Featured
How to Launch a Startup While You’re in College
Everyone’s heard of the stories of prodigies who drop out of college and launch a successful business. Here’s how to launch yours without dropping out.
Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, two people who are recognized as successful entrepreneurs, launched their businesses out of their college dorms and soon dropped out. However, not everyone is born a genius, and some people need college to help get good opportunities.
Here’s how to launch a startup while you’re in college and why you should launch your startup now rather than later.
Tips On Launching Your Startup
Start with an Idea
All great businesses started with a great idea. So if you feel like you have an idea that a lot of people could use, try looking at it from different perspectives to see what parts of it need improvement. If your idea can help solve a problem, people will buy it.
Gather the Value of Your Product
When you have an idea of what product you want to release, you have to be able to summarize your ideas and show how your product can help solve a problem and how it differs from similar products. This will assure you that your product is actually useful.
Ask People around You
Any business should go through a test run before it is launched. This is the best way you can check if your product can solve your target customers’ problems. This is an essential step so that you don’t waste precious hours developing a product that doesn’t effectively solve your customers’ problems.
Produce Your Minimal Viable Product
Your MVP will act as your product temporarily and can be produced with the minimum amount of funding so that you can show samples without taking a lot out of your pocket to produce it.
Come Up with Something that People Want
This is on-the-nose, but making a product that people will buy is a sure-fire way to successfully launch your business. To know if your product is something people want, you should launch prototype interviews where you can present your MVP to your target group of customers and gauge if they are satisfied with the products.
Ship and Distribute
Once you have a product that you know people want, it’s time to ship and distribute it. Start small so that you can cut down on costs, and once more people are aware of your products, you can start producing more pieces. This ensures that you don’t waste time and money producing too much, only for the excess to be ignored.
Ensure that You Have a Business Plan
Before you launch your business product or service, you have to make sure that you have a business plan. This is to give you clues on what steps you have to take next when you launch the product, and how you’re going to move if the product fails, and what to do if the product is a big hit.
Featured
The latest weekly indicators indicate a significant decline in consumer confidence due to mounting debt
Weekly Indicators: Consumer Confidence Drops Sharply As Debt …
Introduction
Welcome to our analysis of this week’s economic indicators! In today’s blog post, we will focus on the sharp decline in consumer confidence and its impact on the economy. Also, we will explore growing concerns about increasing levels of consumer debt. We will dive into ten different aspects that provide a detailed view of the current market scenario and its potential consequences.
Consumer Confidence: A Decline Worth noting
In recent weeks, consumer confidence levels have seen a sharp drop across various regions. This decline is intrinsically linked with the overall health of the economy, as it reflects how optimistic consumers are about their household financial situation and the job market. When consumer confidence is low, spending decreases, investments falter, and ultimately economic growth slows down. It is essential to understand what factors contributed to the drop in consumer confidence recently. Some causes include inflationary pressures, global economic uncertainties, and fluctuations in financial markets. These challenges can lead to a decrease in disposable income, rising unemployment, and increased anxiety over future prospects. To illustrate the significance of the drop in consumer confidence, consider: – A nation grappling with high inflation rates and stagnant wages inevitably experiences a decrease in consumer confidence, resulting in lowered spending habits. –
- Higher prices for everyday goods and services
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- Wage growth not keeping pace with inflation
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- Limited disposable income
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- Growing consumer pessimism
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- Reduced consumer spending on non-essential items
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- Lower demand for products and services impacting businesses
Debt Concerns: A Growing Menace
Simultaneously, there has been growing concern about the increase in consumer debt levels. High debt can negatively impact the economy by making it difficult for borrowers to manage their financial obligations and affecting the stability of the financial system. It can also lead to a vicious cycle, with debt-laden individuals finding it harder to access credit or save for the future. Higher debt levels result from various factors such as the ease of obtaining credit, low-interest rates, rising cost of living, and slow wage growth. When consumers are unable to keep up with their debt payments, default rates increase, which affects the lending institutions and can potentially send ripples throughout broader economic sectors. Imagine a scenario where consumers take on substantial debt over time, fueled by easy credit access: –
- Shopping sprees financed through high-interest personal loans
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- Frequent use of credit cards without timely repayments
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- Struggling with multiple loans and debts repayments
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- Increased default risk on loans
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- Lenders becoming cautious around loan approvals
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- Credit score decline impacting future borrowing prospects
Summary Table
Indicator | Trend | Impact |
---|---|---|
Consumer Confidence | Declining | Decreased spending, slowed economic growth |
Debt Concerns | Rising | Financial instability, higher defaults, restricted credit access |
As we continue to monitor weekly indicators, it’s essential to assess both consumer confidence and consumer debt levels. Understanding their causes and potential consequences can help formulate policy decisions aimed at mitigating their impact on the economy. An astute evaluation is vital to ensure steady economic growth and prevent unwanted setbacks or crises in the future.
Featured
Keeping End-of-Year Finances in Check
Sometimes, the holiday season is not full of wonder and merriment. The gift-giving culture associated with the holidays can be a source of stress and frustration, especially with the ongoing pandemic, economic downfall. Here is how you can keep your finances in check to cap off 2020 by being financially aware.
