New entry comming soon

Hello, I've been a little absent for a while. First because of a little time off I took during and second because I am working in 3 new projects that I hope to share with you very soon.

I am working on the new entry about the next step on becoming an entrepreneur.  But by now you should have a clear idea of what you want to do and a draft of your business plan to move to the next step.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me and I'll be happy to help.

Keep Moving Forward

Selling my timeshare week for this year

Hello, I wish to take advantage of this platform to offer my timeshare week for 2015 at Sheraton Buganvilia in Puerto Vallarta. I won't be using this week, so it is up for grabs.

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, is a great place for vacationing and Sheraton Buganvilias is one of the best hotels, right next to town and in a walking distance to the malecon. 

The timeshare building called the Buganvilias Resort Vacation Club has it's own pool, set apart from the pool of the hotel, with Jacuzzi and bar. 

The room is a Presidential Suite, it is a double unit with one master bedroom with a king size bed, bathroom with tub, the second bedroom has partial kitchenette with a Murphy bed. This suite is great for 4 guests.

I include the link to the official website's information here.

Made an Ebay Listing here

Here are some pics of the hotel and suite:

Here is a map of the hotel's location so you can confirm how near it is from downtown.

The week is a floating week, so, it can be used from May 2nd to October 31st 2015

The regular price for a full week in a suite like this is $2,700.00 USD

I'm offering this $1,900.00 USD, payable with PayPal.

If you are interested in this please click here.

Step 10. Bussiness Plan

Before you go out and start doing anything to create your business, you need a road map to move forward. You need to plan out what winning looks like for you and your business, that's where the business plan comes into play. You now know what makes you happy, you've decided to become your own boss and be financially independent, you know what you want to do and what you are going to call your business, but where to go next? Enter the business plan.

You have to design, think and research in detail your market, your product or service, your competition, your costs, what equipment you will need, how are you going to manufacture your product or what tools you need to provide your service, how big is your team going to be, etc. These are the basic question that your business plan will answer to help you trace your path to success.

There are several reasons you need a Business Plan, but mainly is to be able to explain your ideas to other people, for example, you will need your business plan to convey your ideas to your spouse or significant other on how you plan to bring food to the table, you will need it to explain your business to team members you are bringing in, every funding method out there will require you to provide a business plan to show how you intend to create revenue, what you'll costs be, what equipment will be required and who will be your market.

Let's see which basic questions your Business Plan needs to answer:

• The Problem: You found an itch in a niche that needs to be scratched, explain what it is.
• The Solution: How are you going to scratch that itch?
• Business Model: How are you going to make money scratching this itch.
• Tarket Market: Who is the group of persons or niche that has this itch, how big is this group?
• Competitive Advantage: Compared to other products or services that scratch this itch, what will make you better?
• Financial Summary: How much is it going to cost you to scratch the itch, how much are you going to charge to scratch it and what other factors will have a financial impact while scratching the itch.
• Required Funding: How much money you will need to start your business to scratch this particular itch.

There are several samples out there for Business Plan templates, software that helps you create your business plan and books on the subject. But if you are able to answer these basic questions, you can make a one page Business Plan that will help you pitch your idea to possible investors, or email them this one page BP and if it is in one short page, they will have time to read it, a busy person rarely has time to read more than one page, so this first one page business plan can help you get started in many ways. But mainly it will help you design the path you will follow to success and what winning, for you and your business, looks like.

Here is a list of the best Business Plan software to help you get started.

and here are some books I recommend:

There are many great books on how to start your own business, that I will share in future posts, but I do want to emphasize the importance of your business plan, so having a book specially for that will help you go a great length before you even start. 

Live, Laugh, Love and Keep Moving Forward!

MrFireDragon

Step 9: What's In a Name?

By now you have decided to become an entrepreneur, have found what makes you happy and a possible way to monetize this thing that makes you happy, you've taken accountability for your own situation, you've started to change your habits and started to write everything, but specially your goals and have created a vision of the future and where you want to be with your business.

