RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 380

Thought for the week: "It's not easy to play the clown when you've got to run the whole circus." Hawkeye's Conclusion

• Six self-help tips for business owners
• EnterQuest survey
• Two new business ideas
• Free heatmap tool
• Social media alert tool
• Freelance jobs board
• Firefox scrapbook extension tool
• Cabbage Patch - daft news

Six self-help tips for business owners

One of the biggest and most successful areas in the small business publishing world is that of self-help for entrepreneurs. There are thousands of books, manuals, self-learning courses, DVDs and podcasts covering just about every aspect of small business and personal development imaginable.

Why is there so much on the market?

Because of the demand. Demand fuelled by just about every individual's sense of self-worth and desire for self-improvement in relation to their peers or colleagues and, in the case of small business owners, in relation to their rivals and competitors.

So how much of it is any good? Well, just like anything else in business, the quality of what's available varies considerably, from some excellent must-haves to the drivel produced by people who haven't spent a day of their lives near a small business, never mind in one.

Our advice to you is that there's no reason not to shop around and try out the stuff that's available, but that you should also recognise you are as good as your own ability to learn things for yourself, with a little bit of prompting to keep you pointed in the right direction.

So here are a few tips for improving your personal business skills and the development habits you can sharpen as a small business owner.

1) Work on your inquisitiveness and curiosity

This is about developing an incessant desire to find something new or something more about the needs of your customers, looking for an unfilled gap in the market, a market inefficiency, a market that doesn't exist yet, some added value that no-one else is offering, and of course finding a way that you can deliver it before anyone else.

2) Write down what you are thinking all the time

Carry a notebook everywhere you go and write down your thoughts and ideas as soon as you can, and especially during or just after business meetings. Go back through your notebook every week or so and you'll be amazed at how much you have forgotten to do or have forgotten that you even thought, agreed or conceived. Highlight the stuff that sticks out and act on it.

3) Read as much as you can

You no longer have to read whole business books and manuals. There are hundreds of free business newsletters you can subscribe to, free e-book chapters, online tutorials, extracts from business gurus' private files and so on. Subscribe to the ones that appeal to you and you can soon build up a valuable personal coaching resource you can access via e-mail and the Internet.

4) Improve your vocabulary and speaking ability

Improving your vocabulary is one of the easiest and most valuable personal development habits you can pick up. If you can learn a minimum of one new word a week, you'll improve your ability to describe and articulate your ideas and business proposals and your ability to sell them in the process.

5) Don't shy away from failure

Avoiding failure goes hand in hand with missing out on business success. Don't be afraid of failing occasionally, as you'll learn just as much from this (if not more) as from your successes. View your failures as rungs or ratchets to help you get up the learning curve a lot more quickly.

6) Always seek to improve yourself and your business

Never stop, and never ease back over this. You'll reach a point many times in your small business career where you think you know it all, only to fall back on your arse with a bump. You should view your small business and your career within it as something which you can improve every week of every month of every year until you are finally ready to give it all up. This is something that is very difficult to measure or put a value on in a balance sheet.

Of course, there's a lot more to being a small business success than this, but these are just a few of the entrepreneurial habits in which every business owner should consider, pick up and improve on.

To comment on this article you can click here to have your say.

The latest EnterQuest survey is seeking your views and opinion about the media and other sources of information that you use to keep up to date with business issues, news and current affairs and for your own personal business development. So far we have had a good response, but if you haven't taken the survey yet you can do so now - it will only take a couple of minutes to complete.

Please click here to take the survey.

Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK and elsewhere around the world.

• Planeshop is a permanent retail outlet at Glasgow airport which showcases a different brand for limited periods. Billed as a flexible retailing concept, it ensures there is always something new on offer at the shop.

• The Bolton Hotel in New Zealand has created a "brainfood menu" specifically targeted at conference and seminar goers. The hotel says the menu will help to keep attendees alert for their course or workshop.

Free heatmap tool

Attention Wizard is a software tool that predicts where someone would look in the first few seconds of their visit to your website. There is free Lite version of this "Attention Heatmap" software.

Social media alert tool

Social Mention is a free alert tool that scours social media sites such as blogs, networks and microblogs. It works on the same lines as Google Alerts, whereby you set up an alert for keywords or phrases, and it pings you an e-mail each time your phrase is mentioned.

Freelance jobs board

FreelanceSwitch is a jobs board that can be used to find freelancers who you can contract out work to. It can also be used by freelancers to gain new jobs and clients.

Firefox scrapbook extension tool

The Scrapbook extension tool for Firefox lets you save web pages and sites and bookmark them. It also has highlighting and editing features so you can annotate the page and remove information you don't need.

Here's our weekly look at some unusual, daft and often ridiculous business ideas, products and news.

• Bored with the iPhone? Now you can literally wear your mobile phone.

• A restaurant is going to open where you can dine on someone else ...or maybe it isn't.

• An entrepreneurial student has invented a new type of wee dram ...literally.

• Open all hours (most of the time)?

Win Acronis Backup & Recovery 10

EnterQuest has teamed up with backup solutions provider Acronis to offer one reader the chance to win a copy of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 is a family of products for data backup, system recovery and reduplication.

To be in with a chance of winning this great prize, just answer the following question:

Q: What is the name of the new retailer in Glasgow airport featured in this week's bulletin?

E-mail your answer, together with your name, address and daytime phone number, using 'Acronis competition' in the subject line, to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

All entries must be received by 30 September. Full competition rules are available on request.

To promote your products or services in EnterQuest Classifieds,
call us on (0191) 461 8000 or e-mail enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

Also from EnterQuest's publisher EnterQuest readers can receive a free copy of our sister publication, Better Business magazine. Simply send us an e-mail with your name and address with 'EQ magazine offer' in the subject box to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com. The UK Small Business Marketing Bible contains hundreds of tips and tactics for boosting your sales using proven marketing strategies that work no matter what product or service you sell.

Visit www.enterprisequest.com to access all back issues of the EnterQuest bulletin. If you have any feedback or suggestions for us to make this service more relevant please e-mail your comments to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

If you wish to discontinue your subscription to EnterQuest please click on the 'SafeUnsubscribe' link at the bottom of the bulletin.

Remember that we guarantee never to sell or give your e-mail address to anyone else.

Good luck

The EnterQuest Team

This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate.