Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited is great book for anyone thinking of starting a business venture. Gerber describes how most businesses are started because people are fed up with their boss, or think they are doing all the work already so why not work for themselves. He states that every small business consists of three main characters the technician (the doer and builder), the manager (the planner), and the entrepreneur (the dreamer, visionary). There are life phases in a small business the infancy phase which is the technician’s phase, the adolescence phase which is when the business owner gets some help, beyond the comfort zone, and, maturity and the entrepreneurial perspective.
The technician who starts a small business will start off great, but will run into problems as the business grows. The technician tries to do everything himself; this is the infancy, working long hours and wears himself out and eventually having to hire some help. Once help is hired the technician also becomes a manager and moves out of the infancy phase and into the adolescence phase. From this point on the company will either keep on growing, or will the owner will downsize and go back to the infancy phase.
As someone considering a business venture, I found myself becoming a little intimidated as I read The E-Myth Revisited. For many years I have been saying I am going to open my own business, my own restaurant. I have even came very close to making my dream come true last year, unt...
The growth of online business has grown enormously over the years. Cliptomania is a family operated and owned small e-business that primarily sells clip on earrings (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012, p. 308). Cliptomania early developments were very modest, and as such the company experienced copious strategic dilemmas. An initial strategic dilemma that the company encountered when establishing and building their new e-business undertaking was to create a website for the business operations and essentially to have it fully operable. The owners, Jim and Candy elected to hire a vendor to host the website and additionally utilize the IT systems resources of the vendor to sustain their business. At the very beginning they exploited the offerings of the Yahoo Store. However, continuing down this avenue of using the services of the Yahoo Store inevitably became too costly. By using the services and business offerings of a vendor made it convenient and effortless for Jim and Candy to start their e-business store. Unfortunately the couple did not have much in the way of professional help, and so they had to create and put together the website by themselves. Additionally they also had to deal with establishing their online credibility as many customers preferred to call in their orders just to talk with a real person before being comfortable enough to place their orders via the webpage.
The essay “Into the electronic millennium” is a cynical observation of an author named Sven Birkerts, towards the electronic era of 21st century. Author’s overall intent of the essay is to put forth an awareness with a pinch of bias on the electronic damage to the society. He makes many assertions to argue his points which are some what valid even today, some of them which capture quick attention are: “The electronic media are invisible in process, but omnipresent in product” (Birkerts), “the only way that we can understand what is happening- what has already happened- is by the way of serve and unnatural dissociation of sensibility” (Birkerts). With all these impressive protestations, author is trying to make his readers ponder about the topic, as he says, “ To get the grip on the dimensions of the change, you must force yourself to imagine -deeply and in non-televisual terms- what the world was like a hundred, even fifty, years ago” (Birkerts).
As with many small business owners they vision of their business usually only extends to their own abilities. They are driven and full of determination and believe their abilities will be able to sustain the business to success. Unfortunately, many small businesses lack the knowledge to be able to effectively be owners’ and leader’ to their organizations.
Katz, J. A., & Green, R. P. (2014). Entrepreneurial small business (4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Laudon, Kenneth C. Traver, Carol. E-commerce: Business. Technology. Society 3th ed. Pearson Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle NJ, 2007.
I agree with Nicholas Carr's claim of the internet shaping us into shallow individuals who connect more with the internet than with our heart, souls, and loved ones. We seem to pay more attention to our electronics rather than our peers and the real world. Our world seems to revolve around social media and our technology, for example, hearing a notification sound off on your phone makes you want to drop everything you are doing to check on what the notification is. The reason people are not connecting enough with things that really matter is due to the internet.
During the last decade, we’ve been to the top of the world—during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s—and back down again, when it all fell apart a few years later. But with the bad came the good: The Web forever changed the business world. The following small-business owners are shining examples of how Web-based technologies can be a businessperson’s best friend.
Small businesses have been considered the mainstay in countries around the world. In many European countries for example, the small business has been considered crucial to the success and flourishment of the country in general. Most individuals start upon a small business venture in the hopes of realizing ownership, independent profits and personal success. Small businesses can prove extremely successful when planned properly. Studies suggest that several small businesses, however, close or fail within the first few years of operation. This failure suggests that a majority of small business owners may not have as yet realized the crucial success factors necessary for successful implementation of a small business.
I'll start this section with a story I was once told at an entrepreneurship workshop: Ed White was working for Andersen Consulting until 1991 when he was retrenched. His boss said he was redundant. Instead of sitting back and weep, he decided to set up his Ed White & Co, a firm that specialises in IT consultancy for the banking and motor industries. As we speak, his firm's client list includes Mercedes-Benz, VW, and Lloyds TSB. Interestingly, the firm has only 12-full-time employees.
What's e-business? It is the transformation of every business process through using the internet and associated technologies. In this transformation, each part of the business becomes a part of an intrinsic network, which enables employees, suppliers and customers of a given enterprise to conduct their tasks. People usually try to make a point in differing e-business from e-commence, but as I see, e-commerce is a part of the e-business category, and an important one.
Starting and maintaining a successful business is the dream of all entrepreneurs. Today’s advancements in technology have created new opportunities for business owners to get closer to this dream. The Web has been the most effective tool in creating new opportunities for business owners. An entrepreneur should be more successful by starting, marketing, and operating a Web-based business.
When it comes to business, especially when it comes to starting one, I tend to think I know it all. Yet in reality, I don't really even know how to get started, enough to make a business efficient, or even get the doors open enough to make the first dollar. When I first think of working/operating a business, I think of no boss but myself, the rules are made by me and no one else, and that seems like a great plan in my eyes. As well as having all company profit coming directly to me, and I get to decide what happens with it. Although I know there is more to it than that, there is forming a budget, working with customers, knowing when to expand, and when to coast through. I also know that in the world of business, that if you aren't moving ahead, you are moving backwards.
Starting a small business is often one of the hardest things a person can do. Some people start a business out of pure fascination, or even as a hobby. Whether starting a business for personal reasons or simply the grandeur to make loads of money, everybody needs to have a plan. Starting a small business is no easy task and can take days if not months to prepare. The most important aspect to have is the tempura and heart to start a small business, as without passion, no business can succeed. One has to be his or her own boss, make dream, reality and be willing to market and sell a product. It takes a lot of discipline, long hours and hard work, something many do not have. However with the right willingness, passion and dedication a business can be the start of something big.
At the very start, internet revolution was known as a world wide web that would change everything. In 1990s, the concept of "online business" was created, this business is known by various names such as dot-coms, e-biz etc. which made easier to start a business on internet and inexpensive as well. Whether it's a big or a small, local or international it can reach infront of the world very easily. Thousands of ventures have been made on internet for online business on the basis of brick and mortar. Online business is not different from any other venture. Same rules and principles are applied. First thing to start up a business is to create a business plan and think of how to make money. Some of the options which should be applied for an online business includes, sell products, sell advertising, sell information, sell services and to become a reseller. All of these options are complied together. For any virtual business an individual should always look for products with high margins, high demand and less competition either for physical or digital manner. However, many services are sold on internet such as web hosting, domain name registration, software applications and comparison of different products and services. Selling information is another basic option in an online business which is done in two forms, one is subscribing on a website where online articles are available for free and on the other hand e-books are popular and are free, they can be downloaded easily plus when the writing is done the cost of subscription is very low. Advertising on internet leads toward a lot of money though it's an expensive procedure, with a lot of traffic on a web site one can make money easily by joining any kind of ad network such as Google. By getting affiliated with another web site can also make a lot of money such as sending a buyer on another merchant's web page, like this one can get a percentage on per sale basis but first an individual needs to get expert in marketing for search engines.
We learned a lot of things in this course, but I think the most important lesson I learned is that it’s not easy to be an entrepreneur. I was surprised to hear in the first class that 80% of startups fail, but after reading The Art of Start and E-myth Revisited I understood why this happens more often than one might expects. Some people start their own businesses for the wrong reason and some start with wrong mindset. I’ve always thought that if someone has a brilliant business idea and hardworking they will succeed and grow their business. However, now I know that there are many things to consider before starting any business. In fact, there are many strategies that an entrepreneur could follow to achieve success, such as know your customers, work “on” the business, and how