According to an Intuit report for 2020, the minorities in America will collectively become the majority of the population in the four largest states: California, New York, Texas, and Florida. They will comprise 40% of the national population with Hispanics being 20%.

Many minority groups have segments that struggle with financial stability. The opportunities that business ownership provides can help increase family income levels. (see April 28, 2015 Business Corner titled “Why You Should Start Your Own Small Business”)

The growth of minorities also presents some very interesting side effects on society. As these groups grow, their culture becomes more mainstream and less “ethnic.” The cultural infusion that will blend cultural tastes from around the world into the local economy, will provide a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs that position themselves to serve the changing preferences. This infusion will affect music, food, products, entertainment, and even the workforce.

There will be conflict as some cultural differences receive resistance, but the influence will be undeniable and the foreign tastes will infuse with local tastes as consumers start demanding them at a growing pace. The demand will not be for the strong foreign flavor in itself, but for the locally-infused version of that product or service.

Internet and Cloud services will accelerate the cultural infusion as easy access to products and services are readily available worldwide. This global cultural infusion will spur innovation and international sales.

Observant entrepreneurs who sense trends and influences can position themselves to capitalize on the cultural fusion opportunities. With excellent marketing techniques, many will be able to influence the trends.

I hope you found this article to be helpful. If you have questions or suggested topics you’d like to see in this column, please contact me.

Copyright © 2015, R. Scott Alvord

#minorities #entrepreneur #EntrepreneurialMajorities #CulturalInfusion #ScottAlvord #HireSelf #ADC

The post Minorities to Entrepreneurial Majorities first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Rolling back the calendar to 1948, only one-third of American women worked outside the home compared to 87% of men. As the decades rolled by, the gap has steadily narrowed as men’s employment rates declined and laboring women increased. Back in August, 2014, men had dropped to 70% and women have raised to 57%.

When it comes to education, women now dominate American college enrollment. For younger workers ages eighteen to thirty-three, women are much more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than men are. They also receive 50% more masters degrees.

The fast growth in female employment and education is over. Growth still exists but the trends have slowed considerably. There is some great news, however. The next huge opportunity for massive growth is female entrepreneurship!

Women are currently underrepresented in high-growth entrepreneurship. Even though women own about one-third of all businesses, they only own 16% of businesses that employ others. When it comes to high-growth companies, female founders usually account for less than 10% in any given business segment.

When you put the puzzle pieces together, the growing strength of working women and the glut of highly-educated women, it seems clear that the future growth of entrepreneurship is in the hands of women.

Recent studies suggest that women entrepreneurs are making gains in fields previously dominated by men, but there is still a significant gap in fields such as information technology, manufacturing, construction, and transportation. These gaps are important to understand because these industries provide fertile ground for both revenue generation and employment opportunities.

This gap has sparked many federal, state, and local programs that target women who are primed to launch their own businesses or to boost their existing businesses into higher growth. Why is the government so interested in the huge potential growth of female-owned businesses? Because it is a great way to boost our local and regional economies!

Studies have shown that female potential business owners struggle in two key areas. The first is that they lack mentors and advisers to help guide and motivate them into successful business ownership. The second is that they struggle more than males in obtaining outside funding sources. Both of these situations are fixable, especially if we encourage governments at all levels to join with the business community to help fill these gaps. It will pay off for our communities!

In the meantime, if you’d like a free (really) eBook on How to Fund Your Business, you can get your copy at www.HireSelf.com/free-chapter And yes, it has lots of ideas, regardless whether you are a male or female!

I hope you found this article interesting and helpful. If you have questions or suggested topics you’d like to see in this column, please contact me at Author@HireSelf.com

#FireYourJob #HireSelf #FemaleBusinessOwner #ADC #StartYourOwnBusiness

Copyright © 2015, R. Scott Alvord

The post Female Business Owners are Primed to Take Over the World first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Question:

“How can I build up Twitter followers that are from my target audience instead of just random people? And how can I do this for free?”

Answer:

Assuming you clearly know the characteristics of your target audience, a smart and FREE way to build followers from that audience is to think about the leaders and businesses for which that target audience is connected. These might be your competitors or the leaders and businesses in your niche that you look up to yourself. Go find those leaders and businesses on Twitter and read a history of their tweets to confirm that they would attract your target audience.

Then the fun begins. First, post a few quality tweets on the subject matter for which you specialize. Make sure those tweets are not retweets of some else’s material. You want these golden information nuggets to be at the top of your recent tweets when a potential follower comes and checks you out.

Next, go to the Twitter home page of one of those major leaders or businesses and click on the Followers option to see a list of their followers. If you selected the right leader or business, it’s fairly safe to assume that most of their followers are the type of people that you’d like following you…right? Right!

To avoid wasting time on potentially junk accounts, scroll through their list of followers and quickly look for the following characteristics:

1. They have a profile picture.
2. They have a name that makes sense when compared to their @ handle (e.g., if the name is “John Jones” and their handle is @W3RFg3Q, skip to the next name).
3. They have a profile description that sounds like your target audience.

For each person/business that seems legitimate and appears to be in your target audience, click on Follow to follow that account.

Go to the next account and lather. rinse. repeat. Be careful not to follow too many people in a short amount of time, or your account might get locked by Twitter until you respond to an email from them to verify your account. How do I know that?…ummm…well…trust me.

