Business & Financial

A freelancer has submitted a proposal on your project and the price sounds nice, and he or she sounds knowledgeable, but you see that they have zero feedback. They’re new to Elance and you’re not sure whether or not you should work with them. Here are some tips for determining whether or not you should work with a newbie freelancer.

Ask for Samples – It could be that the freelancer is simply new to the site and not the industry. Writers who are now freelancing might have come from companies as in-house writers. The same goes for web designers and other freelancers. Ask whether or not they have samples of previous work and what their experience in the industry is. You may even get a discount on the work because the freelancer is in need of good feedback to get more projects.

Starting your own business can be an exciting investment. Whether your business is your passion, or just a genius plan that you developed, it is important to know the facts about starting a business before you invest. Many people have misconceptions about what starting a business entails. In order for your business to have a fair shot at success, you should be aware of what to expect. To help clarify things, we’ve compiled a list of myths and facts about opening a small business.

Myth: If all goes well, my business should start turning a profit in 6 months.

Fact: The sad truth is that even successful businesses do not start making a profit until several years after start-up. Because overhead costs for most businesses require large loans or investments that must be paid back, even a booming business will not make a true profit until all the initial start-up costs have been paid off. Typically, a successful business will begin generating pure profit after 2 to 3 years.

Entrepreneurship is all about balance. From allocating your time and energy effectively to managing different types of employees, one of the toughest parts of being in charge of everything is striking the right chord to keep things moving smoothly, efficiently, and in the right direction. The solution often lies in the entrepreneur’s own ability to recognize and balance the conflicting perspectives that drive their own decisions.

There are three fundamental, but conflicting, personalities that in some mix drive most individuals. They are the entrepreneurial view of always looking forward, the manager view of always looking back, and the technical perspective of only dealing with what is happening in the present. Most people excel in one area, may have some balance among two, but rarely have a good handle on balancing all three. That balance is an absolute necessity to develop and grow any type of business.

Authenticity advocates and heart-centered entrepreneurs cringe at the sound of this phrase – I know, I consider myself to be both. The idea of faking anything sounds terrible (and inauthentic) but I’ve discovered that the core intention of this advice has a lot of merit. (Are you gonna let one little word distract you from the wisdom?)

As with most good advice, there is a caveat… It’s great advice IF you are in transition to your next best self and you have a very clear vision of what that looks like for YOU.

The pitfall occurs when our definition of success is based on the life or business another person has created. We try to be like them, do like they do to the point where we start to sound like them, our websites morph into a mini-me version of theirs. And on it goes until your original vision is no longer visible. (But we’re modeling success – right? Um, thats a whole other conversation we could have!)