You've also started to plan either in paper (you better be doing in on paper) or in your mind, on how you will set up your business, either online or brick and mortar, how many employees you'll need, how you'll get your funding, etc. But before you get going on those subjects, you have other things to think about.

Do not underestimate the power of a great name, don't worry about the logo and image of your business, that's the next step. First things first, how is your business or company is going to be called? No, not your product or service, your company. If you limit the name to your service or product, how will you expand later on? You have to choose a name that will let you grow and won't limit you.

Imagine you want to sell tires in San Jose, California. Don't name your business San Jose Tires Inc. What if you open a branch in San Francisco? or Las Vegas? Phoenix? and let's say that you expand your business with other services like oil change, break, motor tuning, etc? You will have to come up with a better name that will not limit you to an specific location, product or service. 

Make it easy to remember, comfortable and something that will let you reach the exact market you need. Don't make things hard for your market, help them to be able to remember your name. Research what would your market like, come up with a list of names and show it to them, let them help you choose.

There are several ways to come up in an amazing name, you might want to give it a go on your own or you can choose to hire the help of experts. So I want to share with you several articles that have helped me on choosing the name of my next two projects, and I am certain that you can also learn a great deal from them to reach that amazing name you seek.

• How To Chose a Name For Your Company

• How To Name a Business

• 10 Ways To Come Up With A Killer Name For Your Company
  

• How To Pick The Perfect Name For Your Business Or Startup 

Give a great deal of time for this step, the future implications of a bad name could be disastrous. Here are some samples of really bad names:

• The Worst Company Names Of All Times 

• 46 Businesses With Hilariously Bad Names 

So now you know how important your business name is,

MrFD

Live, Laugh, Love and Keep Moving Forward

Step 8: Vision, Shoot For The Moon.

It is amazing when you start working hard for something, you start to research about the business you want to launch, and while you learn about it, things start to click. You start to see connections of all the things you know and hold dear with the new information you are learning about this new business. It's like a sign from above, you can call it everything you want depending your particular religion or set of beliefs, but the important thing is that once you see all these connections popping up and you start tracing all the dots, you have to believe and have faith that the path you have taken is the right path for you. 

Life for some reason wants you to complete this path, so I say you follow it, you'll be fired up and excited and will want to know more and do more and move as fast as you can, just don't forget to plan ahead. Don't let the feeling that everything is falling into place cloud your judgement. You now have a vision of where your path is heading, having things click will allow you to see where you are and where you want to go.

The vision is crucial for an entrepreneur, it let's you know where you are aiming, knowing where to aim will let you create the actions that have to be taken to reach that target. If the actions do not render the desired result, don't worry, you still have your vision, stick to it, just find a different approach, improve your actions. This could be launching a new campaign, targeting a different market, creating a new product or service, it doesn't matter what action you take as long as it is focused on your vision. 

A leader without a vision is a failure as a leader, how is the team going to follow a leader that doesn't know where to go? A leader with vision is a great leader, just see what other great leaders past and present have done. I recommend to read biographies of great leaders. Abraham Lincoln, Mandela, Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Walt Disney, Patton, Bolivar, Asoka, Churchill, Napoleon, you name it. Every great leader in history had a vision and kept to it and created their own path. 

If you start a business without a clear vision, you will fail, you will learn that vision is key, but if you find your vision before starting you will save yourself great headache. What could be your vision? To be the greatest contractor in your area, with amazing quality, 5 of 10 working crews, strive for happy customers all the time, provide the best materials and finishes for your projects even if that means doing the job with someone else. Maybe you want to be the cupcake tycoon of America, selling cupcakes on the web, door to door, on a store, reaching millions with delicious frosted pieces of happiness. It is up to you what you want to do, as long as you have a long term look of what you want to do and what do you want to achieve. Follow your vision and everything will fall into place.

