What Is A Social Entrepreneur?

Social Entrepreneurship

First Published: Sep 18, 2011 EntrepreneurJourney.com

Social entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs, but they work on a larger scale. Instead of concentrating on a business or an entity, social entrepreneurs concentrate on social problems and issues and use entrepreneurial skills to solve or change social issues to make society work or societal systems to work better, efficiently, and in harmony with nature and environment.

Social entrepreneurs can work in a voluntary or not-for-profit environment, or can also work in a non-voluntary or for-profit environment, just like a regular entrepreneur. However, their major goals are to concentrate on wide-scale social problems and to offer solutions for entire societies for a better tomorrow.

Social entrepreneurs are visionaries and practical minded to see what the real issues are and how practical the implementations will be. They avoid impractical and unrealistic solutions that may falter for the society as a whole, or solutions that may not be cost-effective or realistic for the long run.

Business entrepreneurs wait to seize the opportunity to identify and come up with products or services to change the face of businesses, to create whole new industries or create brand new markets. Social entrepreneurs take a similar approach, but on a different aspect. They seize the opportunities to change society and various societal systems that bound societies together with innovative solutions and strategies on a mass level for the society and its people.

Let’s look at a few very well-known social entrepreneurs:

Muhammad Yunus - Yunus, a noble laureate, invented microcredit, a loan system that awards very small loans to the poor for starting entrepreneurship.

John Muir - An American naturalist, worked to preserve nature and wilderness. He is the one who established the national park system and also the founder of the Sierra Club.

Florence Nightingale – The founder of modern professional nursing. She also established the first school for nurses. She dedicated and sacrificed her life to improve the health and welfare of all people.

Tips for Starting or Buying a Business

Buying an Established Business

First Published: EntrepreneurJourney.com Aug 13, 2011

Entrepreneurs like to build businesses from the ground up by developing ideas and putting the time and effort into it. However, it may not always be realistic to build something from scratch – especially when time is of the essence and ideas seem to not be making sense. Buying an existing business gives some advantages over starting a brand new one. For example, you already have a customer base, a setup procedure that runs the business, and its reputation. On the downside, there is a lot of money to be spent, and you may run into something unexpected, causing you lots of headaches and financial loss. Today, I am going to talk about a few things you should consider before buying a business to make your new venture a smooth and a successful one.

Choose The Right Type of Business – Do not just buy something you are not familiar with just because you think this is where the money is. Buy something that interests you and make sure you have the required skills and knowledge to stick with it for a long time. It is likely that you will be putting in long hours year after year without any break or vacation in your business. If you buy something that does not interest you, for sure you will give it up in just a few months. Also, don’t forget how relevant the business is to your line of experience. If you never drove a taxi cab before or set foot in a garage, it makes no sense to start “Jimmy’s Taxi Cab” – because you are bound to be a failure.

Know You Limits – Have a clear idea of exactly when you can buy, what you can afford to buy, and where you can location wise without constraining your budget.

Get professional Help – It is unlikely that you will know the ins and outs of buying a business. Hiring a professional such as a business broker not only will help you to save time, but will also avoid the unnecessary hassle you need to go through when buying a business. Some of the issues a broker can pinpoint: if the business is hiding anything or has any financial problems, they can inform you on the latest rules and regulations, negotiate with the seller to save you money, help with obtaining licenses and permits to operate the business lawfully, and so on.

Some resources – Here are some websites to help you with your research finding a business.

- International Business Brokers Association

- Biz Buy Sell

- Business Broker

- Business Sell Canada

- Business For Sell Canada

- Biz Match

- Canadian Biz Mart

How to Incorporate a Business in Canada

Steps to Starting or Setting up a Corporation

First Published: Jun 13, 2011 EntrepreneurJourney.com

n Canada, setting up a corporation or incorporating a business is a straightforward process. Depending on the nature of your business and how accurately you file required documents, it is possible to start your new corporation within 1 – 2 business days if you submit your documents online. For example, my own federally incorporated business entity A Dawn Dot Net Corp. was approved in slightly more than 24 hours. Today, I am going to discuss how you can start a corporation in Canada in simple words.

Although there are many small steps involved incorporating a business, at the end it comes down to these three major steps you need to complete to start a corporation in Canada.

 Pick a Name – You need to decide on a name and even before that you need to know whether your corporation is going to be a federally or provincially incorporated corporation. A federally incorporated business can do business anywhere in Canada. A provincially incorporated business will have to be physically in the province where it was incorporated. Once you know what you would like your corporation to be called, you will have to search for your name availability using the NUANS (Newly Upgraded Automated Name Search) and obtain a NUANS name search report.

 Complete Articles of Incorporation – These are the documents that you file with the authority setting out to provide the legal structure of the corporation – in other words, Articles of Incorporation describe a corporation's purpose, rules, and regulations. For example, how many directors there will be. Where the registered office will be located. Where the remaining property goes if corporation winds up. What classes and how many shares the corporation can issue. Can these shares be transferred or should there be restrictions so the corporation remains private? And so on. Articles of Incorporation are what make each corporation unique. Articles of Incorporation are also known as Certificates of Incorporation.

 Submit Documents and Payment – The last step is to submit the documents mentioned above and any other necessary documents along with the payment to Corporation Canada or provincial authority.

Last Word

Although it is possible and may not be difficult to do everything by yourself online, I recommend you seek the expertise and assistance of a qualified professional. While setting up my corporation, I noticed that it would have been difficult for me to fill up some of the forms and submit everything online fast like the way my accountant was able to do. There are so many rules and regulations that I could not have been possibly known, had my accountant not mentioned those to me.

The Main Problem Making Money With Google AdSense

Making Money Online With Google AdSense

First Published: May 22, 2011 EntrepreneurJourney.com

AdSense makes money; there is no doubt about it. However, it’s not a perfectly flawless system you should rely on to make your only source of income. Today, I am going to touch base on this a little bit based on my AdSense experience.

The main problem I am having with Adsense is the tremendous level of fluctuation. There are days when I make good money from Adsense, and there are days when I make not so good money. You may say that proper AdSense optimization should solve this problem. Yes, I thought the same way and experimented optimization only to figure out that this heavy fluctuation is out of my hand. It’s kind of like the Internet has its slow traffic days and high traffic days and we have no control over it.

If I have a situation in which I have no control, I try to resolve it working on something in which I have full control. In the above scenario, instead of wasting too much time on fixing Adsense, I worked to diversify my ad revenues. Besides Adsense, I am running Infolinks, Chitika, and some private ads (mainly on A Dawn Journal). My least expected ad system Infolinks is actually making me the most unexpected money. There are days when my Infolinks revenues beat Google Adsense. I know it is hard to believe, but it has happened a few times in the past.

Just like about anything else in life, online money making sources need to be diversified as well. The century old Adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” applies to Internet entrepreneurship as well and you should never bet all your sites on one income source.

Attributes Entrepreneurs Should Have

What Are Entrepreneur Attributes?

First Published: Apr 16, 2011 EntrepreneurJourney.com

So you want to be an entrepreneur? Well, do you think you have the attributes that are needed to be an entrepreneur? Well, here are just a few of the attributes you need to make sure you are successful as an entrepreneur.

First of all, you need to be a leader. Leaders are the ones who take charge and make things happen. As a leader, you know how to get things done and that is a useful skill to have when you are an entrepreneur. You will lead your company and you will know the type of people you want around you in order to be successful. According to Robert B. Reich, leadership is the most important quality to have as an entrepreneur. As a leader, you will see opportunities around you and you will know to act upon them. You will be able to solve problems and recognize the solutions before you.

As an entrepreneur, you may be working with someone else at first in a company that you are en employee of. However, as you are a leader you will soon want to get out of that situation and away from your peers so you can stand out. This is where two more attributes come in; risk-taking and extroversion. Extroversion is very important because you need to be out-going so you can win clients and get people over to your company. However, more importantly, you need to be willing to take risks. This is because you will need to take risks to be successful. According to experts, an entrepreneur is a risk-taker because they know how to be innovative, how to increase their efficiency and productivity and how to generate new services that people may not even realize they need.

As an entrepreneur, you will see opportunities before you and you will know how to make them work to your advantage. When others are simply watching the world go by, you will be a person who stops the world so that you can achieve what you want.

There is the belief that men make better entrepreneurs than women but this is false. There have been many studies and they show that men and women both have the same type of attributes that will make them successful as an entrepreneurs. If you believe that as a woman, or as a man, you are not suited to be an entrepreneur then you need to begin to challenge yourself so that you can be a successful entrepreneur.

Of course, just because you do not have these attributes that does not mean you won’t be successful. The important thing is that you know how to challenge yourself to make things happen in your life. If you can do this, then you will be successful. If you can just get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself, you will be amazed at what you can achieve in your life. All you can do is try and see where you go with it.