nobody can instill the need for these in someone, but once they are instilled, anyone can make business ownership a successful career.

About

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement (www.kasplacement.com) an executive search firm specializing in recruiting sales and marketing personnel.

Recommend Articles

Top 10 Small Biz Sales Tips

How To Become a Leader at Work

Aug 7

Top 10 Small Biz Sales Tips

Running a small business or are you on the sales team? Looking to maximize your revenue and increase your close rate? While no sales tip is foolproof, here are some ways that any small business can better connect with the customer and outsmart the competition:

1. Know Who Your Customer Is – You can’t be everything to everyone. Sit down and determine which type of customer is most likely to yield the most revenue. The variables may be geographic or may be size of company.

You don’t know until you reflect on and analyze past accounts.

2. Don’t Look Desperate – Clients want to buy from sales professionals who are confident in their product. Appearing desperate or over-eager (construed the same way) will translate into you not backing a great product or service.

3. Be Upfront and Be Honest – Clients appreciate honesty. Always be upfront as a sales representative; this even holds true if you may miss an account. It pays off in the end.

4. Have Your Marketing All Set – By having your marketing all set, you are going to know how to approach the selling process. Use your marketing as a basis and stick within the bounds of that message.

5. Recruit the Right People – If you don’t have the right people, you can’t maximize your sales. Take sales recruiting very seriously and look for employees who feel the same way about improving their business development techniques.

6. Understand What Makes You Different – Every offering is unique, but not every sales rep. is. Before your next sale, make sure that you know what is beneficial about your product and, in a subtle manner get that point across.

7. Know Your Customer Concerns – Your customers are coming to you for a reason. What is that reason? Believe it or not, it’s not always on the surface. Dig and you should find something very lucrative.

Once the concern(s) are found, make sure that you meet them.

8. Listen – As a sales representative, you must listen contently to what your prospects are saying. If you can’t hear their problems, their needs or what they are looking for, you can’t properly be a problem solver.

9. Work the Extra Hours – The best sales representatives are not slick talkers, rather they are hard workers and know their business. Clients will always latch on to vendors who show that they are putting in the work.

10. Put Client Service at the Forefront – If you don’t care about your clients and servicing them, they are going to stop paying you to do so. It’s the basic law of sales. Produce and be attentive or someone else will.

In the End

While there are dozens upon dozens of business development tips out there for the small business, pick the ones that you are most comfortable with and make sure they are implemented flawlessly.

And, if it doesn’t work at first, try something else. Sales is a living, breathing thing.

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement a sales and marketing recruiting firm specializing in recruiting for companies of all sizes. For free resume giveaways and open jobs, connect with KAS on FB!

10 Considerations Prior to Starting a Business

Business plans can be great, but many don’t consider the sales and marketing aspect of the endeavor along with how realistic the venture in question is. While nothing is going to be perfect when starting a business, some aspects do need to be thought over as failure to do so can equate to a tremendous amount of time and resources wasted.

With that being said, what are some of the key points that entrepreneurs want to think about? From both personal experiences and from speaking with aspiring entrepreneurs, I have come up with 10 considerations that each aspiring business owner should consider prior to pulling the trigger on any business.

1. What are you going to sell? The big question here is whether there is an existing market. I also recommended aspiring entrepreneurs keep it as simple as possible and this means not reinventing the wheel, but rather reinventing what already has an active market base.

2. Who are you going to sell to? When answering this question, the entrepreneur must keep digging. If you’re going to sell a product or service to companies, don’t stop at the types of companies, rather list the people within those organizations that are going to be making the decisions as to whether or not the organization should purchase your product or service.

3. How are you going to reach these individuals? Once the target is determined, the accessibility of that target(s) needs to be examined along with a game-plan as to how to make these individuals aware of the company’s existence.

Things such as cold-calling, search engine optimization and targeted e-mail campaigns are all viable options.

4. How are you going to market your company? Does the entrepreneur wish to be the cost leader? Does he or she wish to be more exclusive and expensive? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, but the entrepreneur should make a decision based upon their gut feeling and the information that they acquired through proper business planning.

5. How much are you going to charge? When I first started my business, I would under-cut the competition to an extent that the consumer would be irrational not to give me a shot.

However, this was not sustainable for my organization. The best recommendation I could give regarding is to have a current pricing plan (before an industry reputation is acquired) and a future pricing plan (what the entrepreneur hopes to charge after brand recognition).

Business is a never-ending process of negotiation and the entrepreneur must have a pricing plan for when to bend and when to stand tall.

6. How long is an average sales-cycle? When figuring out expenses, it is important for the entrepreneur to have a rough estimate regarding the time it is going to take to sell his or her product or service from 2 points:

a. From the minute they call their firm operational.

b. From the minute that they contact their target individuals (see #2 and #3).

7. Who are your competitors? There are a few ways that buyers find a product or service. Let’s take two into account which are word of mouth and through the internet. For an entrepreneur to really know his or her competitors, they must do research in the shoes of a buyer.

For instance, when Googling particular keyword phrases, what companies consistently come up? There’s a hint as to how to find the players in just about any industry.

8. How are you going to fund the venture? The option that I recommend for many aspiring entrepreneurs is to start a business while you’re currently working and transition to full-time once the company is showing signs of yielding revenue.

The option that I often discourage aspiring entrepreneurs from looking into is venture capital funding which can be a huge waste of time not to mention that the entrepreneur is going to become an employee in the rare sense that he or she can sell their business.

9. What do you need to learn? Entrepreneurs, rather than thinking delegation, should be thinking as to what tasks they can achieve themselves and, thus save money by learning how to do those entrepreneurial necessities.

Entrepreneurship is about cutting-costs and being resourceful. The aspiring business owner should be well aware of what it is going to take for them (without using costly vendors) to ensure their business is operational.

10. What are you going to do for office space? When I started my company, I worked out of an apartment smaller than my office. It was not ideal, but I saved a lot of money. Pulling the trigger on an office should be one of the last things on the start-up’s mind.

Instead, focusing on #1 – #9 should yield a better return on investment when compared to paying for commercial real estate that the business owner does not own.