What's the difference between government grants and government loans? The difference is that a loan has to be repaid (usually with interest), whereas a grant doesn't require repayment.

Does a government grant sound almost too good to be true?

Well, there's always a price to be paid and in the case of government grants the price consists of lots of research and paperwork.

Also, government grants for small business start-up and expansion are very limited. Generally such grants are available only for very specific and targeted endeavours, and your business proposal needs to fit perfectly within those guidelines.

For example, a grant program might be targeted to creating jobs in a particular industry (such as displaced forest workers), a particular geographic area (e.g. disaster-affected areas), a particular segment of the population (such as youth or aboriginals), or for a combination of these (e.g. jobs that hire youth in a particular industry in a disaster-affected area).

How to increase your chances of getting a government grant

Given the government’s tendency for acronyms, obscure definitions and bureaucratic jargon, figuring out exactly what the government agency is looking for in grant applications can sometimes be an exercise in frustration. But if you follow the guidelines in this article about how to increase your chances you may just get lucky.

I use the word "lucky" on purpose. Contrary to what many websites promoting proposal-writing and other fee-based services will tell you, getting a government grant for a for-profit business is not easy.

Isabel Isidro, Managing Editor of PowerHomeBiz.com agrees:

Even if you buy books on "how to get grants" or lists that supposedly have information on grants -- all of them are mere rehash of what CFDA has, albeit packaged differently. But still the info is the same - hardly any grants for starting a for profit business.

Like me, Ms. Isidro recommends sticking with government websites to get your information:

...go to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) and Grants.gov, which are two sites created by the federal government to provide information on grants. Browse through the listings and see if you can find any grant that would support a for-profit venture.

Be aware that the Small Business Administration does not give out grants to start or expand small businesses, although they do offer a wide variety of loan programs. They explain their policy on grants here.

This article is for information purposes only and should not be construed as financial or legal advice.

One of the first things most people think about when they want their own business is, how do I start? Close on the heels of that question is, where will I get the money?

Getting a government small business start-up loan is one solution to the "where will I get the money" question. Be aware, though, that there's always a price to pay.

In the case of government loans for small businesses, the price you pay is paperwork and bureacratic delays. Because they are dishing out taxpayer money, government agencies must be very careful to make sure that the money is disbursed in accordance with proper regulations, qualifications and restrictions.

Every business is obligated to operate within the law, regardless whether it's located in a home office or the executive suite at Trump Towers.

Home business legal structure

One of the initial steps to take when setting up a home-based business is determining the type of business entity (legal structure) to operate under.

Generally, there are three methods of operation: sole proprietorship, partnership or limited liability company (corporation). The most common method used by home-based businesses is sole proprietorship, primarily because it's the simplest and cheapest way to go.

However, as a home-based business owner, you may be subject to a wide array of liability issues, so be sure to get expert advice suited to your type of business. For example, if your business involves considerable financial risk or the potential to be sued, you may want more legal protection than that afforded by a sole proprietorship.

Home business registration

Registering a small business is not a legal requirement if the business is being operated as a sole proprietorship. However, you may want to register your business anyways because doing so is a relatively inexpensive method of providing some copyright protection for the business name. As the business grows, you may decided to change its entity and having the business’s name already registered will be one less step you have to take at that time.

Your home office should be designed to accommodate your business while having as little impact as possible on your home life, and vice versa. As someone who has worked from home for over 20 years, I can attest that keeping work and home separate is easier said than done.

Setting up a home office can be as simple as having a computer and telephone in a tiny cubby under a stairway. However, it's preferable that your home office provide a place where you can conduct business transactions in a professional manner – away from the noise and distractions of the household.

After all, your home office is a direct reflection of your business professionalism, and needs to be considered carefully when planning your business.

The photo above shows my home office from the exterior. You can see that my space is above the garage, which is a separate building from the main house. This is an ideal situation for me because business visitors don't enter my house.

But not everybody has the opportunity to have their home office in a separate building. To make the most of the space you have, ask yourself these six key questions:

1. Will clients be visiting your establishment?

Making sure your office is situated away from the personal flow of your home and family goes a long way in presenting a professional image. Ideally, your office should be located in an area separate from the rest of your house. But if this is not possible, try to find a quiet area of your house such as the basement or spare bedroom as far away from the busy part of the house as possible.

Above all, don't set your computer up on the dining room table with a television blaring in the background. I can't stress this enough: to be taken seriously as a business owner you must present a professional image at all times.

2. Will you be manufacturing your product on site?

If your business requires noisy tools or smelly chemicals for production, you will definitely want to locate this area away from living quarters. A detached garage or outbuilding would be perfect for keeping the manufacturing aspects of your business separate from the public access areas. You may want to have a small desk with a telephone and maybe a computer available close by, but most of your paperwork should be in a safe, off-site location.

The Internet has been a great boon for freelancers from all walks of life. Websites such as Guru, Elance and GetAFreelancer provide a convenient, centralized location for freelancers and buyers to find each other.

Freelance listing sites contain job postings, evaluations and ratings for both freelancers and buyers, some type of escrow or secure payment service and, usually, a private message board where contacts can converse with each other over terms, qualifications, etc.

Usually set up as a reverse auction, freelancers (also referred to as "bidders") compete with one another for posted positions. These freelance sites generally earn revenue from membership fees or from charging a small percentage of the awarded value of the project.

Some of the jobs commonly offered as freelance positions on the web are:

• Writing – Various freelance boards offer excellent opportunities for dedicated, articulate writers able to write articles, sales copy, books, reports and other documents.

• Administrative Services – Skills such as bookkeeping, transcription, typing and data entry are in high demand.

• Internet Marketing/SEO Consultant – With the ever-increasing growth of websites in competition for client attention and search engine rankings, Internet marketing freelancers can choose from an almost unlimited pool of sites dedicated to all aspects of their trade including link exchange, keyword-rich article writing, and web site submissions.

• Website Editing – The demand for good editors online is increasing daily. Knowledge of HTML and the most common web editing software programs is required.

• Web Design and Programming– This market is a hard nut to crack, primarily because of over saturation. Designers who have competitive prices and who stay on the cutting edge of advancing technology can secure freelancing positions, but the competition is fierce.

Pros and Cons of Freelancing:

 Freelancers are in the unique position of expanding their business acumen by having the flexibility to embrace opportunity when it knocks. As the person in charge, the chance for adopting new and innovative ideas can be based solely on personal instincts and the thirst for success.

 Freelancers are essentially the masters of their own domain; therefore they are under few conventional restrictions in choosing exactly which projects to work on and what rate of pay they should charge.

 One of the most difficult hurdles that many freelancers encounter is the amount of competition they face when trying to establish a reputation as a credible freelance service provider. This often puts new freelancers in a catch-22 position: it is difficult to secure contracts without a proven track record, yet the only way to get that track record is by completing some contracts.

You may recall a post I wrote a few weeks ago asking whether the topic of a website affects the length of time it takes to get indexed in Google.

I also posted the question on the discussion forum at HighRankings.com (an SEO site). Here are the questions I asked and the expert answers I received in response:

Summary:

Site A (topic is home business) has been active for 10 weeks now and still isn't listed in Google. That seems like an awfully long time considering that I've done everything right in terms of having good, useful content as well as quality inbound links.

I created a new personal development site "Site B" and it was indexed within 24 hours. Although I'm pleased that Site B got indexed so quickly, I am puzzled by the delay in indexing Site A.

I did all the same things in setting up both blogs. In fact, you would think that Site A would be much more attractive to Google because it has 80+ articles compared with the mere three that Site B had when it was indexed. And Site B has only one inbound link so far, whereas Site A has 118 links from 62 different (legitimate) sites.

I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what's going on, and my theory is that it has something to do with the title and content of Site A (Home Business). Put bluntly, I'm wondering if Google is extra-wary of any sites that are to do with home business because there are so many "work at home" scams on the Internet.

Expert answers:

There is a statistical correlation between certain topics or categories of sites and poor search engine optimization practices. As the search engines improve their trust and spam filtering/detection capabilities, you should see some topic communities become isolated because a majority of their members lack trusted, high value inbound links.

Google in particular seems to be crawling trusted sites more frequently and untrusted sites less frequently. Hence, blog B could indeed be benefitting from very few links that are more trusted while blog A could be stuck in the untrusted link zone of a poorly perceived, untrusted community.

Although some people might tell you that the more competitive a topic, the longer it takes to get indexed...this is not accurate. The problem with competitive areas is not that they are treated "differently", simply that they are competitive. So there are lots more page competing for the same terms and therefore they are going to be harder to rank for even after your site has aged. And if the pages you are getting links from aren't trusted themselves, it's even harder to achieve good rankings.

Quick Glossary:

For the best list of tips I've ever seen on how to market your blog, check out Tony Hung's guest article at Problogger.

Some of my favorite tips in his article:

Join a blog carnival: Where every blogger who joins one blogs about a topic, then each blog gets promoted. Here’s an index of blog carnivals to get you started.

Guest blog: Offer to do it for free, and you’ll be able to demonstrate what you know to an entirely new audience. Gives you great credibility, and of course, most will allow a courtesy link back to your own blog. A free foot-in-the-door to some communities as well.

Participate on larger blogs in comments: but try and be one of the first few commenters on heavily trafficked sites to get recognized — most people won’t read past the first 10-20 comments.

Spend time to create links and trackbacks: In every post spend as much time as you can to create outbound links to relevant and high linking blogs; many blogs automatically have trackbacks enabled, so in their comments section they will have a link back to your blog.

Publish original research: If you’ve got the time, start with a question, try and figure it out with the data available, and “publish it”.

Of course, not all the tips fit for everyone. For example, Tony recommends joining Helium to submit expert articles. It sounded like a good tip, so I checked out the Helium website. My first impression was positive, as they have an attractive and professional-looking website. But when I perused a couple of articles I discovered a diverse range of quality. Some articles were good but an equal number were weak.

There are so many high-quality places to post on-line articles (such as Associated Content and iSnare to name just two) that it doesn't interest me to post articles at a site with spotty quality.

Part 3 of my interview with Flo Schell covers her seven step process for creating sales through relationship-building. (If you missed part 2 go here and part 1 go here).

Flo: step number one in my mind is really understanding yourself, knowing what makes you tick, knowing what makes you become fearful, knowing when you’re at your best, knowing when you might feel confused. What are all of those things that you know about yourself that will help you as you’re identifying who you are and what you do to a customer.

Step two we talked about earlier is choosing your customers well. So again, if I’m a brand new coach and my background happens to be franchising and sales and education, then I might be thinking that the customers might be most interested in my franchise coaching work would be members of a franchise company, individuals who like the idea of outsourcing and bringing in some new thinking.

It could be an individual in the franchising world who’s dissatisfied with their sales progress and wishing for a new idea about how to approach sales. So you could see that I would be identifying what it is that my customers have that would be ideal candidates for my business. So I would want to choose my customers well.

Barbra: And do we sometimes not choose well?

Flo: Yes, indeed. We sometimes do not choose well. We kind of know it going in. It’s interesting that when I wrote the book, I kind of said, Well, there will be times when you just have to make the sale for one reason or another or you just decide that if you don’t accept that customer, your business might flop or whatever. It’s a process.

But at one point, my son, who was one of the pre-editors, said to me, Mom, what if you really have to take that less than perfect customer? Wouldn’t your readers really like to know how to make that person a stronger customer for you?

So I said, Yes, absolutely. There is now a section that talks about how you can take a less than perfect customer and using coaching skills and caring skills, really connect in a way that you can make that customer be more ideal for you.

Flo: It’s very interesting. Because we all have to accept customers at one point or another who are not ideal. It’s just an economic truth.

So step three is getting clear on precisely what you as the salesperson has to offer. This is something that I’ll bet you wrestled with in the beginning of your coaching career and I certainly wrestled with in the beginning of mine.

Did I want to be a personal life coach? Did I want to be a franchisee coach, a sales coach, a business coach? Did I have to choose, Barbra? Did I have to choose just one?

