Characteristics of Entrepreneurs

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Regardless of your definition of success, there are, oddly enough, a great number of common characteristics that are shared by successful business people. You can place a check beside each characteristic that you feel that you possess. This way, you can see how you stack up. Even if you don’t have all of these characteristics, don’t fret. Most can be learned with practice and by developing a winning attitude, especially if you set goals and apply yourself, through strategic planning, to reach those goals in incremental and measurable stages.

Like any activity you pursue, there are certain musts that are required to be successful in a chosen activity. To legally operate a vehicle on public roadways, one must have a driver’s license; to excel in sports, one must train and practice; to retire comfortably, one must become an informed investor and actively invest for retirement. If your goal is success in business, then the formula is no different. There are certain musts that have to be fully developed, implemented and managed for your business to succeed. There are many business musts, but this article contains the more important musts from the different sources and experts that are required to start, operate and grow a profitable business and soon be called as Entrepreneurs.

1. Do you have an exceedingly strong need to achieve then it is a plus to survive in the business world. This strong need to achieve as opposed to a need to be liked or to exercise power is a great quality of an entrepreneur.

2. Perseverance, everyone needs it. Perhaps the most important of all the characteristics of entrepreneurs is the ability to withstand the troubles that come with starting a business. Beginning a new enterprise is an immensely difficult task, and as an entrepreneur, you’ll have to stick through the storms and stress if you want your venture to be a success. It sometimes takes years for a good idea to start making you money, but when it does, you’ll be glad you stood strong in the face of adversity.

3. Objectivity. Know exactly what you want and get focused on the game. The knack to precisely weigh and assess risks linked with a meticulous course of action, as well as being realistic about one’s own abilities and limitations. Be objective and never be one-sided.

4. Be wise in terms of money but never be greedy for it will also be the cause of your downfall. A respectful attitude toward money, but a propensity to look upon it as a means for achieving things, or a way of keeping score in the game of business, rather than as a thing to be sought as the end in itself. At the end of the day money isn’t everything.

5. The tendency to foresee developments and to make things happen, rather than waiting to react to problems as they arise. Think beforehand. You cannot just decide for the things present, you must be able to determine the possible consequences.

6. Resourcefulness. The capacity to resolve tribulations in some ways, to be able to handle things that come even without having prior know-how to rely on as a guide. Instinct will help, and you must also learn to trust yourself, after all, it is you who knows the business well enough.

7. Personal relations. The successful entrepreneur usually has an emotionally stable personality, is cheerful, cooperative, and usually gets along well with (without necessarily being close to) employees and associates. Besides, no man is an island, make sure you can talk to people, you cannot work on your own, and everyone has their part. Your business won’t run without your people.

8. Communication skills are well developed, both in oral and written presentations. Also learn the PR skills and learn to know how to build the rapport.

9. Technical knowledge is usually well-rounded, and the successful entrepreneur generally is knowledgeable about the specifics of providing their goods and services. You must know every little job in your business.

Top Fact:

Those who run successful businesses possess many of the above attributes at phenomenal levels, much beyond those of the average person. And they don’t fear failure, but are quick to learn from it.

Now you can understand why less than half of all startups last more than five years. Some experts argue that everyone possesses these attributes, but they may be buried deep in the subconscious. Their challenge is to release the negative thoughts and feelings that are blocking the emergence, and blocking success.

Travel around Japan with Odakyu this 2013

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Japan is definitely one the best place to travel, from Tokyo to any part of the country Japan is truly a remarkable place to visit. Odakyu Railway has a very interesting offer that will start January 20 this year until February 28 the same year; it is a part of their winter campaign in Shinjuku, Hakone, Enoshima/Kamakura and Ito. International passport holders, like myself, can pick up coupons from Odakyu Travel Service Centers at Shinjuku and Odawara Stations and use them to receive special discounts and commemorative goods at ‘Odakyu Department Store Shinjuku’, ‘Shinjuku Mylord’ and other participating retailers in Hakone,Enoshima/Kamakura and Ito. So, my family and I enjoyed Japan more because we saved extra money and at the same time we traveled more.It allowed us to travel freely on the Hakone Tozan Train, the Hakone Ropeway and the Hakone Sightseeing Cruise on Lake Ashi.