So up to this point, it sounds like you’re following your target audience instead of getting them to follow you. How do you turn this around?

You’ll be happy to discover that many of them will follow you back, especially if your profile fits their interest and your tweets look like the stuff they’re interested in following. We find that about 25% of them will follow you back! What a cool way to connect with your exact target audience.

Bonus: Try to connect with influential people or companies who frequently like, retweet, or positively comment on the tweets of gurus or popular companies your target audience follows. These might be free advertisers of your material if you can get them to follow you as well.

If you are looking for more help to identify and reach your target customer, or if you just need a qualified consultant, contact Advanced Development Concepts, LLC.

The post Twitter Tip: How to Get Your Target Market to Follow You on Twitter for Free first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Hotels do it. Airlines do it. Cruise lines do it.

For example, if a cruise ship can break even on food, housekeeping, and wear-and-tear, by renting an interior cabin for $100, and they know that the additional liquor sales, excursions, and casino earnings will, on average, bring in $200 per cabin, they are happy to give bargain basement prices at the last minute to various travel agencies and discount travel sites. The catch? The shopper might not be able to go on a desired cruise if they risk waiting until the last minute, and the shopper only gets the left-overs.

This is the concept that can allow you get advertising for less than half the price. This applies to newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and more.

Here’s the situation: Folks who sell advertising space for a living, make money off the commissions. They have to sell to get paid, and the publisher needs those sales to pay for the cost of publishing. The ad agent can’t always find enough buyers to fill the necessary slots. They can often make room, with a smile, if they have too many. But they get a little desperate when they are running thin because the publisher requires certain minimum levels to fund the production.

This is where your opportunity lies. You can offer to help fill these voids at a significant discount in the event the sales agent needs someone quick. If you know what the absolute minimum price that the publisher requires of the agent, you can make an offer around that level to fill the holes when the sales agent needs to meet their quota. The downside is that you won’t necessarily get to pick where it’s positioned, when it airs, or even if it gets selected to run at all (of course you won’t pay if it doesn’t run). Another downside is that you aren’t helping the sales agent make much money, but meeting quotas can help them keep their job.

Here are the steps to get this special pricing:

1. First figure out where your target audience will be. What do they read, watch, and listen to? Those are the places you’d like your ad to exist.
2. Contact the marketing sales agent for these media sources. Find out all the specifics about the ad options including the size/length, format, deadlines for submission, and who to send the submission to. Ask a lot of questions about the location/timing options, and how much control you get in selecting where the ad is positioned. Ask which positioning locations tend to do better and which do worse (e.g., the top right corner of the right page of a magazine is seen more often than any other location when the magazine is opened). Make notes, this is all important for later.
3. Obtain the regular prices for each of their options (first page, back cover, various sizes, special issues, etc.) and the best pricing they can give you and if they ever run specials. It’s important that you clearly understand how their pricing model works and why sometimes they offer specials.
4. If you are able to find out anything about how their commission works and if they have quotas, you will be in an excellent position for later. Some sales folks don’t mind sharing this while others realize it puts them in less control and won’t answer it. This information can sometimes be gathered by reviewing the details of their job postings on their website or by simply calling or emailing the manager of the advertising department and asking these questions. They are sometimes amazingly quick to share the details because they might assume you are thinking about applying for the position, but you might find them guarded. Be prepared to answer the question, “Why do you ask?” Saying that you’re a potential advertiser will likely get you no where but lying and saying you’re wanting to apply for the job is unethical. Possibly answering, “I’m curious how it works” or “I’m doing some research,” would be a reasonable next response but determine ahead of time at what point you are going to admit, “I’m considering advertising with you and I want to understand how your sales reps get paid.“
5. Try to find out how often they are scrambling to find advertisers, or how often a prime ad location isn’t filled. This information will be golden to you.
6. After researching multiple companies this way, you can then study your notes and figure out where you’d like to advertise, based on what your target audience would consume, and which of these targeted media sources might be the most desperate to give you a great deal.
7. For each media source, figure out your budget and what you’re willing to pay for a horribly placed ad and for the prime location. Again, write everything down so you’ll be well-prepared for the upcoming phone call or email.
8. Then contact your targeted advertising sales rep and you’ll pitch your offer to help them fill in missing advertisements when necessary, for a significant discount.  FOR EXAMPLE, let’s say that you’ve determined that the publisher needs at least $150 per 1/4 page ad and splits the amount over this minimum as commission for the sales rep. You’re willing to pay up to $200 for a $500 1/4 page ad placement. You’ll create your own ad so the sales rep doesn’t have to hassle with paying for graphic work (which makes you an easier and less costly client to work with). After the warm-up conversation, your pitch might sound something like this: “I am not able to budget my advertising for the $500, 1/4 page ad that you quoted me. But I am willing to be placed on a back burner until you need to fill a 1/4 page hole and can’t find a full-priced advertiser, or if someone backs out at the last minute. I’ll do my own artwork and have an ad ready to go for that size and format, and I can afford $175/issue for this purpose.” Offering less than the $200 you decided you can afford gives you a little negotiating room if they counter offer.

Guess what? If you did your homework well enough, you might not have to wait too long for the sales rep to use you to start filling holes. You’re not as profitable as the other advertisers but you do fill a need. You are offering a win-win situation that can help the sales rep when necessary.

The post Advertising Secret: How to Get Advertising for Half the Price first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.