Talentpreneur Hub was featured in today’s MyPaper, “创业的8大须知'’
Ken Koh, Managing Director from Talentpreneur Hub, offered readers “8 IMPORTANT TIPS” when starting a Business.
Media Feature: MyPaper, June 29 2009
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on Monday, June 29, 2009 | comments (0)
Talentpreneur Hub has been featured in the March/April issue of Horizons; a official bi-monthly publication by MDIS. “Promoting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship”.
Ken Koh, Founder and Managing Director of Talentpreneur Hub, gave a talk to 200 Diploma and degree students from MDIS to promote and spread the spirit of entrepreneurship.
Cost-saving tip for start-ups and local SMEs: Freelancing
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 | comments (0)
Starting a business can be rather costly, hence it is crucial that all businesses should constantly look for ways to drastically reduce your business’ overhead costs in order to increase profit margins. One of these ways would be to outsource and hire freelancers to cope with certain aspects of your businesses.
So what are the benefits to hiring freelancers?
- Save on your monthly overheads by hiring help or outsourcing only when you need to
- Freelance professionals may boast skills that your full-time staff may not have
- It's easier to swap to another freelance professional if needed, as opposed to firing and hiring
How to hire freelancers?
http://www.freelancezone.com.sg/
Websites like Freelancezone.com.sg allows companies to post jobs, search through databases and manage projects.
Visit www.freelancezone.com.sg today and discover the benefits of freelancing!
Media Feature: LianHe WanBao, June 18 2009
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on Monday, June 22, 2009 | comments (0)
Media Feature: Berita Harian, March 21 2009
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on Monday, June 15, 2009 | comments (0)
Talentpreneur Hub Helped Young Entrepreneur Started a Business
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on | comments (0)
Recession sees more interest in Talentpreneur Hub’s startup programme. With the help of Talentpreneur Hub’s Startup! Accelerator programme, Mr Muhammad Razy successfully started his own fashion business; Costume Di Amour. Despite being called crazy for wanting to start his own business in this current economic climate, Mr Muhammad Razy thought it was in fact an opportune time since costs are lower.
Managing Your Small Business Finances
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | comments (0)
If you want to succeed in a business you're running, you need to know about financial management of your company. No matter how skilled you are at creating a product, providing a service, or marketing your wares, the money you earn will slip between your fingers if you don't know how to efficiently collect, keep track of, save and spend or invest it wisely.
When poorly managed, financial management become a number one reason that lead a business to a failure -- no matter whether it's new or established business. In many cases, failure could have been avoided if the owners had applied sound financial principles to all their dealings and decisions. Financial management is not something that you can leave to your banker, financial planner, or accountant — you need to understand the basic principles yourself and use them on a daily basis, even if you plan to leave the more complicated work to hired professionals.
These are some of financial management tools that are most used, in general, by small businesses.
- Basic bookkeeping helps you recording daily transactions, working with your accountant and banker, and, for the do-it-yourselfers, how to close the books and draw up financial statements.
- Credit and collection records helps you overseeing the pros and cons of accepting credit cards or offering trade credit, and tells you when you need to more quickly and effectively collect the money your customers owe you.
- Having a cash flow statement helps you managing your cash flow to reduce the lag between cash outflows and inflows, and prepare you to make decision to invest the surplus cash you'll soon have on hand.
- Records of major purchases and projects helps you to evaluate larger investments in capital equipment or business facilities, by using some of the same financial tools used by accountants and other financial professionals.
- Analyzing your current financial position arms you with sophisticated ways of examining your financial statements and other aspects of your business, and identifying trends, spot emerging problems as well as comparing your business to others in the same industry.
Business Idea in Health Industry: Dietitian
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on Thursday, June 4, 2009 | comments (0)
First thing first, you need to be an accredited dietitian for starting this business. Although there's no regulatory board or council protecting the titles of Dietitians and Nutritionists. The Singapore Nutrition and Dietetics Association (SNDA) implemented an Accreditation Scheme in 2005 for Nutritionists and Dietitians who are members of the association.