 We tried everything that Odakyu offered. Because the Hakone Freepass is available at a discounted price might as well try it, so we took advantage of it and we did not regret the experience.

There is also a bonus, that doesn’t end there; visitors will be warmly welcomed at Togendai terminal in Hakone with a photo shoot with a samurai and handmaiden, free calligraphy and origami workshops and other activities for experiencing

Japanese culture.Me and my husband also tried the special travel packages including the Limited Express “Romancecar” ticket and accommodations in Hakone will be on sale at great prices.

 I recommend couples to try it as well. The winter limited Hakone freepass is valid for 2 days so you can really enjoy it. Usually you have to pay 5,000 yen for adults but today they are giving it for only 4,100 and 1500 for children, great way to save.

 You can also have “Hakone coupon book” for use on tourist facilities and restaurants.

Our Japan visit was really remarkable, we had a photo shoot with a samurai and handmaiden, mochi rice-cake pounding, free amazake (sweet sake), origami and calligraphy workshops, lion dance, Japanese drumming and Geisha performance.

A genuine Japan experience.If you wanted to know more about their winter offer they have the following coupon giveaway

Shinjuku area

  Odakyu Department Store Shinjuku – 5% off special coupon at the Tax Discount Desk* *excluding certain

stores and products

  Shinjuku Mylord – 1,000 yen discount for every 5,000 yen spent on merchandise

  Hyatt Regency Tokyo – 1 free drink at the hotel restaurant

Hakone area

  Experience “Tencha” at the Hakuundo Tea House in Hakone Gora Park, free of charge

Enoshima/Kamakura area

  Half-price entry at the Enoshima Aquarium

  Free souvenir when showing the corresponding coupon and the Enoshima/Kamakura Freepass or the Enoshima

1day passport at the Fujisawa City Tourism Association helpdesk in front of Katase Enoshima Station
Ito area

  Free souvenir when showing the Ito tourism Freepass at the Tokai Bus Ito Station office

Aboard the Romancecar Express Train

  100 yen discount on soft drinks

  100 yen discount when buying the Romancecar pen or charm

Valentine’s Day Business Ideas- Ways to Show Your Customers Love

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Valentine’s Day is traditionally known as a day to celebrate the love between two people, but as a business owner or manager, this holiday offers an opportunity for your customers or clients to feel the love that you have for your ongoing business relationship. There are several ways that you can successfully accomplish this without the risk of being tacky.  Just think of how you would show your significant other your love and tailor it accordingly for your customer. In the past, there have been many ways in which gratitude had been shown from multiple local businesses. A few ways in which those businesses showed their appreciation were thoughtful and creative.

·         Valentine’s Day Cards – Shutter fly cards can be custom made using photos of your products, staff or anything else appropriate with a message like “We Love Your Business” or “I Hope Our Working Relationship Continues to grow”.

·         Host a Luncheon – Invite your best client or customer to your office for a Panera Bread catered lunch just for them. This could be for one person or an entire staff. Give a special discount on your services for the month printed on a Valentine’s Day Card or free product samples wrapped with Valentine’s Day festive paper.

·         A Box of Custom Candy – Send your clients or customers a specially packaged box of chocolates with your logo on the box and even embossed on the candy itself. Chocri is an online confectioner where you can chocolate bars to spread many thanks to your premium customers.

·         Send Flowers – It is traditional and common but flowers sent to an office to decorate the reception area always appreciated. The key is to make them different. Teleflora offers plenty of Valentine’s Day flowers that are very festive while still business appropriate.

·         Host a Getaway – Southwest Airlines continues to offer great “Wanna Get Away” deals to hundreds of location. Host a competition for a period of time to gain the loyalty of many customers. You will begin to see familiar faces. For those loyal customers, have a prize of a romantic 3 day, 2 night vacation throughout the Valentine’s Day holiday. This is a great way to continue to keep customers year round.