Holiday Questions
It is no secret that the ongoing pandemic has affected the economic lives of people. While the holiday season promises a short relief from the doom and gloom of the pandemic, more and more individuals are located on opposite sides of the spectrum when handling finances during the holidays. Others want to go all out to celebrate the hardships that 2020 brought, while others are more practical and tend to be more frugal in their holiday spending.
Here are some of the frequently asked questions about how to manage money during the end-of-year season to have a balance between sharing your love and care to the people you love while not breaking the bank.
How Do I Keep from Overspending during the Holidays?
Give the gift of your time and talents.
Gifts come in many shapes and forms, and while the gift-giving culture primarily revolves around how much money you have spent on a gift… Gifts can also come in the form of time and talents! For example, if one of your friends desperately need time for self-care activities or a date with her husband, you can volunteer to babysit their kids in one evening! If you know your friend is getting married and you have an amazing voice, you can ease up their burden of looking for a wedding band and volunteer to become a wedding singer free of charge!
Make your wish list before going shopping online.
While shopping online is becoming more efficient, it can be distracting to put more in your cart than earlier anticipated. One way to not spend more on your holiday gift list is to make a wish list first and, most importantly, stick to it!
Spend within your means.
Yes, with the pandemic, money may be tight, and it is more practical to let go of luxury items (because who needs a $5000 designer bag if you are not a Kardashian, right?) and make do with practical and useful gift items.
I Will Be Using My Credit Cards for All My Holiday Shopping. What Are Your Thoughts on Best Practices?
With cashless payments slowly becoming a trend, more and more people are attracted to pay using credit cards. Credit cards are a great way to pay for bulk holiday items because most credit card holders provide a generous cash-back system that can pay you back from 1% to 5% of your purchase fees. You have to look out for sure that your chosen credit card has no annual fees, which means you will not pay any interest in your purchases. Another word of caution is to again spend within your means so that your credit card debt will not be carried out through the spring season.
Business
Airbnb Bounces Back amidst Covid-19 Pandemic
It comes as no secret that the Covid-19 pandemic has severely affected the tourism industry, including the hotel and accommodation sector. Despite the initial setback, Airbnb’s are slowly starting to rise with the trendy Airbnb nomadic culture work from home individuals are starting.
Airbnb Nomads
When the Covid-19 pandemic started, the first industry to take the brink of the economic downfall was the tourism industry. With flight and movement restricted by lockdown protocols, fewer people are checking into hotels and booking at Airbnbs. While the industry initially felt the effects of the lockdown protocols, they are slowly bouncing back with the Airbnb nomad trend.
So what exactly is the Airbnb nomad trend? Because more and more companies are encouraging people to work from home to control the spread of the virus, people are ditching their apartments and are starting to hop from one Airbnb to another as an opportunity to explore the world (within the confines of their Airbnb) while they are working from home.
Working in Style
Take, for example, Tess Pawlisch, who has been working in San Francisco for four years. She can only take a few vacation leaves amidst her busy schedule in her previous office work set-up with her demanding job. However, now that she is working from home, she can balance working from her Airbnb even when she is on a sunny beach in Mexico sipping tropical-flavored shakes. Pawlisch is only of the many individuals who decided to seize the opportunity to “travel” while working from home.
Bouncing Back
With the initial setback to minimal to zero bookings for Airbnb during the early half of the year, this trend comes at a perfect time for the accommodation giant as Airbnb sales skyrocketed to twice their original sales start of the year. Airbnb’s market value is almost at par with another booking giant, booking.com, with the Bnb having $83.2 billion and booking having $85.6 billion. Airbnb has been doing so well in the past few months in terms of shares and stocks that they even surpassed Marriott hotel, which has a projected $41.7 billion valuation.
Exciting Opportunities Await
The work from home set-up is advantageous for people who are bitten by the wanderlust bug, but it is also advantageous for individuals with families or those who want to be nearer their families during these trying times. For example, Trey Ditto was working in Brooklyn, New York, because of his job. Because his company encouraged him to work from home, he decided to move in with his wife (who was also working from home) and their 2-year-old son when they found a bigger apartment near the upstate portion of New York City for about two months. When they realized this would be the new normal soon, they moved to another Airbnb in Texas to be closer to their families—an opportunity that would not have been available if they were back in the office.
Pain Points
However, hopping from one Airbnb to another is not all luxury and glamor. First, the stress of hauling all your things to settle for a month and then moving to another house the next. It can be extremely exhausting. Second, there will always be the element of surprise. For example, even if the unit’s photos are very enticing (it’s called marketing for a reason), the actual unit may be smaller or more run-down than earlier anticipated and can be quite stressful for picky individuals. Lastly, since the Wi-Fi connection is essential for work from home individuals, not all Airbnb units have the best Wi-Fi access to work with. In fact, the Wi-Fi connection is the number one complaint of individuals who are slowly adapting to this lifestyle.
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