From SNDA website, we understand that "Accredited Dietitian of Singapore (ADS) and Accredited Nutritionist of Singapore (ANS) are recognised professionals who have credible qualifications and expertise to provide expert nutrition and dietary advice to the healthy population. ADS have additional knowledge and skills in clinical nutrition and are trained to work with various diseased populations in various settings."
As a new accredited dietitian, you could sub-contract your services out to numerous businesses such as schools, hospitals, nursing homes and (which is popular here in Singapore) weight loss clinics and fitness centers. Being a smart entrepreneur, you shouldn't only think being an average dietitian but also working toward your personal branding as a successful dietitian. Build long lasting relationship with your customers and use referral technique to boost your sales of services.
Potential profit for diet consulting services is promising and annual income of $50,000 or more in your first 2-3 years is certainly not impossible given Singaporeans' consciousness towards importance of diet and healthy living. To survive in a competitive industry like this you have to focus on increasing business revenue by developing your own exclusive diet programs, videos and software, books, which can be sold through the company website, as well as to national retailers on a wholesale basis.
How do you think the potential of this business?
Starting Home Based Business with Affiliate Marketing
by Talentpreneur Hub Events on Monday, June 1, 2009 | comments (1)
Whether it's in good or bad economic times, everyone is looking for the next big idea or business to come along. Unfortunately, not many people are willing to spend significant time to build a legitimate business, especially when it comes to home-based business. People who are serious about starting a home based business need to examine the facts before jumping on the band wagon with all the get-rich-quick gurus who claim to have secret, proven business system. A real long lasting business takes a lot of work.
What is so difficult? Well, getting your website up and running to sell products sure help, but that alone will not good enough to draw people into your business. Think about the cost of doing business, not only in term of dollar amount but also time you spend to acquire or keep a number of costumers. Although it is cheaper to do business online than a traditional brick-and-mortar business, one must keep in mind that you are not free from traditional concept customer service concept such as provide add-on service, gather feedback about your service, foster open dialogue with your consumers and maintain relationship with them along the way.
Always keep your lines of communication open -- emails, voice chat or phone calls are great, but face-to-face conversation is always better. What you want is to keep the consumer happy, let them spread the word, and your business will grow with lesser effort on marketing part. Look at your customers as free advertisement for your business. This means having phone number they can call to ease their concerns about your product and keep them informed as well as updated on new products or discoveries through mailing list or corporate blog.
If there are seems many things to do, especially as a home-based business owner, but don't be discouraged. You can start small while riding your learning curve. For instance, you can sell other people's products or service and get paid for it. This is called Affiliate Marketing, a years-old internet/online marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Most of these program accept people who want to sell others' product for free. On the other hand, they take care of all the customer service system and reply quickly to your customers' concerns.
These days, there are many affiliate programs or networks -- which works locally and globally -- that that pay people quite well for selling their products or services. Instead of spending all your initial capital and time on a business that doesn't guarantee any success. You can start small with affiliate marketing, sell others' products or services and find a business that meet your interest -- a business that you believe can lead to satisfied customers so that they will keep coming back. When you're confident with your ability to sell on the internet, you already have enough knowledge set of the industry to start you own business.
World's economy has never been this worst in recent years. Uncertainties seem follow your everywhere you go. Bank credits are tightened, corporate layoffs are announced almost every day and a shaky stock market is followed more closely than ever.
I'm not trying to write an article that will put your spirit down, instead I want us to learn the lessons apply to any challenging time we and our organization may be facing. Whenever and for whatever reason times might be tough, consider these things you can do to create better results for yourself as a leader, to be a better leader your organization or team.
The right attitude rules. The attitude and mindset you bring to workplace is important and infectious to your team, but it has never been so in tough or challenging times. Never fail to fill your mind with ideas and thoughts that help you maintain a positive mood and an upbeat attitude that keep your entrepreneurship spirit going. Whether attending motivational seminar or reading self-improvement book, you should do whatever it takes to maintain that attitude for yourself, knowing that your attitude is contagious.
Communicate organizational goals and vision. When things seem uncertain it's especially become more important than ever to focus your team on the big picture. Does your team see the vision of organization future or just do whatever it can to survive the crisis? Do your people know the most important and meaningful organizational goals? Do they just try to make a living out of your business? As a leader it's your responsibility to all individuals in your organization get the right answer. Spend more time communicating, sharing and engaging people in your picture of the future and their place in it. Not only will it help people see past today, but it will focus them on something positive and helpful for the whole organization.
Keep the good results coming. Don't allow people to become victims of the environment and always expect optimistic results beyond your standard performance. Your industry might be off by 25%, but that doesn't mean your sales have to be off that much. Challenge your team to do more, and to do things differently -- remember there's always a winner in worst situation. You shouldn't deny the current tough environment, but you shouldn't accept it as end of you effort either. Expect the best of team, fully support them and give encouragement whenever is needed, and help them succeed. It starts with your expectations.
Engage your top talent. You may not have much attrition in these tough times; on the other hand, your people may not be looking to move somewhere else. If that's true, it can be easy to take people for granted or rest on your laurels. Don't do it. The economic conditions will change and when it does, you want to be with your top talent who are most open to making a change and are ready to run your organization to its peak performance. Use the current situation as a chance to develop and engage your people as well as to assess their skills set which required business needs. When people are fully engaged they are less likely to leave. Keep your focus on engaging your organization - especially your top talents.
In a connected world where information spread seamlessly, one of the most popular ways for a business to receive free publicity is by attracting (printed or electronic) media attention through Do-it-Yourself (DIY) press release. Most of the time, it takes time and work to get noticed by journalists especially if you run small business. However, the basis of a first-rate public relations campaign is your business press release. If you have established positive relationship with news editors, or hired someone who can catch them during their busy schedule, news press release is the most efficient way to get into the media.
Getting your press release into media's page is not always straightforward though. With limited space and attention given to promote so many businesses, most of press release sent to the media wind up in the trash. If you want members of the media to call you regarding stories you pitch, or the stories they are already working on, you have to send the right message in your press releases.
- Get your five W's and one H of Reporting Correct.
For journalist, facts are the foundation of every news article, thus, when basic factual information is need they often turn to press releases. This is the why who, what, when, where, why, and how of your story are so important. When creating a press release, take some time to note the facts about the news you wish people notice. This information is vital for the entire story, and you should reinforce them in the lead paragraph of your release so that news editors don't have to read much to get the gist of your message. - Write a brief-yet-catchy headline
When writing a news, journalist always think from readers perspective. Therefore, headlines of your story should communicate the main idea of the story while capturing the attention of the reader with minimum number of words words possible. Headline of your press release should present the news in in a catch, but keep it in a informative manner, such as "The Many Hidden Costs of High-Deductible Health Insurance" and "Music Industry Sees Nightclubs as a New Source of Revenue". - Get readers' attention, hook them
Once you've gotten your readers' attention, it's time hook them. Think about something that compel the reader to continue reading, such as a surprising fact or statistic, or a common problem faced by readers or a compelling question. This hook often communicates a common problem and a startling statistic, such as "Cancer Death Rate Dropped Nearly 20 Percent in 15 years" or "Is Living in a High-End Suburb Worth It?" - Quote experts' opinion
As you go into more detail about the five W's and one H of your news, giving as much detail as you can in as few words as possible, you will beginning developing the body of your press release. In doing so, you should include experts opinion that the reporter can pull directly from your release. The media loves getting quotes directly from the source of the news and by giving them a quote or two. By including quotes from the first source, you make the their job easier while greatly improving your chances of getting mentioned in the paper. If possible you should use quotes that really highlight the impact of your news. - A Call to Action
After you've gotten all your main points in, last thing you need to close your press release with a call to action. If you want reporters to call you for an interview, you should say so. If you want them to cover your event, make that your call to action. Don't forget to include your contact information.
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