In my travels, I meet quite a few would-be entrepreneurs. Some of these characters have a vision of starting or buying a business, but always seem to find reasons to do nothing. Their excuses as to why they have not created an enterprise sound convincing, but in truth none of them really stands up to close examination.

First on the list tends to be a lack of capital. There are lots of solutions to this one. My first business, when I was 18, was a venture with an Oxford nightclub where student friends and I promoted themed evenings and took the door money, while the venue owners kept the bar takings. The operation needed no capital at all - always the best type for absolute beginners.

Other situations may need some funding, but often less than founders think. I am often impressed at how first-time restaurateurs seem to fit out premises on a shoestring - using second-hand equipment, helping out themselves with the refurbishment and so on.  Most things can be done on a budget if your life’s dream depends on it.

And even now there is equity backing out there. There are all sorts of pockets of institutional and private cash for a sound project, from government agencies to angel investors. It has never been easy to tap these sources of finance, so you need to be good - and persistent.

Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, did more than 250 presentations to raise the early-stage funding to really kick-start his coffee bar chain.

A second imagined obstacle is income: people get addicted to a nice safe salary as an employee, and are unwilling to give it up for the uncertainties of the entrepreneurial life. It is true that plenty of the self-employed earn less than they would working for others - and may put in longer hours. But they do it because of the freedom and fulfilment it brings - and because they refuse to give up on their hopes.

During my early 20s I took little time off - when I wasn’t working for others, I ran sideline businesses at weekends and during holidays - until I felt able to finally break free and become a full-time entrepreneur. In some ways I wished I had not delayed, but had taken the plunge straight from university.

I accept that there are those who have heavy domestic responsibilities - a mortgage, family obligations and so forth. But anything really worth having requires sacrifice - do you want to deny yourself opportunities and live a life of regrets? Right now many are facing redundancy, so there may not be any salary coming in anyway - what have you got to lose?

A third reason is the idea: too many wannabe entrepreneurs are waiting for a breakthrough concept to arrive one day, fully formed and ready to launch. But capitalism is not like that.

Most new businesses do something pretty similar to many others - they provide familiar services or products, fulfilling a definite demand - with perhaps an incremental improvement. You do not need an earth-shattering invention to achieve success.

Those triumphs are rare, and usually happen after immense heartache. What you want is a solid proposition that generates sales and cash quickly, using the skills you already possess, with economics you understand, and serving a known market.

A fourth reason is risk aversion. Too many people fear failure more than they want to win. Of course, your start-up might prove a vain attempt at the prize, so you may lose money, time and pride. But 2009 is, in fact, a great time to fail. All around us companies and institutions are going wrong, including many of the world’s largest and grandest. Everyone who has achieved much has suffered setbacks. And you know what? No one really notices or cares. As Confucius said: “Our greatest glory lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”

I predict that many great companies will be started in the next year or two, by those brave enough to believe in the future, energetic enough to seize the day and optimistic enough to deny the possibility of defeat.

There is never a perfect time to begin the journey. But if you have ambition and are willing to apply the effort, stop making excuses - get out there and start battling.

Most of the time these beliefs are picked up by us at very young age. Mostly between the ages of 1 and 7. If our parents or family members are holding on to various beliefs about them selves that limit their capabilities, these beliefs are passed on to their kids too. At that young age we are very much vulnerable and cannot consciously decide if these beliefs are going to serve us or affect us adversely later in life.

Major Self Sabotaging Limiting Beliefs include, “I am not good enough”, “Fear of failing”, “Fear of rejection”, “I am not from a well to do family”, “I am not pretty or handsome” and so on. These beliefs are hidden below the surface of our conscious mind and come out at a crucial time in our elderly life and sabotage major decisions or goals.

Getting rid of Self Sabotaging Limiting Beliefs are easy said than done. They are like a web, the more you dig in to the more comes up. In my own experience I have been dealing with these beliefs for more than 2-3 years to find more and more coming up. The best solution would be to use the latest cutting edge technology or get a Coach.

I will outline below the pros and cons of some effective techniques that would help you to clear Self Sabotaging Limiting Beliefs.

1. Emotional Freedom Technique is effective to some extend. It is basically an acupuncture method, where you tap on the meridian points in your body with the finger tips.

Pros- Easy to learn and could be done by yourself.

Cons- You have to find and access the specific memory of what happened in the past, in order for you to have acquired the particular limiting belief, which is not easy.

2. Release Techniques (Sedona Method). It looks too easy to be true, but is effective to some extent and if you could persist with it, you may get good results.

Pros- Technique seems too easy to be true and very easy to learn.

Cons- You have to tune in to the feeling and it takes a long time to release a belief as there are more aspects to one belief.

3. Meditation and techniques to quiet the mind. Sit in a quiet place for 10-15 minutes a day and concentrate on your breath, inhaling and exhaling. If your mind wanders try to bring back the mind to your breath.

Pros- If you could quiet your mind, it is the most effective technique. But any one who had tried it knows the difficulty.

Cons- Takes a very long time to achieve notable results.

4. Find a Professional Coach.

Pros- This can be much more effective, as a coach may go deep in to your subconscious mind to apprehend Self Sabotaging Limiting Beliefs more easily than you doing it by yourself.

Cons- Expensive. Most coaches charge by the Hour. And you never know how many hours you need to be coached until you access these beliefs.

5. Use the modern day, Patent Pending Latest Cutting Edge Technology. The latest technology in the Brainwave Entrainment industry includes the 3P-D.E.A.P method which makes it much more effective than other products of the same nature.

Pros- You don’t need to do any thing by your self. Just sit for 30 minutes a day listening to a CD and the CD does all the work for you. You would feel an amazing difference within the first 5-10 days.

Cons- You still have to spend 30 minutes a day.

Prepare and ask good questions Good questions will help you to better identify and target the prime prospects that you want in your network. Questions with purpose will move you faster to your goals then idle gossip. Good questions asked well will engage your networking contacts in interesting conversation.

Engaging conversation will make them think. It might make them laugh. It will help them remember you because we tend to remember interesting people. And it will help them to help you better because they will better understand your needs and mindset.

Good questions demonstrate forethought. Good questions don’t happen by accident. Don’t try to wing it. Networking will required a significant investment of your time. Networking done well can be very profitable for you. Why would you wing anything so important?

Anticipate and prepare for questions

If you were summoned to a job interview you would think about and prepare answers to the questions you think you will be asked. Consider every networking event as a job interview. Think about, anticipate and prepare good answers for the questions you might be asked.

Don’t be like the financial planner I met at a networking event. She had a catchy opening line. Then I asked her about what books she based her investment philosophy upon or might recommend. Her halting reply was that she did not support any of the books out there. What a ridiculous answer. She immediately lost all credibility with me. That ended the conversation as I dismissed her. Her only networking tool was a clever opening line but her inability to answer my question demonstrated lack of planning and thus a useless networking contact.

Ask yourself questions

This type of question is the most important to the success of your networking. While planning your networking strategy ask yourself about your purpose, assumptions and expectations.

What do you want your networking to do for you? How will you make your networking as productive as possible? What are you willing to invest (time, thought and money) in your networking activities to enjoy the best return on your investment? How will you improve your networking skills? How will you learn the science of networking? Who are the difference types of contacts that you want in your network? How will you identify them and nurture those relationships?

Become a master of smart questions

Some networkers are afraid of questions. Why? Maybe they have something to hide. Maybe they are afraid to grow. People who want to grow are learners and learners are people who ask good questions. Albert Einstein <http://www.alberteinstein.info/>; continually asked difficult questions of others and especially of himself. Einstein would have been an incredibly effective networker.

Be aware of the myth that “there are no dumb questions”. In fact there are many dumb questions - so think and prepare smart questions. “How’s business?” is a dumb question. “What’s new?” is a dumb networking question.

You can get better networking results when you ask smarter questions.

Research has shown the brain needs constant stimulation and challenges to maintain clarity and alertness. Reading biographies of successful people will stimulate your desires and dreams. Dreams are the beginning of our goals. Keep your goals realistic. Start with shorter time limited goals, while keeping the big picture always in your sight. The concerted concentration on achieving your goal keeps your brain strong and stimulated. Over time this constant concentration trains the brain to react faster every time the brain realizes you are trying to accomplish another goal.

Joining a toastmasters club or a public speaking group will have your brain concentrating on proper speaking diction and creating stories to present eloquently. Learning a second language can also apply a lot of concentration for memory. Assembling puzzles, filling out a crossword puzzle and mind challenging games are all mind challenging exercises.

These suggested new challenges will bring your brain out of its comfort zone. This can be bootcamp concentration training for your brain. It’s great preparation for your brain to keep your mind fit in order to meet any future challenges. Don’t stop challenging your brain with new tasks, ” Use it or loose it!” All these exercises will train your brain to react faster to thoughts while increasing clarity.

But with hundreds of blogs in the world wide web, it makes you wonder, how do other bloggers make their weblogs stand out? What blog marketing strategies do they use?

One of the recommended blog marketing strategies being done is by RSS feed distribution. The orange square is familiar to many web users. This keep people informed about the updates of a particular section of a website after they have subscribed to it.

Adding the RSS feed to your blog, by inserting the icon and HTML code, would keep your visitors get the updated information in your blogs a lot easier. By incorporating fresh keyword- rich text content in the blog, search engines would take notice of your site. This would enable more visitors to check your blog.

Other blog marketing strategies are blog submission and strategic product research. With blog submission, you can submit your blog details to a number of blog directories in the web. It can be time consuming, but it is worth it. These blog directories have an extensive list of categories with sub-categories, within which your blog can be reviewed. Directories may even show the amount of hits for a blog and whether they have received a review.

With the strategic product research, you can find ideas for your blog products. You can do extensive research and research about your target audience. You also get to know who you are competing with. You also get to know why you are being trashed or praised by the public and how to appropriately respond to these reactions.

Blog marketing strategies also include communication with the customers and representing your business transparently. To promote better communication with the customers you can have dialogs with your customers and readers to be updated about their needs.

Blogs humanize the company. Customers tend to buy from someone they can talk to instead of a corporate identity. This is what business benefit from blogging. They make their business transparent.

There are numerous blog marketing strategies you can try. These can either make or break your blog. It may or it may not work. But if some strategies would not work for you, surely you will learn what is best for your own business in the process.

Well, let me share my recent example.

I’m single and the holidays can be lonely. So several years ago I decided to start taking great trips during those holidays. It’s a slow time business-wise, so it’s been a fantastic solution. I expand my horizons, don’t miss out on lots of business opportunities, and don’t sit around feeling sorry for myself.

This year I was seriously considering going to Greece. I bought several books on Greece, contacted several companies that do tours of Greece, and thought it might be the location for this year. But the economy took a nose dive and I decided it would be wiser to pay off my mortgage rather than take an extravagant vacation.

Of course, as the holidays approach I’ve been wondering if maybe I made the wrong choice, if I shouldn’t have played it safe. Can you say, “Whew?”

As many of you know, Greece is in a horrible state right now. It’s being torn apart by rioters. Obviously I would have had to cancel my trip or if somehow I had gotten caught in this mess, there’s no telling what could have happened. It certainly wouldn’t be the Greece I wanted to visit.

We don’t have a crystal ball, we can’t know the future. Sometimes something seems bad (this recession) but maybe you will also realize there’s some aspect of it that’s for the best. Maybe we’ll reassess what’s important to us. Maybe we’ll treat our customers like they are worth their weight in gold (which we sometimes forget when times are good). Maybe we’ll operate more efficiently. Maybe some companies will fail that really needed to. Maybe you’ll be let go from a job you really hated and find work you really love. Maybe someone leaves you, only to free you up to meet the person of your dreams! We can’t see the future and what the end result will be. So hang in there!

How to stop worrying about the future:

1.) Assume if you do the best you can things will work out in the long run. It might be the very long run, but they WILL work out.

2.) Don’t confuse short term pleasure (eating a whole pizza) with long term happiness (being healthy). Sometimes things are awful in the short term, but pay off big time down the road.

3.) Tell yourself, “When the going gets tough, I get going.” Action obliterates fear and worry.

4.) Stop imagining the worst. If you insist on predicting the future, why not assume the best?

5.) Stop beating yourself up over the past. It is over - you did the best you could with the information you had at the time.