So getting clear on really what I had to offer and who I wanted to serve was a very big, big point. So I recommend that as step three.

The fourth step is figuring out the problems that your customers have. As you know, Barbra, as 21st Century humans, we are all beset with problems of time and money and people relationships and frustration and overwhelm and isolation.

So we all have the same problems but to different degrees and at different times in our lives, some of them seem bigger than others. So understanding what your customers’ problems are and then the next step, step 5, is communicating how you can solve those precise problems. Does that make sense?

Recently on the CoachTalk discussion forum Diane Krause Stetson, Vice-President of the International Association of Coaching (IAC) wrote:

I strongly believe that when we talk about the future of coaching, we need to separate the challenges of being a "coach-prenuer" in the business/industry of coaching (the delivery model) from the extraordinary gains and endless potential there is from the act of coaching (what "it" is).

This was in response to a discussion started by Julia Stewart in which she questioned the current model of coaching delivery. The topic was picked up by several people, including Donna Steinhorn who wrote:

I think it's important to realize that coaching is not a single skill set. If you look at the many...coaches out there who have been coaching successfully for 5, 10 even 20 or more years, they are not doing formula coaching. They don't even always call it coaching, but they know the needs of their clients, and know the solutions and value they provide. And most importantly, they change as their clients needs and the world changes.

Having said that, Julia is right on the money that one of the main reasons that some coaches do not succeed as coach-preneurs (love that phrase) is that they are not cut out to run a business.

It's not that they are not good coaches, it is that they are not good business people. Knowing that, they have several choices. Join forces with a coaching company or collaborate with people who have complementary skills so that the marketing/administration/business side of the company is handled by others...or hire a marketer, bookkeeper, VA to handle the parts they're not good at.

Or...recognize that they are not cut out to be entrepreneurs, and take those coaching skills into a job where they are valued...as Julia pointed out, even a brief scan of job requirements reveals that many jobs (beyond those for internal coaches) now list coaching skills as part of the skill set required.

Basically, if something is not working (after you've given it sufficient time to work)...then it's time to make a change.

This discussion seems to me a wonderful indicator of the fact that coaching (as an industry and as a social movement) is maturing. I know many people objected when Thomas Leonard said "everyone's a coach", but I always took that to mean "everyone can coach" (for better or worse effect).

The distinction is between the doing of it, and the doing of it professionally. And based on what Donna Steinhorn said, perhaps there is a further distinction between doing it professionally (say as a manager, in-house coach or teacher) and doing it as an independent business person.

I sometimes use the analogy of singing. Can you say "Everyone's a singer"? Well, yes, in a sense that's true. We all have the ability to sing. What's not true is that "Everyone's a professional singer". And not all professional singers are suited to being singer/businesspeople (i.e. have a business singing).

I'd say the same thing about coaching. "Everyone's a coach" (group 1) but not "Everyone's a professional coach" (group 2). And yet fewer are coach/businesspeople (group 3).

We need everyone singing, just as we need everyone coaching. Hopefully we'll all get better at both as we learn and practice!

And a final point: we need coaches who are in group 2 to go out in the world and share the gift of **professional coaching**. And those coaches need to realize that they ARE professional coaches, even if they are not succeeding in group 3.

What do you think? Tell me in the comments section below.

In Part 1 of my interview with Flo Schell (that's her photo at left) about sales, we left off talking about how we already have the skills that we need to create a wonderful sales experience for our customer. In Part 2 below, Flo explains how to do this.

Flo: Let’s just imagine that we have a relatively new coach and this coach has created their business and is now really trying to consider who their ideal customer is and perhaps create five or six profiles of the people who might really require or desire their services.

And so that coach is already formulating an idea of the kinds of people that he or she is trying to attract into their business life. In fact, they’re creating, hopefully, a marketing message and even a marketing look that will attract that particular kind of favorite customer.

So, for example, if my favorite customer is a corporate America kind of individual, which it is in my case, my website will look almost like an IBM-like website. It will have the colors of blue and gray perhaps, or with my personality, probably a shot of orange. But there will be a look that a corporate professional could relate to.

