Your business day has just begun and you quickly whip out your clearly written plans. Pardon? Did you say you don’t have a written business plan? Then join the club, ‘Business Owners Without Plans’. The main problem this club faces is that the majority of it members’ businesses are likely to fail. Business failure rate is high and a crucial reason for this is lack of planning.

If you belong to this group and I did once, you’re probably an entrepreneur or a creative person. The idea of planning feels boring to you, seems unnecessary and involves a lot of detail. And you’d rather be doing other more interesting things. Your way of working is probably a lot more spontaneous, exciting and in the flow so you don’t want to be restricted with plans. However, without plans you can to easily end up very unfocused, not achieving the results you desire and ultimately face the failure of your business.

So, what’s your reason for not having business plans? Besides the usual reasons, like not having sufficient time to plan, not knowing how to do it or where to begin, perhaps you think that planning doesn’t fit in with your entrepreneurial and creative spirit. After all, this is who you are and you don’t want to lose this. Now fear begins to surface; fear that you many need to change personally or fear of failure. While plans stay in your head, it’s not so frightening and real. Putting them in writing, brings them closer to fruition and although you may say this is what you want, is it really if you’re not willing to commit them to paper. Planning your business takes it from being a hobby to a fully-fledged business. Although a lot of people would say that they operate their business as a business, in reality most operate them as hobbies and don’t take them seriously. Then they wonder why they’re not being very successful and getting results.

I feel one of the problems for creative and entrepreneurial people is that when they consider business plans the picture that spring to mind is of hours pouring over enormous pages of details. That’s enough to turn them straight off. However, it doesn’t need to be that way. There is a way to develop plans for your business, and to be creative and entrepreneurial at the same time. These informal business plans are ones that you’ll use yourself. If you need a business plan for outsiders, such as your bank or investors then this approach might not be for you. It could however be a good process to get your formal business plan started.

Instead of thinking that you need to commit hours to working on your business plans, I invite you to start with just five minutes. Now, without any thought of the appropriate way to do it, just write down the things that first come into your head for your business. Simply capture any goals, strategies, problems, your current situation and positioning. Writing down your plans, clarifies, organises and prioritises them, and clears vital space in your head.

The next step is to tap into your strengths as an entrepreneur or creative person. You’re probably fantastic at coming up with ideas and solutions, and may well be intuitive. So, you’ll tap into all of these using the power of questions. You’ll use questions to come up with answers and solutions that you’ll put into your business plan. Your business plan need only be a straightforward review of your present situation, your strategies, resources and goals. Nothing complicated or too detailed.

Here are some questions to obtain you started:

What is the current business situation?

What goals do you have for your business?

What problems and challenges is your business currently facing?

What strategies are you using?

What strategies do you need to use?

What resources and opportunities do you have available?

Okay, so having spent five minutes on your business plans, I now invite you to make a commitment of five minutes each business day and continue working on your business plans. Once you’ve responded to the above questions, put on your creative and entrepreneurial hat, and come up with your own thought provoking questions to answer. Take your creative and entrepreneurial spirit, and use this to perfect plans for your business that keep you focused and producing the results you want. Once you start laying down some plans for your business and experience the benefits of doing this, you’ll find it easier to continue. The most important step is getting started.

As an entrepreneur or creative, what will it take for you to begin putting some of your business plans onto paper?

What planning for your business do you currently do?

What further planning do you need to do? ie. Sales, marketing, business development.

What will it take to start writing down your business plans?

Wendy works with business owners to be more effective and successful, achieving a more profitable business in less time. Click through to her site www.business-personal-coaching.com and read more of Wendy’s articles and about how business coaching can take your business to the next level.

Car Insurance Quotes – How to Get The Best Quote

If you are a young driver then it can prove harder than normal to get car insurance. The thrill of being able to drive at 70mph at the tender age of 17 or 18 means that the likelihood of running into somebody else is quite high – as a result, the car insurance premiums are liable to be that much higher.

The key is to shop around and not simply take the first offer that comes through online. By spending just a few quick minutes and ensuring you are looking at all the offers that come through you can save yourself hundreds of pounds.