For me, finding my vision required me to have a little alone time, I had little time to actually meditate, clear my mind and find a solution to the problems I want to solve. So I used my commute, sometimes I would pop a podcast either Entrepreneur on Fire, Entreleadership Podcast or even WDW Radio, since I'm such a geek and enjoy that podcast very much, and during those commutes, hearing great podcasters and great interviews, then my mind would start working like crazy. The audio became a white noise while I was immersed in my own thoughts on how to create my business, but specially I created the goal I wanted to reach for both projects, I have a very clear and defined vision of where I want to go, and from that I have been planning and designing the actions I'm going to take to reach that goal. 

So get out there and think, plan, meditate, explore, try to find patterns and connect the dots. Create an amazing vision, shoot for the moon, if you miss you'll still be among the stars.

Exciting New Paths by Finding a Pain

Aside of writing tips and advice for those of you who want to start your own business I will also try to share my our journey, failures and experience for it prove to be of some value for you. So today I want to open up a little about two projects I am about to start, both I will launch through Kickstarter by March or beginning of April.

I won't be saying much right now because I am still polishing the kinks a bit to launch a successful Kickstarter campaign and researching within my target audience to try to find any and all pains I can soothe with my two projects. 

One of the projects is based on alternative energy, in a product that I've, so far, not found in the market as a viable product. I've seen many successful experiments, but nothing in the market out there that can be purchased by the public in general. This has me on fire at the moment, and a team of very talented people is forming to research, develop and launch an amazing product that could provide with free, clean energy in a small scale to charge your gadgets.

The other one is an online service with app and web system that will let people with any kind of degenerative disease to track their everyday symptoms along with their medicine, food, supplements, etc to look for patterns. The systems is going to be way more complicated than just this, but this was the basic idea that triggered this idea and concept. I've also been talking with my target audience and they have been amazing, I've received tons of ideas and suggestions based on their actual needs. They are excited about this service and that fires me up even more.

So the basic idea that I want to share here with you is that, no matter what your idea might be, always try to reach your target audience and ask what they really need. Find a problem, an itch, a pain that you can solve, scratch or soothe. That way you can be sure that your idea for a product or service can have a profitable future. I had a basic idea for what I wanted, for both projects, but getting in touch with my target audience allowed me to take new directions that I had not even thought of, having their feedback opened up my mind and created a wider and lighted path for me to follow.

MrFD

Live, Laugh, Love and Keep Moving Forward!

Step 7: The Going Gets Tough

When you have decided that you are going to become an entrepreneur, start your own business and become your own boss, you are going to find your share of obstacles that you will have to overcome. Like the saying goes, you make plans and then life happens. You will receive your share of unexpected expenses, health related issues, the stream of naysayers that will call you crazy for going independent, even the eventual hater that makes his/her life's mission to bring your happiness down. There will be some that will tell you that what you are doing is a waste of time.

But you want to know what really is a waste of time? A waste of time is to have invested time and money in formal education and be stuck in a job you hate, fading away a little each day into numbness. If you dare go for your happiness, the things that makes you tick, if you go out and find your "food truck", research about this thing that makes you happy, the past, the present and dare to create its future. That is definitely not a waste of time. If you are in a hole, you have to stop digging.

I went through all of this, I was dying a little every day, I had people that seemed invested in keeping me bottled down and stuck at a job that I started to loath, I was way too overweight, my wife was diagnosed with arthritis at 31, a little girl starting school and people around me trying to convince me that I was crazy for wanting for more. I broke my fears, and went for it and I am starting to see the fruits of my work, how my dreams and ideas are slowly becoming realities. 

You don't have to be tough to make it, as the old saying goes. You just have to keep moving, as slow as you want, but just as long as you don't stay on the same place. Remember, when the going gets tough, just keep moving forward.

MrFD

Live, Laugh, Love and Keep Moving Forward.