Home based business opportunities provide a wide range of options for you to excel in your life. However, you’ll need to grab these opportunities by following some strict principles in order to succeed with your business in the long run.What are the factors that decide the success of your venture? Apart from all the other factors the one thing that stands out and the most important factor is customer delight.You just can’t ignore the role of you customer in the success of your home based business opportunities. Be it a small scale business or large business but the customer is always the boss and you’ll need to keep them happy in order to get more and continuous business. Attaining customer delight is not an easy task in any venture.Every customer wants the best service to be provided to them and therefore you’ll need to be very flexible in your ideas of serving them in order to drive your home based business opportunities towards the harbor of success.What are the things which you’ll need to doing to in order to attain customer delight?Read on the following points to learn more:Measure the level of customer’s satisfaction:The very simple way of measuring the level of customer’s satisfaction is to get feedback from them. This will benefit you in 2 ways. Firstly, it lets your customer know that you care for their satisfaction and happiness and increase your credibility. Secondly, you’ll be able to understand what the customer feels about your product or service.Many entrepreneurs think they know everything about the customer’s choice and don’t feel the need to take feedbacks from them. This could be very dangerous as you may work against their likes & choices. Based on the feedbacks you can always sit back and make necessary changes in your product or service which best satisfies the customer.Find out the reasons for dissatisfaction and delight among customers:Many managers among us tend to react as though the attributes studied in the customer satisfaction surveys would have a direct effect on the customer satisfaction. However, when these attributes are delivered the customer delight is generated. But when these attributes are not delivered, the customer is dissatisfied.There is always an inverse relationship between dissatisfaction and customer delight. The attributes that create delight among the customer tend to be soft and relation building factors. Therefore any action intended to eliminate dissatisfaction will drive in delight.Keep up the relationship with your customer:You cannot imagine how great the customer feels when you remember their special days in life. It brings a lot of delight to your customer since you genuinely care for them and this could encourage them to maintain a good business relationship with you as well. It is always suggested to keep a contact information database of your existing customers and keep in touch with them.You can do it either by sending greetings, emails, SMS or even a telephonic call.In addition to this you might consider offering special discounts to attain customer delight to succeed in your home based business opportunities.

Living the DreamIf you are planning to buy a property in Greece or even just thinking about it you will need a guide to help you though the Greek property purchasing process. Whether you dream of a beach villa, village house or an apartment in the town, it is important to avoid the pitfalls of buying a property in Greece in order to make your dreams come true.The Dream Verses RealityIn your favourite daydream you have decided to leave your present home behind you and settle in another country. You pack your belongings and leave your country behind. You can imagine the little table, chair and parasol on your terrace overlooking the beach. You are watching the sun set peacefully into to azure sea, while drinking a glass of local red wine and eating olives hand picked from your own trees. You are relaxing away from the stresses and strains of your current life and enjoying a life that you so rightly deserve…Well, we all have fantasies but, this is the real world and things are simply not always that easy. Are you planning to book a cheap package holiday for a week or two, spend a couple of days looking around, and then buy the perfect little house on the spot? Or have you really thought about what’s involved in purchasing a property in Greece? Have you done your homework, research and planning? Do you know where you want to live when you reach your dream destination? A little forward planning will help you achieve your goal of living the dream. It’s much better than leaving things to chance.What do I really want from a property in Greece?The first question you should ask yourself is exactly why you wish to purchase property in Greece. For example, are you looking for a retirement or holiday home? Do you want a summer, winter or permanent home? Are you seeking a sound investment or do you wish to work or start a business? Probably you will find that there are a number of reasons you wish to buy a property in Greece. If this is the case there are many more factor to take into consideration then just buying a holiday home. Take some time to decide what kind of property you would like to purchase, and then discuss your ideas with your partner and family. If you are at all unsure of what or where to buy, the best decision is usually to rent for a while first.When buying a property you need to consider where you would like to live. Resorts are lively in the summer, but may be crowded with tourists. However, in the winter they may be completely closed, with nothing in the way of facilities or shops. In the mountains or villages a few kilometres in land you will probably be a part of a friendly village community, but if the village is remote no-one may speak your language, so you will have to learn theirs quickly. Another option is to excel at mime. You can make many friends among the villagers this way and have great fun too.Financial ConsiderationsOne of the most important aspects of buying a property in Greece and living there is finance, which includes everything from transferring and changing money to mortgages and taxes. If you are investing in property or a business it is important to consider the exchange rate. Take a realistic look. It is easy to imagine that you have more money to spend on your dream property than you actually have. The cost of purchasing a house and costs of repairs can spiral dramatically without you being prepared for it. If you need to borrow money to fund your dream property, be careful where you borrow the money from.Many mortgage companies will not lend money for property overseas. It may seem trivial to mention, but always remember that if you borrow money to buy property, or to rebuild it, you have to pay the money back! This statement is one that should be at the forefront of your mind when you are making your plans. It’s advisable to have your finance in place before your inspection visit. If you see your dream home you will be able to purchase it without any delays. This way you will not miss out.Do not count on holiday lettings for your property to tourists during the months you are not there. In the last two years there has been a decline in the tourism in most parts of Greece, and income from letting property has declined with it. To let out rooms legally, you must have a license from the Greek Tourism Board. You must also fulfil fire and safety regulations, and you must pay tax on this income. Authorities are having a clamp down on illegal lets, and fines are enormous!If you are planning to move permanently to Greece, unless you have enough private income for you to live well on, you must consider employment in the place you are going to live. You must ensure that this will be possible before you buy a house. What kind of job can you really expect to do? What are your qualifications and experience? Are they recognized? Do you speak fluent Greek? Unless your Greek is fluent you wont be completing on equal terms with the local workforce (you wont anyway, but that a different issue!). Most Greeks aren’t interested in employing people who do not have a good knowledge of the Greek language unless it deals exclusively with foreigners. Are there any jobs in your profession or trade in the area that you plan to live? Answer to these questions and others can be quite disheartening. However, it is better to ask them before moving to Greece, rather than afterwards.The Greek equivalent of the English Job Centre is the OAED which has a special department for Europeans seeking work, although you should expect it to be easy to find a job. Unemployment rates in mainland Greece is generally high. It is higher still on the islands. Some islanders can only find work during the summer season, when tourists visit. This means they either have to save enough money when they are working to live on during the winter, or learn to survive on unemployment benefit in the winter months. Unemployment benefit is only paid if they have enough national insurance stamps credited to them over eighteen months. Working one summer season will not earn you enough to be paid benefits. If you are self employed in Greece you are not entitled to benefits at all.Looking For Your Dream Greek PropertyAfter you have answered all these question and more your will be ready to start looking for a property to suit you and your family. Now do your research. The internet is a helpful tool. Listed below are links to relevant articles and information about property and the prefecture of Messinia which will help with your research.Take notes about the kind of properties that are available and their location. Also note down any that are just below your price range (just below, because you will need some money to pay for taxes, legal fees, and hidden costs of buying property). Discuss the properties that you have found with your family and friends. Find out about the area to see if it suits your requirements. Study maps and guide book descriptions of each location.When you have established what your requirements are contact the real estate sites you have been looking at. Find out if the online property list is up to date, quite often agents only advertise a small selection of the properties that they have available. Let the agents know your full requirement (be as detailed as possible) and leave your up to date contact details with them. Ask the agents to let you know when any suitable property comes up. This will make it easier for them to narrow down the search so you do not spend months looking at unsuitable properties.If you intend booking a holiday in order to view properties, it is important to let the real estate agent know you are going to be arriving at least a couple of weeks in advance. Tell the agent where you will be staying. