Tag Archives: David Bozward

Dr. David Bozward is an entrepreneur motivation speaker and workshop leader.

Blog

Entrepreneur E-Learning

Over the last two weeks I have been developing a new online service for Entrepreneurs, an eLearning site providing courses in Sales, Marketing and how to start a Business. Further course are planned in the Autumn 2011.

Entrepreneurs are amazing people, yet have certain traits that make them hard to work with. First of all they are time limited, by the very nature of starting a business and also very geographically diverse. Secondly, they tend to have very little money and I feel wrong in taking too much money from people who should be investing in their businesses. Thirdly, they tend to learn in different ways.

So we have designed these courses to fit their entrepreneurial needs…

The design of the courses ensures the pace of the course is dictated by the entrepreneur. The can take as long as they desire and also review, redevelop and re-understand the course element in the context of their business.

The core cost of running course is training, venues and organizing everyone and everything to be at the right location at the right time. ELearning allows us to have the course starting any time and always open. The entrepreneur also does not have to travel and therefore has more time to spend on their business.

One aspect we do lose with online course is the loss of the real face-to-face networking which is so important when learning, knowing there are others who have the same problems. This we will fix using LinkedIn.

One important lesson which the internet is very aware of, if content is free it has no value. Everything known to mankind is available on the internet, however it’s the application of knowledge is where value lies. As an entrepreneurs we understand this. The courses develop knowledge through the application of this knowledge, in an entrepreneurial way.

For many years I have know that there are three type of learning styles (Fleming’s VAK/VARK) model:

  1. Visual
  2. Auditory
  3. Kinesthetic or Tactile

Kinaesthetic learning is a learning style in which learning takes place by the entrepreneur actually carrying out a physical activity. This means we have incorporated an element of developing their business in every course.

These courses are now in beta release and having our first set of beta-entrepreneurs from UK Universities through and if you would like to join then please email me.

Blog

What business should I start?

This is the million dollar question, and so hard to explain to people.

I always talk about passion and how if you have passion then you will be more successful. It’s more than this, if you do not believe in what you are doing and have the ability to drive yourself 12 hours a day to strive for success then success will not be able to find you. Passion for the product, the service and your customers is a real source of energy, drive and determination which is an enormous help.

However some people have a passion for making money, being financial stable and independent. These people would have the passion to sell tea spoons, or sand or just about anything. For these people I tell them:

Its about Basic Needs

Maslow is famous for setting out people’s needs. He stated that people need the following in the following order:

Physiological(food, water, health, sleep), Safety and Security(employment, finances, resources, family, property), Love and Belonging (friendship, family, sexual intimacy), Esteem (confidence, achievement, respect) and Self Actualisation (creativity, problem solving, acceptance of facts).

If you walk down the high street, every shop is based on one of these needs. The most successful ones are those which basic needs, food, water, health. The more basic the need, the greater the market size, the more people wait it and the better chances you have of selling more and being more successful. There are lots of examples: Bottled Water, Coffee Shops, Hotels, Fast Food….

Take a look at you spend and what products you buy, how can you better or improve on the products you buy?

Its about trends

People are living longer. This means there will be larger population, resources will be have to be shared and will cost more (supply and demand). The price of land, minerals, financial resources and even the virtual world will increase. More of these people will be old(er), more will have an illness, more will need help, more will be in the process of dying. There is money to be made out of each and every stage of life.

People have more money. The rich will always be rich and the poor will always be poor. Be definition you cannot have one without the other. Greed drives one to master the other. Those with money will and always have wanted to live in individual place, have different social clubs and have people to help them enjoy and spend their money.

There will always be people moving around the globe, people will move for work, holidays and migration as they have for thousands of years. Every day China and India get richer and this massive population will wait to travel, have the experience of seeing the Pyramids, Eiffel Tower and Sydney Harbour.

The economies of the world will change to develop new sources of energy which ensures the growth. Do you think China and India have done all this hard work only to run out of energy? With new energy sources come new opportunities to manage, measure and profit from it.

The internet will get bigger, faster. Moores law will continue to ensure we can double processing power every 18 months. Applications will be created which will allow the most amazing integrations of library information, personal environmental data and social interaction. Please remember the words of Darth Vader “All your technology is insignificant to the power of the force.” The force being peoples habits. After all we still live in houses created hundreds of years ago.

In short there are so many opportunities that you just need to look for the one that fits your skills, appetite for risk and aptitude.

Blog

Remember your motive for starting a business

In a recent survey, 37% of start-ups stated their motive for starting a business was independence. The second and third motives were money and a new challenge.

It is so hard to maintain sight of this motive when you are working in your business on a daily basis. You forget the big picture, the grand plans and the gallant cause which means you lose your core asset, motivation. So the key to maintaining your motivation during the early years of business is to remember your motive for starting a business and ensure this is still relevant today as it was when you started.

To achieve this, I recommend you take a day out to work ‘on’ your business and not ‘in’ it. During this day you should a) revisit your motive(s), b) look at the business from an investors point of view and c) evaluate the plan.

Your motives for starting your business will never change, but your motivation for continuing will. So you must periodically look at the current motivation and ensure you and it are happy partners. If not, then look at other motivations. This motivation will then lead to how you develop the business, what customers, investors and suppliers you use.

As a business owner you have a lot of emotional attachment to the business, the products and everyone associated with the business. It is therefore very hard to look at it from a cold hard investor’s point of view. You are an investor in this business, providing time, energy, money and good will. So step back and look at the business from a third party view and see if this is a business you would invest in, if it was not yours? Ask your mentor to help you in this process, if you need help. Write down the changes you would want for you to invest.

This should allow you to develop a plan, based on your motives, your motivation for continuing, an evaluation of the business and you investing more into this business. While developing the plan, have an exit goal in mind. This is a point whereby you either completely leave the business or give one or more responsibilities to another person, allowing you more time to work on your business, not just in it.

Blog

Goals Goals Goals

At this time of year there are two types of businesses, those which are the middle of their best sales and distribution period and those winding down for the Christmas break.

Which one are you?

For those of you winding down, it’s the best time to start planning for the New Year. Don’t wait until you need to make a financial plan. It’s now the time to think about what you want to achieve next year. The best way is to split your goals into three, short, medium and long. What you define as short, medium and long in terms of time scale is up to you and depends on your business. However, what is important is you think about them, write them down and communicate them to everyone involved.

The Short term goals are there to motivate you, get you up in the mornings and also ensure the New Year goes off with an amazing quick fire win. So some of these goals should be achieved during the first few weeks of the year, maybe one should be to communicate the 2011 plan to staff, customers and suppliers, it maybe email all your customers to say thank you for their loyal custom in 2010, call your most valued customer and ask how you can do it better.

For the Medium term goals, we are looking at the hard work and this means customer acquisition, increased revenue per customer and reducing costs, i.e. making you business better, faster and more efficient so you can ensure your success in 2011. The target dates for these should be from June through to September.
Your Long term goals should be the great big airy audacious goals which will make sure your business stands out from the rest. These goals will not just make your business a good business but a fantastic one, a business which others in the market follow, a brilliant success. So take a long hard think about them. They (because there should be more than one) may take less than a year but the timing of these is not important, the fact you assign a date to every goal is.

Now you know your hat-trick of goals, it’s time to go and buy the Christmas presents now, knowing that 2011 is going to be your best ever.