Cristiane Namiuti - An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Taking the Plunge

By Cristiane Namiuti

Choosing to start a business is a thrilling venture that takes a lot of preparation. As a new business owner, you are choosing to build something meaningful, to dedicate yourself to an endeavor that will keep you up late at night and wake you up early each morning. The process is reinvigorating, but you must be sure that you can push through the following challenges to achieve success.

• Being your own boss means that you’re going to be working constantly. You’ll be working not only to find new clients but also to make sure they all remain pleased with your services. You’ll probably work up to seven-day weeks every so often, if not continuously, in the initial stages. And this may continue even after you begin to make money.
• You have to decide how much you’re willing to invest and how you’re going to manage the revenue you earn. Many new businesses close early because they simply couldn’t grow the business fast enough to pay the bills. That’s why many entrepreneurs continue to work a day job while simultaneously building their new business. Have a plan in place, and you may want to consider seeking out a financial advisor beforehand.
• Be prepared to go with the flow. Sometimes business will move quickly, and sometimes everything will come to a screeching halt. You’ll have to learn to adapt and adjust to anything and everything that could possibly go wrong, and quickly.

About the author: Cristiane Namiuti is a passionate advocate for budding entrepreneurs. She completed her MBA at Babson College and has recently joined a technology startup.

Sources: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/12/small-business-challenges.asp
https://www.quicksprout.com/2009/11/24/the-7-harsh-realities-of-starting-a-business/

Use Marketing and Social Media to Your Advantage

By Cristiane Namiuti

Establishing and running a profitable business venture is not an easy thing, regardless of the type of business run. If you are running a one-man operation or have a few people to help out, chances are you will be handling many different roles. While you won’t always know everything, it’s a good idea to try and educate yourself on what you don’t know, and reinforce the knowledge on what you do know.

Marketing and social media, especially in an age of technological advancement and the Internet, are some of the areas many business managers struggle with. When properly handled, however, they have the potential to take your business to the next level.

Marketing

As your business’s premier salesperson, you will be charged with branding and marketing your offerings to audiences out there. You have to know what you are doing, and have a marketing plan to support and direct your actions.

The first thing would be to have a marketing strategy, one that outlines your marketing goals and objectives, takes into account the type of market you are dealing with, and the marketing arsenal at your disposal. All this necessitates copious amounts of time spent on research well before you create the first flyer or brochure advertising your business.

With proper research, you can never go wrong. You’ll have a picture of your target market, what they like/dislike, their buying preferences, as well as marketing avenues that work. Of course, some efforts will not be a success, so you have to know when to learn from your mistakes and move on.

We live in a new school, technology-driven world. Online marketing can bring enormous benefits to your business, so find out which online marketing tactics can work for you. Offline tactics still work, but a good number of consumers use the Internet to search for and review products and services way before visiting a store.

Social media

Social media is such an expansive topic, but here’s a short primer on how to effectively use it in your business:

• Use social media for much more than marketing; make meaningful connections. Keep the “buy my product” posts to a minimum in favor of informative posts on current affairs, international events, business events, and so on. Your customers will view you as a resource on great information, which will improve your credibility making it easier for you to convince them to purchase from you.
• Before going into social media, do your homework. Not every site will work for you, neither is every business in social media for the same reasons. Find out your strengths and weaknesses, particularly in regards to the timing of your posts and your responses to customer feedback.
• Set realistic expectations. The more specific and realistic your goals are (get 100 loyal followers by the end of the year, increase website traffic by 15% in 6 months, and so on), the easier it is to achieve them.

Most importantly, be proactive when it comes to marketing and social media because it helps you stay ahead of the curve and handle issues effectively.

About the author:

Cristiane Namiuti is a brand marketing professional with more than a decade of experience building and managing top consumer brands. She is passionate about product innovation and brand communication.

What New Entrepreneurs Should Know When They Get into Business

By Cristiane Namiuti

Very often, stories of successful entrepreneurship fail to touch on the untold rejections and harsher realities that are representative of entrepreneurs’ journeys. The reason for it could be that stories of despair, hardship, fear, doubt, and anxiety aren’t really inspirational. Or quite possibly because few people want to hear about the struggles first-time entrepreneurs face and their occasional desire to quit.

In reality, entrepreneurship starts out with a lot of insecurity and numerous surprises. Much like searching for true love, there are many things to uncover along the way before a calming assuredness of success sets in. The following are some of the issues new entrepreneurs should brace for.

Finances will rarely be enough

Many new entrepreneurs get it wrong right out of the gate when it comes to finances, mainly because they don’t accurately determine how much money is required to launch the idea. Those who do so quickly realize that money is a big factor to success, and maintaining sufficient cash flow or raising adequate capital is a tough endeavor.

In this day of venture capitalists and angel investors, your idea may be good enough to get meetings with investors. But you’ll always need a strong team and a sound business model validated by real customers to convince them to invest in your idea.  Early in the ideation process you have to do the math and come up with an accurate picture of how much you need to develop and get your idea into the market.

School has taught you little

The business knowledge you acquire in school is by all means vital to your development, but you will soon realize that it doesn’t prepare you for everything you will face as an entrepreneur. The only way you will learn to handle the issues and pressure of entrepreneurship is by going out and becoming an entrepreneur.

In the same vein, you have to acknowledge that you don’t have all the knowledge. Overconfidence hurts a lot of new entrepreneurs. Be humble and accept that there are some things you have little knowledge of. That’s when your strong team makes the difference allowing you to delegate to people you trust.

You may need help

Understanding that you can’t get everything done on your own leads to the reality that you may need a partner to help out. Having a reliable partner can ease the pressure and reduce the responsibilities on your plate. Besides, shared ownership can motivate you to become better and is a good way of attracting talented individuals. Partnerships also mean giving up some level of control and ownership – something many new entrepreneurs find hard.

People want you to succeed

The fear of failure is what prevents many people from becoming entrepreneurs. What many first-time entrepreneurs realize quickly is that everybody wants them to succeed, so all stakeholders will work towards success and rally during tough times. Mistakes and failure will happen along the way, but use them as opportunities to learn and correct.



To Learn more, Visit : https://about.me/cristiane.namiuti
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/274743

Brazil Among the Most Miserable Nations

By Cristiane Namiuti

The Cato Institute just published its annual Misery Index ranking of nations. Professor Steve H. Hanke of Johns Hopkins Universitycalculated the indexesbased on data from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The Misery Index calculation follows a simple formula:

Misery Index = (unemployment + inflation + bank lending rates) – GDP’s percentage change.

The highest indexes are associated with the most miserable nations.

According to Hanke’s Misery Index for 2015, Venezuela continues to occupy the first place as the most miserable nation for the third consecutive year.And Venezuela’s situation in 2015 was much worse than 2014: the country’s Misery Index went from 106 in 2014 to 214 in 2015, increasing more than 100%.

Ukraine rose two positions, going from fourth place in 2014 to second in 2015, with a misery index of 82.

Brazilearned a Misery Index of 67, appearing as the third most miserable nation in the world1 (after Venezuela and Ukraine) and second in the Americas2 (after Venezuela). The Brazilian economy has been deteriorating over the last few years. The country is struggling with a high level of government debt, high inflation and very high interest rates. Most of these aspects directly affect the country’s Misery Index.

Bender, Jeremy.“Most Miserable Countries in the World”
BusinessInsider.com Jan. 2015.
<http://www.businessinsider.com/misery-index-cato-institute-2016-1>
2Hanke, Steve H.“Economic Headwinds: Big Players, Regime Uncertainty and the Misery Index”
Cato Institute, Feb. 2016.
<http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/economic-headwinds-big-players-regime-uncertainty-  misery-index>

Cato Institute’s Misery Index scores for 2015 were only calculated for nations with up-to-date data at the EIU. Some countries, like for example Syria, were not included because they did not have current data available.

You can check the latest Misery Index rankings here:

Most Miserable Countries in the World
http://www.businessinsider.com/misery-index-cato-institute-2016-1

Misery Index Scores per Region
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/economic-headwinds-big-players-regime-uncertainty-misery-index

Social Media Transforming Advertising

By Cristiane Namiuti

The Internet and the massive adoption of mobile technologies are changing the way we relate with the world around us, and redefining how we consume (anything and everything): brands, products, services, information, entertainment etc. Thanks to technology, we now have immediate access to all types of information. And this new paradigm has transformed, and still continues to reshape, what once was the “Traditional Marketing”.

 

In a world where there are more mobile phones than people, we tend to spend more time on social media than watching TV or reading magazines. In this scenario, brands are adapting to our new media habits, and creating new ways to connect with consumers and convey their messages.In 2013, Airbnb released its first global campaign with an innovative movie produced leveraging crowd-sourcing and social media. This was the first movie directed via Twitter and entirely shot with Vine. The director, Ben York Jones, created the storyline and tweeted Vine directions of the scenes. Following his instructions, people from all around the world created their Vine videos, and tweeted them back to Ben. After a week of editing, “Hollywood and Vines was Born” with the objective of conveying Airbnb’s mission: “an artful story about travel, adventure, and finding your place in the world.”

The final film is four minutes and thirty seconds and was first released in 2013 on the Sundance Channel and later online.

You can watch the movie Hollywood and Vines here: 

About the Author:

Cristiane Namiuti is a brand marketing professional who has strong interest in innovation and technology. She is particularly interested in following the newest technology trends and analyzing the impact they are making on consumers’ lives.

Cristiane has more than ten years of experience building and managing top consumer brands. She is passionate about developing brand communications and product innovation based on consumer insights. Throughout her career Cristiane has successfully launched hundreds of consumer brands and products. Her projects have generated stronger brands and business growth for large corporations such as Unilever and Bare Escentuals, as well as small businesses and startups. While at Unilever, Cristiane’s projects received multiple awards, including: “Best Creative Media”, “Best innovation Project” and “Best Integrated Communications Plan” by Unilever Awards. She holds an MBA in entrepreneurship from Babson College in Wellesley, MA and a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and Advertising from ESPM in São Paulo.

Illustrations by freepik.com