Many car insurance quotes are on the market, looking for new customers and the introductory discounts can be very generous. Because people do tend to stick with their existing car insurance company from year to year, the cost of acquiring a new customer can even eat into the first year’s premium just to get the new customer on the books.

Big discounts are currently available at insurance companies such as

AA Car Insurance who offer 15% discount online and Kwik Fit Car Insurance which offer 20% discount online. There are more, certainly, and the prices and discounts do change from time to time as the market changes.

The main three elements that determine Car Insurnace Quotes levels are age, gender and claims history. There are numerous others, however, such as the gender of the driver, how far you drive per year, why you need the vehicle and others.

Age

Drivers under 25 tend to be risky. Drivers between 50 and 65 are the safest.

Gender

Women are statistically safer drivers, but that trend is changing as more female drivers get on the road.

Henry is an expert in Car Insurance and the policies that go along with them. He is a staffer for Car Insurance Quotes in the UK.

For some people the response to the question about how to find the best home insurance company is likely to be one of sarcasm, one that borders on telling you how easy it is to just pick a home insurance company, pay your money, and you have home insurance. That is the gist of it in the end, but the question is how to find the best home insurance company, not just how to find a home insurance company. Anyone can look in the telephone directory and find a home insurance company close to where they live, but that doesn’t mean you will make the best choice.

 

Choosing a home insurance company is not as easy as simply picking a home insurance provider and going with it. You need to make sure the home insurance company you choose has a competitive pricing structure, is reliable, and most of all, can offer you the package you need. The home insurance company you choose needs to be able to provide everything you need that is within the scope of their product line. What that means is you can’t expect them to provide home insurance for something they don’t ordinarily cover. For instance if you are looking at a package within your budget that requires a $500 deductible, you can’t insist on a $250 deductible for the same price.

 

You need to give a great deal of thought to a home insurance company before you make a final decision. Don’t choose someone from out of a hat so to speak but take the time to research, speak to others who have used the same home insurance company and make a final decision based upon the information you have before you. AHS has a reputation to uphold and can provide home insurance to meet your needs at a price that is fair and falls within your budget.

Use American Home Shield insurance for your home.

So you financed your car through a dealership and are paying outrageous interest on your auto loan.  Your payments are through the roof and your interest rate is too high. At the time, the finance guy at the dealership told you this was the best he could do for you because your credit wasn’t great.  This probably wasn’t exactly true, but this is how auto loan finance people make their money- they tack on extra interest to your loan and get a little extra for them in the process.  The good thing is that you’ve been making your payments on time and now your credit doesn’t look so bad, so why are you still paying the high rate that your car dealership finance guy stuck to you?  He made some money off of you by adding a couple of points to your interest rate, so now it’s time for you to take back your financial freedom and lower your interest rate on your auto loan by refinancing at a lower rate.

By refinancing on your auto loan, you can get a much lower rate on the amount you still owe on your auto loan and wind up saving up to $100 monthly.  That can add up to $6000 dollars over the life of the loan, which can mean really big savings for you.  Not to mention that since the federal rate is so low, the chances that you will drop your auto loan interest rate by at least a couple of points are high, so you should very seriously consider refinancing your auto loan at a lower rate.

When you’re having trouble making your monthly auto loan payments, but your credit is still okay is when you should be taking steps to refinance your auto loan.  This time around, you won’t go through a dealership to get your auto loan refinance, you will go through one of the many direct lenders who deal with auto loan refinance to get a lower interest rate and a lower monthly payment.  Then the next time you buy a car, you will use your borrowing power differently and not let your financing needs fall to the finance guy at the dealership, but you will secure an auto loan on your own, with a decent interest rate that you will never have to refinance.

You shouldn’t refinance your auto loan at a lower interest rate if you only owe $2000 or less, because you’ll just set yourself back by extending the term of your loan, but if you owe more than $5000, you would definitely profit by refinancing your auto loan if your have a high rate.  Remember, the goal with an auto loan refinance is to get a lower interest rate than you secured with your previous lender and lower your monthly payments by adjusting the current terms of your auto loan refinance.  You hopefully can lower your payments by as much as $100 monthly, which can really go far in an economy where every penny counts.  Don’t wait, refinance now before you run into trouble paying your current high interest auto loan.

If you are looking for information on auto loan refinance interest rates, contact a professional today.