It’s a fact that by remembering a customer on a day other than Christmas shows that you really consider the importance of your relationship at all times of the year. It will help to maintain a bond through good times and those that are more trying.

Cybercrime targets smaller fish with less guard

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Fraud prevention is very important to big or even smaller businesses. Self-storage industry is beginning to be affected by cybercrime and it is becoming a big problem. This can be prevented through effective training and education to make owners and managers aware of the developing problem. Same methods that were already adapted by cybercriminals to target other industries and some of the same methods used to defraud businesses before digital age can be used against our industry.

Small- to medium-sized businesses are in more risk than ever unlike before that only the most high-profile cybercrime cases involves child victimization or Russian spies. Although large corporations have the most up to date protection of their systems they always tune it up because they still have been fighting online fraud for many years. This is why smaller outfits (family-owned self-storage facilities or even smaller chain operations) should be vigilant to what is happening in the cyber underworld as well.

Larger companies stronger defense made cybercriminals turn to smaller businesses as their victims. This smaller outfits only have a small IT staff or sometimes non at all, making them an easier target. What they should be doing is to start teaching themselves of the latest scams and methods of today’s digital thieves.

Criminal Minds and Methods. Cyber thieves use many various techniques to trick their victims. Cyber criminals have the reputation that they large affect large bank because “that’s where the money is.” What self-storage owners and managers should know is that these cyber criminals are now also targeting their industry. Now also seen on self-storage industry is the some same methods used to target the broader real estate industry. Even if there are few self-storage attacks that were known to public, in general small organizations is now cyber thieves target preys.

Recently, another example of cybercrime in real estate industry was through email messages with the goal to recruit money mules. Money mules are simply the money launderers, their work is to transfer the money collected from the Internet scams from the victim to the criminal. These people most of the time are unaware of the crime they committed because they believe what they did was just work from home opportunity.

“An international real property agency with wide background in reselling, exchanging, buying out and legal counseling assistance all over the USA and Canada.” This is a Spam message that has been distributed recently, offers a part-time real estate agent position. This is an example of a illegitimate offer rather what it do instead is it not only involves international, organized crime, it denigrates and erodes the integrity of true real estate professionals.

This one is another real estate-specific scam, it involves rental properties posted online. Cyber criminals can collect every payment to the property they do not own simply by copying the digital information from your online listing to create their own listing. This is actually a long time scheme and now the convenience and ubiquity of the Internet make it easier for cons to perpetrate these crimes.

People who find it harder and harder to make ends meet have been lured into secret shopper jobs, this happens during the recent recession. Most of these are scams but there are also legitimate offers on the website for the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. In self-storage industry an example of this scam involves a re-shipping scam where you may be persuaded over email to receive goods at your facility and later ship them out to another address. They are taking advantage of your innocence so you can commit a crime without you knowing so try to avoid strange offers like the latter.

Remember that cyber criminals are best at tricks, they prey on your sympathies and fears and you may not know it until you literally misplaced your confidence in someone.

They also used sense of urgency to lure you into becoming their prey. They will make you feel that you have to respond quickly to the queries in order to get the business. Any transactions that make you decide urgent more often than not leads to disaster, in any decision you make always remember to slow down, take it easy and rethink of it several times before deciding and remember, cyber criminals take advantage of our impulsiveness.

Phishing and Malicious Spam. Maybe the most famous, earliest and the most widespread from of scam over the Internet was phishing of online banking credentials. the cyber criminal will send you an authentic-looking emails, messages or link that warns you that something went wrong to your account and you need to confirm your information details by clicking on the link provided and logging on their account would mean they already have your details without you realizing it. As a result, all your authentication credentials were immediately emailed to a criminal who used them to transfer all of the money out of the account. Self-storage isn’t spared on this scam. Managers and their website administrators must be alert to phishing scams so they do not fall prey to such Internet fraud.