Barbra: I’m going to stop you there, Flo. I find this really interesting and yet I’m still trying to get my mind around how this relates to selling. If I put it in my own words, tell me if I’m getting this. So you’re saying, if I understand you correctly, that selling begins even before I’m talking to the customer.

Flo: Thank you so much for clarifying that. Absolutely that’s what I’m saying.

Barbra: Okay. The first thing you said was, I would make a list of who my ideal customer would be and what would be attractive, almost what would make them feel comfortable in terms of a website.

Flo: Exactly. And as we’re attracting those particular people into our lives and they’re feeling, I like the face of this person or I like the feel that I get when I go onto this website or when I hear this voicemail message or when I hear this radio interview, there will be a connection almost the way you would have if you were meeting a new acquaintance for the first time.

Barbra: It makes me think of when I first started doing life coaching and I had a bio on my website and it mentioned that I had three cats. I can’t tell you how many people phoned to inquire about my services said, When I saw you had three cats, I knew you were the one for me. Isn’t that funny?

If you're looking for a professional "voiceover" artist to do some work for you, I can recommend Lisa Hartwell. If you go to her website you can hear audio samples of work she has done.

Barbra: Hello. This is Barbra Sundquist from HomeBusinessWiz.com. I’m here today with Flo Shell who is a business coach specializing in sales coaching. Flo also has expertise in franchises.

In fact, prior to starting her coaching company, Flo was a major player with Sylvan Learning Systems. You probably recognize the Sylvan name as a very well known name in the education business and they’re actually a franchise, one of the leading educational franchise systems in the world.

While at Sylvan, Flo developed a franchise sales strategy that had the incredible result of doubling the amount of franchises at Sylvan from 300 to more than 700 over a seven-year period.

So, Flo, you obviously know a lot about sales and sales coaching. I would really like to welcome you today to talk to me about that.

Flo: Barbra, I am really thrilled to be having this conversation with you today. Thank you.

Barbra: Flo, I must admit that sales is not one of my areas of expertise so I would like to ask you some questions and learn more about it if I could.

Flo: I’d love to hear them, thank you.

Barbra: Great, let’s get started, then. Let’s start with that word “selling.” I know that so many people are afraid of that word. Why is that, do you think?

Flo: You know, that’s a great question, Barbra. If you were to look at the definition of selling in Webster’s Dictionary, for example, it is quite a bland definition. Actually, the definition is something like, “exchanging products or services for money or something else of value.”

Barbra: Okay.

Flo: So when you listen to that definition, you say, What makes it so nasty to so many people? And yet there is a magic word in that definition that I think can explain it for us in many ways and that word is money.

I think that we all have very emotional feelings about the money we spend and the value that we’re getting for that money. So that may in part create that image of nastiness.

But I think it’s much more than that, Barbra. I think that all of us at one time or another and many of us more than one time or another, have had very uncomfortable selling experiences. Would you agree with that?

I think I've just figured out something important about Google: the topic of your website may seriously affect how long it takes for Google to index you.

Case in point: HomeBusinessWiz has been active for 10 weeks now and it still isn't listed in Google. That seems like an awfully long time considering that I've done everything right in terms of having good, useful content as well as quality inbound links.

A month or so ago I wrote about what to do to get listed in Google . In that article I explained that it can take up to three months for a new site to get indexed.

But two days ago I created a personal development site called WelcomeJoy.com and it was indexed within 24 hours. In contrast, HomeBusinessWiz is still waiting after 10 weeks. Although I'm pleased that my new site got indexed so quickly, I am puzzled by the delay in indexing HomeBusinessWiz.

Do you know about FreeMind? It's a free mind-mapping software which lets you do mind-mapping on the computer. One of the cool things you can do is export to XHTML and upload a complete mindmap to your website.

You can use mind-mapping for essay writing and brainstorming, using colors and shapes and arrows to organize disparate ideas; for project management to keep track of projects, task assignment and time recording; for website or blog design to get your ideas organized into categories; and for anything else that requires organizing information.

There's a great step-by-step FreeMind tutorial here.

And here's a screenshot from the FreeMind website showing what a typical mindmap looks like.