A new venture for Martin and Steven Sands
Sands Brothers launch Genesis Merchant Partners A new hedge fund to provide asset-based loans
Martin Sands and Steven Sands who founded Sands Brothers Asset Management in 1999 are always looking for new opportunities for their investors. The Sands brothers saw a new opportunity in the current tight credit market and they created a new hedge fund called Genesis Merchants Partners fund.
Genesis Merchant Partners is the name of the new hedgefund which allows investors to invest in asset-based loans. Genesis Merchant Partners will make secured asset based loans (ABLs) in niche or underserved markets. The fund will make loans secured against assets that will be taken in exchange if the loans can’t be repaid. While the cost of the loans will be higher than bank rates, using these loans can ultimately be cheaper for the borrower than selling equity at depressed prices.
Genesis will operate in a wide range of industries that offer up hard assets as collateral and diversification for investors. The fund will make short-term loans in the range of $250,000 to $2.5 million
Click here for more information about Martin SandsMartin Sands, Steven Sands or Sands Brothers Asset Management or about Genesis Merchant Partners fund.
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If you’re seriously interested in knowing about business meetings, you need to think beyond the basics. This informative article takes a closer look at things you need to know about business meetings.
A lot of businessmen pass through different trials during the period they are dealing with the launch and development of their company. Even if you are used to daily business meetings, you will discover that for business meetings with clients and for signing contracts you need lots of strategies and abilities.
You have to collect supplementary information. A simple phone call can anticipate the needs of your client. You have to learn more about them and prepare yourself for that face-to-face meeting learning more about the client’s company. Then create a list that has on it all the benefits your services will bring him.
The objective has to be realistic. The experts calculated that a business meeting with your clients can cost you up to several hundred dollars, depending on the domain of the business and on location. So it is important for every meeting to be convincing for the client. If you are a public relations consigliore, for instance, a realistic objective for a first meeting would be the detailed presentation of the offer.
You must present quality products. Prepare your documents printed well on quality paper. You have to bring all needed, business cards, estimative graphs, brochures, presentation materials.
If you find yourself confused by what you’ve read to this point, don’t despair. Everything should be crystal clear by the time you finish.
You must carefully analyze your client. All through the meeting, watch closely his behavior. It’s good to notice if he is approving of your ideas or if he isn’t. Pay attention to signals your client is sending and make sure to answer accordingly.
Any questions put must be well thought. A business meeting is an opportunity to discover your client’s needs and to present him with the solutions. If the discussion between you two isn’t equilibrated and you are the one that is doing all the talking, it means the meeting is a failure. It is important for you to put the right questions, but also to know how to listen carefully to answers.
You must always go for real cases and examples. True stories can demonstrate the fact that you kept in mind your client’s needs. Prepare for every quality and ability a demonstrative story. It’s preferable to tell a story that talks to the client about the benefits the rest of your clients and consumers have.
Provide efficient solution and act on time! Assuming you prepared very well and you used the observations efficiently, now you have reached the moment when you can ask directly the things you are interested in. This is important and it must not be missed. Some people organize great meeting but when it comes to closing the deal they leave home bear handed. When getting to this, you must have the strength to act and go on with it.
It never hurts to be well-informed with the latest on business meetings. Compare what you’ve learned here to future articles so that you can stay alert to changes in the area of business meetings.
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A unique selling proposition (USP) is an attempt to express the uniqueness of your business in a single statement. It can be a promise no one else makes. It can also be a unique benefit that applies only to your product or service. Either way, it serves to differentiate you from your competition.
To sum it up, it’s a one to two sentence phrase (or it can be a concept) that clearly lets your customers know why they should buy your product over your competitor’s products.
The use of a unique selling proposition in your business will only stand to benefit you.
Here is what a profit pulling USP will allow you to do…
Find a niche and position yourself as the ONLY choice for that niche.
Place your product or service on a different level than your competition, catapult you to a higher plane of business and enable you to sell in a vacuum (i.e. no direct competition).
Protect you from market fluctuations.
Break free from mindless advertising and get your product or service remembered more than any other in your market.
Grant a stronger preference for your company’s products and services so you can charge more and customers will gladly pay your higher price.
Sound interesting?
Copyright © 2005 by L A Parmley. All rights reserved.
Would you like to create a profit pulling unique selling proposition for your small business or professional service? Discover how by visiting Positioning Tactics and sign up for our free ecourse.
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What if you’ve taken the time to create a marketing plan but now you’re so busy servicing your current clients that you’re having a hard time keeping on track with your plan?
Is it okay to set the plan aside for awhile? After all you’ve got enough business to keep you busy. And, you’re not sure you could handle additional clients right now anyway.
While marketing may not seem like a necessary activity when your business is going gang-busters, it’s only a matter of time before your lack of marketing starts to impact your business.
Staying on top of your marketing plan, even when you’re busy, ensures you always have a pipeline full of prospects and clients into your business.
While you may be busy right now, if you stop marketing for the next three months, you may find yourself high and dry when it comes to clients, because you’ve stopped the flow.
As an independent professional myself, I can totally relate to being too busy to market. It seems the days are never long enough to get everything on my to-do list done. But as a marketing professional I know I can’t afford to NOT get my marketing done.
So what’s a busy gal (or guy) to do?!?
Here are 5 suggestions … these are things I do and recommend to all my clients in my 10stepmarketing System.
(1) If you haven’t already, create a marketing calendar. Schedule all of your marketing activities in the calendar according to how frequently you planned to do them in your marketing plan.
If you planned to do something monthly, enter it on the calendar once each month. Weekly? Enter it four times per month. Do this for every planned activity.
(2) Hang your marketing calendar over your desk on a bulletin board or on the wall. Make a habit of looking at it every morning. This way you won’t have the problem of “out of site out of mind.”
I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had whose marketing plans have ended up in a file folder in a drawer. You’re certainly NOT going to grow your business that way!
(3) Try incorporating your marketing activities into your weekly and daily to-do list. Enter the activities as to-do tasks in your calendar or PDA just like all your appointments and other business activities.
I do this with all my marketing activities. I use Microsoft Outlook and a Pocket PC and it’s the only way I know I’ll keep myself on track. If something is on my calendar, I treat it like any other meeting or appointment and I do it.
For example, every Wednesday, a little notice pops up to remind me to write my weekly ezine. If that didn’t happen I’d either be writing it on Monday’s at midnight, or it wouldn’t get done.
(4) Pick one day per month to review your marketing calendar in detail and to look three months ahead. What is coming up that you need to prepare for now? What do you need to transfer into your to-do list or PDA to make sure you don’t forget to do it?
I usually do this at the end of the month when I’m doing all my month-end work … things like running sales reports, doing billing, and updating my marketing tracking reports.
Make it a habit to review your marketing at the same time you do these tasks. After a few months you won’t even have to think about it anymore, it’ll become a habit.
(5) Consider hiring an assistant or support person to help. If they can take some of the tasks off your plate that really don’t require your expertise, it will free you up to focus on what I call “revenue producing activities.”
These are things like working with clients, creating products and services and marketing. I couldn’t believe the difference it made when I hired some help.
I didn’t think I could afford it, but now I don’t see how I lasted so long without help!
When you find a way to get back on track with your marketing and you do it on regular basis, it really does become a part of the way you do business.
Suddenly it doesn’t seem like marketing anymore. It’s just what you do to run your business. That’s when it becomes effortless.
And, that’s when you know your business will be continue to be busy and profitable for the long-haul.
(C) Copyright 2005 Debbie LaChusa
20-year marketing veteran Debbie LaChusa created The 10stepmarketing System to help small business owners and solo-preneurs successfully market their business, themselves without spending a fortune on marketing. To learn more about this simple, step-by-step program and to sign up for her FREE audio class and FREE weekly ezine featuring how-to articles, tips and advice, visit www.10stepmarketing.com
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Studies have shown that regardless of a person’s background, their experience, age, or country of residence, all successful Home Business Entrepreneurs have one thing in common. They have all set specific goals and pursue them with laser-like vision to their completion.
Let’s engage in a little exercise…
Suppose we were speaking person to person, and I asked you what your goals are for next year and insisted that you answer, what would be your reply? Would you be able to reply? Or would you find it difficult to give me a straight answer?
Let’s take this exercise a little further. How would you define the word ‘goal’?
My dictionary defines a goal as the end toward which a person’s effort or his enthusiasm is directed. It is his purpose.
Seems straightforward, right? But the meaning is still hazy…
Using this meaning, your goal can be:
(1) Success in your home business” or
(2) Become top in your niche or
(3) Invest in your list
All these goals are excellent, but still unclear, obscure and difficult to measure. Unless your goals are well defined, firmly fixed, and measurable, they will always net you substandard results.
Okay, we are going to revise each of the three goals above, but this time we are going to use language that is a little clearer and more precise so that we will be able to trace our progress in relation to each one of our goals.
1. Success in our home business:
We will target ourselves to make $4,500 plus per month within the next sixty days. We will then expand our operations so that we are earning $15,000 per month for the next three months. By the end of the our first year our income should not be less than $155,000.
2. Become top in our niche:
Our goal is to be in the 20th position in all the major search engines by the end of January. By the end of May, we should be in the number 10 position, and be in the top 5 by August, so that by December we would have achieved our desired target of being in the number one position …ready to reap huge rewards during the heaviest shopping period of the year!
3. Invest in our list:
Our targeted “list” goal is to explode our present list to 50,000 by June 30. Then we can start running our websites as a full time home business. We will set our minimum, targeted cash flow prediction from our websites, to at least $6,000 per month.
While each of these statistics quoted have been chosen strictly to demonstrate my point, I am sure you get the idea. The second set of targeted goals is much clearer and specific than the first. It is much easier to track each stage and measure the progress as you go through your business year.
Challenge yourself during this year. Go ahead and set your targets. Be specific, set realistic goals and single-mindedly head for your finish line! Let this year be your year of astounding home business success!
Home Business Entrepreneur Janice Sharman has helped lots of ordinary people start profitable Home Businesses. For FREE information on how you can start a successful Home Business email: janice@profits4sure.com and join the thousands of successful Home Business Entrepreneurs.
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What if I told you I was looking for home based business ideas — what sort of things would come to your mind? Well, when many people hear this question they might well imagine something like the following:
“Well here’s my idea, you go down to Wal-Mart and you buy a bunch of these ‘whatyamacallits’ and you take them home, wrap this pink fuzzy stuff around them, and then you sell them on E-Bay.”
Okay, your ideas might be a little better than that, but most people think they need some sort of a gimmick in order to make money on the Internet. For some reason, it never seems to occur to them, that they could take something they already know about and turn it into a successful home based business.
Home based business ideas don’t have to be clever; you don’t have to think up the next ‘pet rock’. If there’s something you’re interested in, maybe even something you’re passionate about, there’s a pretty good chance that there are some other people out there who share that same interest.
That’s one of the best things about successful home-based business ideas - - they are actually really easy to come by. You just take some interest that you have, add a proven process for constructing a high traffic Web site, mix in a little water, and “proof”; there you have it, instant home-based business ideas. No cleverness required.
Besides coming up with home based business ideas, many people also get stuck on the notion that they have to have an artistic home page, or a technologically advanced Web site, in order to make money on the Internet. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, the fancier a Web site gets the harder it becomes for it to rank well on the search engines. A simple text-only site will always score best with the search engines.
So there you have it, a whole universe of potential home based business ideas. Just think up something that you’re interested in, imagine yourself writing a few emails each week to some friend of yours that shares that interest. Do that for several weeks, and you’ve got a good start on a successful Web site. Keep that up for several months, and you’re pretty much there. The only other “trick” to it, is coming up with the right list of sub-topics for these “emails” (web pages). You can find many resources on this site that will help you learn the best techniques for that. If you imagine that it’s any more difficult than that, you are cheating yourself out of the best potential home based business ideas.
Scott J. Patterson is a self-proclaimed Dunce, yet last month he earned $12,124 from one of his online businesses. To find out how YOU can do the same, download his fr*e ebook- The Secret-Guide to Home Businesses: http://www.duncemoney.com/wbarticle.html
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The key to building a successful business online or offline is to look for an exsisting market that needs something you can offer them. Find the problem FIRST before you start trying to find the solution.
Some of the things you would do before deciding to go online is to:
BRAINSTORM A LIST OF POSSIBLE MARKETS
For example, if one of your interests is scrapbooking, you need to identify markets that relate to scrapbooking. These could be artists, painters, people who own art stores etc. Or, if your a gardener, you will need to look at areas related to gardening - landscapers or casual gardeners.
Once you have brainstormed a list of general markets for one of your five interests do the same for the other four.
GET STARTED WITH SEARCH ENGINES
In order to search for the right information for you make sure you enter in a keyword phrase eg scrapbooking tools. The results you get for the keywords will give you lots of interesting sites, make a list of them and take notes of their products and what they offer for them. All this information will help you further sown the road.
CHECK OUT NEWS SITES AND EZINES
These tools can be a great resource on what’s happening in your particular market. News sites such as CNN.com or news.google.com are the most popular sites and they are frequently updated. You can also perform searches in these sites to discover information about a particular topic. Also be on the lookout for ezine sites that relate to your topic. They are a great way to check out issues that might be dominating your market.
Tamra Forde
Director of Marketing
Freedom Business Opportunity
http://www.freedombusinessopportunity.com
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Supply and Demand Issues Fuel China’s Automobile, Steel, and
Coal Industries
Suppliers and Participants Mittal Steel, PUDA Coal, SORL Auto
Parts, and China Automotive Systems Benefit From China’s Growing
Industrial Economy
www.China-AsiaStocks.com
As China’s growing economy and expanding infrastructure impacts
demand and supply in major industry sectors including
automotive, steel, and coal, companies that are positioned in
China as suppliers will benefit. Mergers and acquisitions,
rising prices and overall strength in construction and
infrastructure all indicate strong growth signals within the
sectors.
The automotive industry is anticipated to be driven by Asian
demand and Asian consumers for the next five years. In addition,
China’s surging construction levels are in turn pushing the
demand for commercial vehicles higher. China’ entry into US
automotive markets and expected increased exports, changes the
face of the global automotive industry. Companies that will
survive and benefit from the global changes will have
incorporated strategies to position themselves in both China and
the US.
SORL Auto Parts (OTCBB: SAUP), China’s leading manufacturer and
distributor of automotive air brake valves for the commercial
vehicle market identifies North America as a key focus for
increasing export sales, taking advantage of the construction
industry’s growing demands.
With China continuing to expand its infrastructure, demand for
coal is on the rise globally and within China. Recent news that
China’s largest electricity producer, China Huaneng Group,
signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Shanxi Coking Coal Group
(one of China’s largest coking companies) to jointly develop a
coal mine is a positive sign for smaller companies like PUDA
Coal (OTCBB: PUDC), a supplier of premium grade coking coal to
the steel making industry. Supply for coking coal is anticipated
to increase by 5.4 million tons this year.
With coking coal utilized to smelt iron and steel, it is
directly impacted by the steel industry. Steel prices and stocks
are up based on discussions of M&A and consolidation. With steel
prices increasing more than 150 percent since 2003 based on US
and the increased demand from China and India, it sets the stage
for Mittal Steel, one of the world’s biggest steel makers,
acquiring a 37.17 percent stake of a subsidiary of Hunan Valin
Iron and Steel Group of China. Mittal, U.S. Steel and Nucor
control 55 percent of the U.S. steel market.
Auto Industry Transformation
China’s automotive industry has experienced rapid growth since
the country opened itself up to the rest of the world and
adopted economic reforms. In addition, the 2008 Olympics in
Beijing and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai are two key events
that are expected to stimulate significant growth in the
transportation logistics industries. Meanwhile, massive
construction projects all over China are spurring the growth in
the heavy duty vehicle and commercial vehicle market.
SORL Auto Parts is meeting the increasing demand as a
manufacturer and distributor of automotive air brake valves and
hydraulic brake valves mainly for the commercial vehicles
market. For the nine months ended September 30, 2005, the
Company realized an increase of 38 percent generating sales of
$45.8 million, compared to $33.1 million for the nine months
ended September 30, 2004. David He, SORL’s Senior Manager of
Investor Relations and International Business Strategy and
Planning states, “The trend of urbanization gives China’s
construction sector a historic opportunity. The booming
construction sector also stimulates the development of
construction materials and construction machinery, resulting in
tremendous increase in demand for transportation, particularly
the use of heavy duty vehicles. It is expected that heavy duty
vehicles will maintain a significant market in China. In 2005,
China’s total heavy duty truck output was approximately 250,000
units. Industry experts estimate that the market will sustain an
annual growth rate ranging from 10% to 15% until the national
output reaches 600,000 units per year. It is projected that
total annual output of heavy duty vehicles in China will reach
450,000 to 500,000 units by 2008.”
According to Mr. He, there are four major driving factors for
this industry: “First of all, the Chinese economic growth and
the progress of urbanization will ultimately drive the demand
for automobiles. Also, it is the government’s industrial policy
to support the development of the auto industry as one of the
nation’s pillar industries. Thirdly, rapid expansion of the
domestic auto market in recent years, leading to the
corresponding growth of auto parts market, for both OEM and
aftermarket. Last but not least, the relatively low cost of
Chinese auto parts has driven increasing volume of auto parts
exports; the lower cost of qualified labor has attracted more
and more foreign investment, shifting manufacturing from their
home countries - each of these factors promotes the development
of the Chinese auto parts industry.”
China Automotive is one of the major suppliers of power steering
systems and components to China’s automotive industry. Jie Li,
Investor Relations Officer for China Automotive states,
“Infrastructure build up reflected in highway, transportation
and bridge construction will continue to increase. The national
highway system is aiming at 1 million miles. CAGR of the Chinese
auto market will remain at 15% for the next 5 to 10 years.
Subsequently, the auto parts market will look healthy as well.
With the trend of global purchasing of auto parts, the Chinese
auto parts market will enjoy 20% annual growth. Also, joint
ventures between Chinese auto makers and foreign car makers will
increase domestic auto parts purchases. Another important issue
that will benefit the domestic auto parts market is that the
Chinese government now requires auto makers to purchase 40% of
their parts from domestic firms in the first year, and 60% in
the second year.”
Building Demand from Construction
The Chinese steel industry has continued to experience double
digit annual rates of growth as it has worked to keep pace with
the construction boom. China has grown to the largest steel
market in the world from a relative unknown in short order. As
reported in Global Insight, Steel at a Crossroads: China’s role
in shaping new global market, “China’s steel consumption is up
110% over a six-year period and is still rising, producing over
26% of the world’s supply of steel, while consuming 27%.”On the
other hand, the growth of the steel industry is also restricted
by the limited supply of many non-renewable raw materials, such
as coal, coke and iron ore.
As vital suppliers to the steel industry, both thermal coal and
coking coal producers are facing very high demand. According to
the China Coal Industry Association (CCIA), with demand rising,
the price of thermal coal used for power production had risen 50
percent to more than $60 a tonne since the beginning of this
year; term prices for coking coal, the material used in steel
production, are set to almost double next year, to $100 a tonne
or above from under $60 this year.
PUDA Coal, a Chinese coking coal producer, is benefiting
significantly from the high profitability provided by this
trend. According to Puda CEO Zhao Ming, “The factor that drives
the demand for coking coal is the mass construction of
infrastructure, including but not limited to real estate
development, extended urbanization process, western region
development and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. These projects
require the use of large amounts of steel, and coking coal is
essential in making coke, which is largely used in the steel
making process. Puda’s future focus is to sell directly to steel
mills with their own coking facilities (or so-called integrated
coking-steel making mills). ”
Mark Lidiard, Vice President of Investor Relations and
Communications for BHP Billiton, the biggest coking coal
producer in the world states, “Metallurgical coal is used in
steel making industries, and incremental demand for
metallurgical coal is primarily being driven by the growth in
the Chinese steel market. On the other hand, steaming or thermal
coal is used in power industry, and they tend to be driven more
by global power demand. Although again incremental growth in
power in China is causing some pressure on the thermal coal
industry, which again is creating good demand for thermal coal
products around the world. As well very high current oil and gas
prices are driving the demand for coal.”
Mittal Steel, one of the world’s biggest steel makers, signed an
agreement in 2005 to acquire a 37.17 percent stake of a
subsidiary of Hunan Valin Iron and Steel Group of China.
According to the Company, “This transaction is a key milestone
for Mittal Steel’s business in China and is an integral part of
its global strategy. China is the world’s largest consumer of
steel products and demand is expected to continue to grow
strongly. Mittal Steel’s participation in the expected growth of
the Chinese steel industry will be further enhanced through its
investment in the Company and its partnership with Valin Group.”
Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman and CEO of Mittal Steel, had been
quoted as stating, “We are confident that demand for steel in
China will remain strong and this acquisition is very much
intended as a first step towards a more significant production
presence in this country. China is experiencing a period of
rapid economic growth and we are excited by the prospect of
being a participant in this.”
____________
Investors and industry following the growth in China should look
at trends including pricing increases, import and export growth
and restrictions, as well as global demand influences, to find
new opportunities. Steel demands are on the rise globally as
infrastructure in China and India continues to grow, creating a
robust steel market and an automotive industry that is going
through dramatic changes as the east and west converges.
Disclaimer: www.InvestorIdeas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp
©Copyright InvestorIdeas 2006
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Working at Home in Ireland is growing at a phenomenal pace.
The beauty of it is that your time is your
own and you can dig in anytime you want. Even Large
multinationals are now seeing the benefits of employing
people in the home workplace.
Because of the vast improvement
of communications in the last 10-15 years, the
home is now becoming its own office or company in
its own right. All of the machines and instruments that
were once only located in the work office can now be
located and used just as efficiently in the home office.
Powerful computers, fax machines and internet
connections can now be easily installed in the home.
Discipline and honesty are huge traits that have to
be addressed when working from home. Procrastinating your
work is not a problem as long as the work gets
completed. When working from home, the important matter is
not when the work is done, it is that the actual work is being done.
Many Irish entrepreneurs that work from home will tell you
that if they have missed work by running some errands
during the day, they will complete the work later on that
evening or they will do extra the following day. Until
you reach a point in your life where you can pick and
choose when and where you work, discipline is the
foundation on which your work at home business will thrive.
If you have a full time job and are insecure about trying
a work at home job, I would first suggest doing it
part time. By doing it part time you will start to
understand if this life is for you or not.
There is definitely people (of which I am not)
that love the great out-doors
and want to be constantly out of the house 9-5 Monday
to Friday. No matter how good an opportunity came along,
these people still would not like to do it. On the
other hand I believe there is the majority crying out for
change. These are the people that would love to try
something new if it only would increase the quality of
their lives.
These people are the new leaders in internet
and network marketing. These people are the people that
provide the real determination to succeed in their
irish home based businesses. By reading this article, if you
think you are one of these people, then you are in the
right place. Give your home based business a try, you have
nothing to lose only a regret that you didn’t start it sooner!
Author Jack Foley works from home in Ireland
For more articles and information about Jack’s home business, visit Jack’s website: http://www.residual-income-home-based-business.com/
Copyright © Jack Foley - All Rights Reserved
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