RE/MAX brand was spoofed by email account credential phishing and was used as scam for real estate industry. Once homebuyers logged in their email accounts to the look-a-like page that offers to give them access to exclusive listings but the thing is RE/MAX is not linked to your email provider, and the victims had their email accounts compromised.

It doesn’t matter how famous phishing is, scam watch is very important, because today’s spam messages are even more authentic looking and more malicious, it is harder to determine the authenticity. It isn’t just that but now you did not have to click a link from the email you received rather just by visiting a drive-by malware site where they do not even need to log in or agree to download anything in order to be infected with a banking Trojan or other malicious software. Immediately after being infected, your vital and secret authentication credentials for banking and other online transactions will be stolen, and you wil have no control over your machine because it is now being controlled by unseen forces and included in a global botnet that perpetuates more cybercrime.

The Blackhole Exploit Kit, since this criminal toolkit was invented phishing method has become more common over the past two years. For only $50 per day or $1,500 per year scammers can lease this software kit.

Fraudsters can lease this software kit for. The spammers who initiate the infection process have created email messages that spoof over 50 well-known brands and do not contain spelling errors or other mistakes to tip off a suspecting reader. The chart below describes how the Blackhole Exploit Kit is used to infect you with malware in a drive-by attack. Large organization technology departments are finding more ways for scam watch and fraud prevention so that they can protect their employees and systems and for the rest of us, scam watch is our own responsibility. We must learn to be wary of links in unsolicited email messages. Instead of clicking on the links provided, navigate to the content by using your browser to go to the website you trust for that company. If email account is spamming or Facebook or Twitter account is showing messages that you did not post, the best thing you do is change your passwords.

Tips for Using Social Media While Protecting Your Online Presence. Self-storage uses social media accounts to promote their products. And to be able to protect those accounts from invasion and manipulation, they should take additional steps.

• If you have a professional Internet presence, then maintain those accounts in a professional way and maintain your personal social networking profiles separately.

• Do not fall for scam artists who promise to deliver hundreds of “Likes” of your page for a small fee.

• Safeguard your passwords carefully by using HTTPS and strong passwords and by using different passwords for every site. You can find free software for password management to help you with this.

Customer Data. “The most attractive ‘loot’ for today’s thieves are customer data—at least for the cyber-criminals.” This is from the article on selfstorage.com on Oct. 12, 2012, “Cyber-crime overshadows property theft” by Mark Lusky. This loot can be plundered from your payment system such as credit card machine or systems compromised. This can also affect your email account such as accessed after login credentials have been phished or obtained with malicious software, or your business computer that has been infected.

Self-storage stores customers’ data in a digital format, PII or personal identifying information, if not well taken cared of can be used to steal your customer’s identity. Scam watch should be well thought of or it will create devastating fines, minimum fine for a data breach can be $10,000 per customer.Protection through Awareness. Scam watch is very easy in fact; a good start for this action is to self-study and to email notifications from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.ic3.gov). This action will help you get informed, cyber criminals always has new technology to trick on you, so it is always good to get knowledgeable to emerging cyber threats that could affect your business.Some may find this unnecessary but this is as important as any fraud prevention. Remember that all software you use should also be kept current, including your operating system (Windows or Mac OS), your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.), and other programs such as Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. And disable Java in your browser’s plug-ins section as unlatched Java contains the most successfully-exploited vulnerabilities. It is very essential to have anti-virus and anti-malware protection on all of your computers and to look into guard for your mobile devices such as smart phones.

Help From Authorities. Activities highlighted are Federal crimes and should be reported as such this is according to the most cybercrime offenses are covered by Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1030: Fraud and related activity in connection with computers. The U.S. Department of Justice website sustains its Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section with contacts for reporting incidents to local, state or Federal law enforcement agencies.As the larger banks and institutions are becoming more conscious to cyber attacks of all kinds, self-storage industry and real estate in general in now more appealing to cyber criminals. But since they are becoming a little bit more conscious too and developing ways of scam prevention, cyber criminals are not targeting small businesses that tend to have less wary employees and smaller computer staffs. And smaller staffs should step up and find ways to defend themselves against threat of cybercrime.

