RealShelf

Considering starting your own business? Franchise businesses offer the advantages of a pre-built and proven business plan and the marketing and planning support of a larger corporation. Unfortunately many franchises are very expensive to acquire with some of the better known fast food franchises costing $750,000 or more. You almost have to be a millionaire just to start a local business if you go the franchise route. Ultimate Book of Low-Cost Franchises 2005 can solve that problem and open the door to a franchise business for those with considerably less than 3/4 of a million in spare cash. The book is written by the author of Entrepreneur Magazine’s Start Your Own Business and the executive director of Entrepreneur Magazine. It includes a list of the top 10 low cost franchises and a list of over 300 low cost franchises.

The full subtitle of Guerrilla Marketing Weapons is “100 Affordable Marketing Methods for Maximizing Profits from Your Small Business”. For those not familiar, Guerrilla Marketing is the concept of low cost direct to the consumer marketing tactics that bypass high cost media where big companies dominate the field. This book includes tactics for gaining new customers, keeping old ones and generating referrals all as part of a guerrilla strategy. For my small business clients, I can’t recommend the concepts in this book enough. The particular techniques are not so important as the thinking they generate. What’s important is to think not about where to buy advertising, but how to reach potential customers and how to tailor guerrilla concepts to your own market. For example, Levinson recommends classified ads as guerrilla marketing for many businesses because, compared to television for example, they are cheap. in the real estate business, though, classified ads are used by everyone, priced at a higher rate for Realtors than for “private parties”, very cost ineffective and result in far fewer sales than most other forms of advertising. Obviously not the place for the Guerrilla Realtor. The information in the books is extremely valuable as a mindset, but you still must know your own business. Any and all of the Guerrilla Marketing books are great resources for building your business.

In an increasingly global economy and a local economy that includes more immigrants, foreign tourists and international investors, understanding other cultures isn’t just a matter of manners, it’s good business sense. Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: How to Do Business in Sixty Countries is the classic work on the subject. Of course, with 6 billion people on the planet, no work is exhaustive on the subject of cultural differences, so the rule to follow is to be aware of differences, be polite and use references like this to reach out to consumers from other cultures. Whether you’re running a retail business in southwest Missouri, working with me to sell your real estate for top dollar or leaving to do business internationally yourself, being aware of these differences is a must and this book is the must have starting point.