6.) Realize that when people try to predict the future they are usually wrong (and we think they are weirdoes - gypsies, astrologers, palm readers and weathermen come to mind.)

7.) Quote Nietzsche - it if doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger! Bring it, Life! The harder it is, the stronger we will be!

8.) Remind yourself that most of the things you worry about never happen and that worrying doesn’t do a damn thing about them anyway.

Bottom line - you never know what the future holds. Something that seems bad today could end up to be something good tomorrow. You might meet the love of your life at the second job you had to take to make extra money. The Universe works in mysterious ways. Your only job is to keep showing up and staying open to hope.

The main problem with online shopping is that on the Internet, people cannot touch anything, and nor can they have a feel of a product. The only thing that they can do is see their pictures and read the descriptions. This is why they hesitate when making a purchase - they would rather buy it from an offline store but still visit websites because it is convenient to do so. Thus, if there are testimonials where the users are actually saying good things and about their user experiences, then it definitely helps.

But the testimonials need to be well written and not something simple like this - “I have used this product and I liked it - Thank You”. Customers want to know whether the product is good or not and whether it delivers what it promises, but they want to know much more too. Such as whether the company selling it is reliable, are there any money back guarantees and whether the company honors these guarantees or not, whether the product reaches on time or not and lastly, is the customer service department functional, helpful and prompt.

So you should request your happy customers to write testimonials that are more detailed, offer value propositions and speak of personal experiences. And if they cannot do so, you may even write them yourself and send them over to the customers for their approval.

There are those websites that also publish audio and video testimonials and many believe that these ones have more credibility as visitors can actually see happy customers speaking or hear them.

But in whichever way you may publish the testimonials, you can expect them to work as your secret sales force. That is why they are so popular on the Internet.

Every entrepreneur experiences a period of time where confidence levels drop only to be replaced by soaring levels of fear and insecurity. The secret to making it through those days, weeks or even months of feeling insecure is to put on a brave face and keep going anyway.

I’m a huge fan of President-elect Barack Obama and like most people, am inspired by his message. I imagine even Obama must have moments where he thinks, “What have I gotten myself into? Can I really solve all these problems and do this job? Am I qualified to be a world leader?”

You’ve probably heard political pundits talk about whether or not Obama looks and sounds “presidential”.

How can he be expected to sound presidential already? He’s not the President and he’s never been the President. But that will be his job soon enough and when it is, there’s no giant “pause button” in the Oval Office he can press to stop the world from watching him while he eases into his new role.

To keep the rest of the world feeling secure about him being a leader, he has to look and sound presidential and keep going - especially in those moments when he’s not really feeling it. If he looks confident and sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, he inspires our confidence in him and his abilities– even though he’s never done this job before.

A common trait among new entrepreneurs is that feeling of insecurity. Thoughts going through your head saying, “People are going to see right through me! How can I possibly be qualified to do this? Can I actually deliver on what I’ve said I could do?”

This second-guessing is quite common. However, if you’ve gone into business for yourself, there’s a good chance you’re great at what you do. My best advice to new entrepreneurs is to put on a brave face and go for it.

Don’t be afraid to meet with new clients. Congratulate yourself on the fact that you were able to convey a professional enough image to actually get a client! That’s half the battle! This person saw something in you that you may not be feeling right now, but you have to keep going anyway.

The more confident you appear to prospective clients, the better. Everything else aside, if you’re competing against someone with the identical credentials, experience and education as you, all a potential client has to base a decision on is your body language, how you sound and how you act. Would you rather work with a calm, cool and collected professional or a fidgety, nervous person who obviously lacks confidence?

If you appear successful and confident when you’re first starting out in your career, people are going to naturally assume you must be great at what you do. If you are perceived as successful and especially if you appear in high demand, people are going to find the thought of working with you more attractive.

If you don’t feel like a professional [insert your profession here], act the part until you do!

Act the way you think a successful person in your field would act. The more you do this, the less you’ll feel like you’re playing a part. It will become more natural with practice. Fortunately for you, unlike Obama, you don’t have to do your job with the whole world watching your every move and hanging on every word! Your clients aren’t looking for signs of incompetence; they’re looking for solutions to their problems. Give them what they hired you for and keep your focus on the task, not your nerves. You’re better than you think!