Japan Wildlife Film Festival 2013

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JWFF is the largest wildlife film festival in Asia. This year like the past years joining is free. The purpose of the festival is to encourage international wildlife production by honoring the very best films. The Festival aspires to strengthen worldwide networking among wildlife filmmakers, especially those in Asian countries. For the general public, Japan Wildlife Film Festival aims to increase awareness of the need to protect and conserve our natural environment by screening the films.

This year the festival will be held on August 8, Thursday until August 11, Sunday of the same year. It will be held at Toyama International Conference Centre, Japan. All of Toyo Japan and the whole country are excited every year on the said festival.Nature Film Network is this year’s organizer of Japan Wildlife Film Festival in cooperation with Wildscreen (UK), Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (USA), UNEP. Entrants automatically grant approval for their productions to be retained by the Festival organizer and will be shown at non-profit public screenings to promote JWFF and charitable event to promote the conservation of nature through wildlife films during and outside of the Festival. An admission fee may be levied to cover venue and administration costs. The Festival organizers reserve the right to add a voice-over or Japanese subtitle to the films selected for those screenings. The costs will be covered by the Festival. JWFF expects all applicants to secure music and talent rights to their films for festival exhibition. It is the sole responsibility of the entity submitting the project to secure permission from the copyright holder of the material in question. JWFF will not be held responsible for any inclusion of uncleared copyrighted materials in your film. Entries will not be returned. They will be retained in the film library by the Festival. If you would like to have your entry returned, it should be indicated on your entry form and the return postage enclosed. The deadline for entry registration ended last October 31, 2012. On-line entry is always available on JWFF official website. Judging will be fair and square, entries will be screened and judged by the Judging Committee. Entries selected by the committee will be nominated as finalists for awards then finalists will be notified by the Festival office as soon as possible after the selection. During the Festival, films will be judged in relation to each award by the International Judging Committee. Award winners will be announced on August 11th at the Gala Ceremony which closes the Festival. Nominees cannot be revealed yet or shown yet to the public. Nominated films will only be made available for public screenings during the Festival. Nominees will be notified and asked to submit the highest quality format available with HDCam, or DigiBeta copy of the master to produce Japanese subtitled version. One person for each finalist film will be invited to the Festival with his/her accommodation and travel in Tokyo and all over Japan covered by the Festival organizer. Please note that expenses outside and to/from Japan will be paid by the finalist. After the Festival, all works of the finalist films will be retained by the Festival organizer, and will be shown at non-profit screenings in line with the purposes of the Festival. In some cases, a small admission charge may be made to cover administration costs. No film may be withdrawn from the festival programme after its selection. The awards will be, Best of Festival Grand, Best Animal Behavior, Best Underwater, Best Cinematography, Best Underwater Cinematography, Best Nature and People, Best Environmental Conservation, Best Educational, Best Animation, Best Children’s, Best Asia – Oceania, Toyama Ptarmigan Award (by audience poll). The judging committee, at its discretion, may present special awards to deserving films which do not qualify in any of the categories listed above. The submission of an entry registration for the Festival implies full acceptance of these rules. Should any matter come into dispute, only the Japanese version of these rules will be valid and any such dispute must be settled under Japanese law. Everyone in Tokyo Japan and in the word is definitely looking forward to watch the Films.

Nestle withdraws beef pasta meals with horsemeat

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Horse DNA found in beef pasta meals in Italy and Spain, due to this Nestle, the world’s biggest food company removed it at once it the shelves of respective countries. The deliveries from a German supplier was stopped it process by the Swiss-based firm. Traces of horsemeat in beef meals was long been an issue and Nestle was not the first in a string of major food producers to discover it. Levels of horse DNA were very low but above 1%, said by the spokesman for the company. On the previous week the firm said its products did not contain horsemeat. Two chilled pasta products naming Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini were pulled out by Nestle in Italy and Spain. A frozen product for catering businesses produced in France named Lasagnes a la Bolognaise Gourmandes will also be withdrawn. A spokesman for the company said that Nestle had identified a problem with a supplier from Germany.Nestle stated on their website that the supplier was identified, he is HJ Schypke, a sub-contractor of JBS Toledo, a major meat processing company based in Belgium.

