Hasta La Gadget!

Most people have a plan for everything these days – a business plan, marketing plan, and even an editorial calendar for their blog. It’s not easy to sort out what you actually need initially in business, but I’m telling you your first focus should be on having a life plan. Developing a life plan isn’t something you’ll read about anywhere else; it’s a strategy that I’ve developed. What is a life plan? It’s where you determine the big picture goals for your life, which in turn, will determine how your business will align with it. What is your definition of success? How much money is enough for you? Are you building a business to sell? Or will you turn it over to a family member later? You need to know these answers up front to focus your intentions on how you have a successful business and a good life. Here are some ways for setting up a small business that works with your life plan:

Setting Goals

Once you know the broad brush strokes of where you’d like to take your business, establish goals to get there. If you want your kids to take over your business in 10 or 20 years, you should set a goal of hiring them in positions they’d be good at now so you can eventually train them for more responsibility. If you want a buyout, then you should grab a copy of the book Built To Sell by John Warrillow; you need to set goals for making a business that can run without you.

Creating a Contingency Plan

What happens if you get ill for several months? Does your business fall apart? What if you want to take an extended vacation? You need a contingency plan that will outline what to do if you’re not around. You also need to make sure you are properly insured to cover yourself financially should you become severely ill. Who’s in charge in your absence? What decisions are they authorized to make if you’re unavailable?

When creating this component of your life plan, discuss it with that person who you trust to run your business in your absence so they are aware of your wishes. Don’t forget to keep your life plan handy so you can tweak it as needed and ensure that you’re on track to achieving those big-picture goals.

Looking at Longevity

Most business owners don’t have the end in mind when starting a business. They simply want to launch a business around an idea or a passion. They hope it’ll succeed, but it seems presumptuous at that point to be thinking about how that business will look in 20 or 30 years.

And yet, knowing what your business might look like can help you make decisions today. Here are two examples:

• Business A hopes to be wildly successful in the next 5 years and then sell to a larger company
• Business B wants to be around for future generations to run

These two examples would need very different business strategies right now to achieve their goals. Business A, for example, should start looking for investors to help with that skyrocketing growth it wants in the near future so it’ll be appealing to potential buyers in five years. Business B needs a longer, slower path to success, not a cash infusion and a Board of Directors.

<br What do you envision for your business? Do you want it to provide income for the rest of your life while you work, or do you want to slave away for a few months or years to get a big payout and then go sip umbrella-clad drinks on a beach?
You wouldn’t hit the highway without a roadmap, so to help you get started I’ve created a life planning journal that will guide you toward developing your dream business and your dream life.

This article was originally published under the title How to Develop a Life Plan for Your Small Business at www.succeedasyourownboss.com

Melinda F. Emerson, SmallBizLady  is America’s #1 small business expert. She is an author, speaker and small business coach whose areas of expertise include small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. She writes a weekly column for the New York Times, publishes a resource blog, www.succeedasyourownboss.com which is syndicated through the Huffington Post. She also hosts a weekly talk show on Twitter called #SmallBizChat for small business owners. As a brand, she reaches 1.5 million entrepreneurs a week on the internet. As CEO of Quintessence Multimedia, Melinda develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to end small business failure. Forbes Magazine named Melinda Emerson one of the #1 Woman for Entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. Melinda has been featured on MSNBC, Fox News, NBC Nightly News, and in Fortune, The Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Black Enterprise. She is the bestselling author of “Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works,” and the ebook How to Become a Social Media Ninja; 101 Ways to Dominate Your Competition Online.

Android Wear isn’t going to officially support iOS devices any time soon, but that doesn’t mean that the two platforms can never see eye-to-eye. Developer Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh has tweaked Android Wear to make it display an iPhone’s notifications us…

Apple jolted its rivals with Apple Pay and the sheer pace with which it is being adopted by financial institutions and merchants alike. Samsung recently acquired LoopPay for its Apple Pay rival. Google is reportedly working on a new project to counter Apple’s new payment service by reviving Wallet. A new report suggest that to further this cause Google might acquire Softcard, formerly known as ISIS, which is a payments service collectively owned and operated by the country’s major carriers.

At one time U.S. carriers weren’t interested in preloading Google Wallet on their devices because they were trying to make ISIS happen, the service was later renamed to Softcard for obvious reasons, but their attitude has reportedly been changed following Apple Pay’s launch.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is going to pay carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to pre-load Wallet on the Android devices that they sell. The carrier may also give them a bigger cut of the revenues generated through ads shown inside mobile searches.

In order to make this happen Google might have to start things off by purchasing the payments service that was started by these carriers, and which has failed to gain any traction, but so far no confirmation has come from Mountain View about whether or not is is pursuing this acquisition.

Google May Acquire Softcard To Improve Payments Offering , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Some new information has surfaced about the Galaxy S6’s camera. Previous rumors have suggested that the upcoming flagship might have a 20 megapixel camera. Some conflicting rumors have mentioned the 16 megapixel camera as well, there was always some confusion regarding this aspect of Samsung’s 2015 flagship. As per a new report Samsung is actually going with a 16 megapixel rear camera with Sony’s IMX240 sensor.

Sammobile “confirms” that the final retail unit of Samsung Galaxy S6 is going to have a 16 megapixel rear camera. The camera sensor will be Sony’s IMX240, and if that sounds familiar, that’s because this is the same sensor that Samsung used on the Galaxy Note 4.

The report does claim that Samsung has made several tweaks to the camera lens as well as the camera sensor to improve performance, particularly for low-light performance, something which Samsung itself has hinted in recent teasers.

However camera might take a back seat to one of the biggest changes that Samsung might tout during its press event. The company has released multiple teasers which all but confirm that its next flagship is going to have a metal build, something which Samsung fans have been after for a long time, and it looks like this time around the company has finally listened to them.

Samsung is going to unveil the Galaxy S6 at a press event on March 1st, 2015.

Galaxy S6 Camera Will Be 16 Megapixel With Sony IMX240 Sensor , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Oh, Tinder, OkCupid, Grindr, whatever your particular dating app poison. Your first date dramas play in bars the world over. Because bars are a typical venue for painfully awkward first encounters, bartenders all have a front-row seat—and they’re definitely talking about it.

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