“There is no food safety issue, but the mislabeling of products means they fail to meet the very high standards consumers expect from us,” the statement said. In addition to removing the three affected products from sale, Nestle would be “enhancing our existing comprehensive quality assurance programme by adding new tests on beef for horse DNA prior to production in Europe”, it added. According to BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva, the news that the world’s biggest food producer is now having to withdraw some foods, shows the problem is far wider than previously thought and, critics say, how dangerously unregulated the food industry has become. At least 12 European countries were affected by the widening scandal over mislabeled horsemeat. This includes Switzerland, where on Monday forced to remove nine different products from its shelves. Switzerland is famous for its broad range of organic, locally-sourced food. The company stated last Wednesday that it had found horsemeat in its own-brand frozen lasagne produced by the Comigel food processing company in France. Co-op now faces probable charges of negligence from the Swiss authorities. While other meat processing firm was also being affected as France partially lifted a production ban from Spanghero. The French government abrogated its license last week over uncertainties that Spanghero knowingly sold horsemeat labeled as beef, an accusation the company discards. Unwitting workers should not be penalized, said The French authorities. Thus the firm will be permitted to produce minced meat, sausages and ready-to-eat meals, but not to stock frozen meat. For the moment the UK and Germany have also both promised to step up testing of frozen food products.

Cincinnati poll worker charged with voting six times in November

http://hendrengroup.biz/blog/2013/04/02/cincinnati-poll-worker-charged-with-voting-six-times-in-november/

Obama supporter Melowese Richardson charged with illegal voting in 2008 and 2011 for allegedly voting at least six times after admitting voting twice in the presidential election last November. But, in an interview on a local TV station, Richardson claims that she was worried that her vote would not count and she was no intention to commit any voter fraud. She voted in her own name by absentee ballot and also in person at the polls, officials charged, but Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney Joseph Deters said she was also charged with voting in the name of five other people in various elections. Deters also added in an avowal, every vote is important and every voter and candidate needs to have faith in the system. Furthermore, this is not North Korea and the current arraignments must let people know that this is a staid matter. Following by the 58-year-old veteran Cincinnati poll worker now faces eight counts of voter fraud which one is a nun. At this time, The Hamilton County Board of Elections publicized that there was an investigation whether she voted six times, counting her vote on behalf of her granddaughter, India Richardson, this made Richardson to national headlines.

But voting twice or in another person’s name is illegal. According to the prosecutors the five other people that Richardson voted in behalf were all relatives. Sister Marguerite Kloos also faces one count of illegal voting. She allegedly voted in behalf of her fellow nun as an absentee voter, but Sister Rose Marie Hewitt was a deceased before absentee ballots were sent out. She was accused of opening Sister Hewitt’s ballot, forging her signature and mailing it to the Board of Elections as a vote.

Kloos, 54, serves as an associate professor of religious and pastoral studies where she also was a dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati but has resigned. Kloos was not charged but faces what is known as information, for the reason that her lawyer contacted prosecutors and she agreed to cooperate and plead guilty.75-year-old Russell Glassop, also charged with illegal voting for voting on behalf of his wife, who died before Election Day. Richardson’s case was the most shocking for the possibility of repeated votes, if proven guilty; she will face up to 12 years in prison. The Hamilton County Board of Elections lately held hearings on cases of possible double voting and voter fraud, part of a statewide review ordered by Secretary of State John Husted. 88 counties were called to review complaints of fraud, as well as voter disenfranchisement. Hamilton County prosecutors are currently investigating three additional cases of possible voter fraud. According to the written statement publicized by Husted, every voter must play by the rules, and if they don’t they will be held accountable. And so it might mean fines, it might mean detention.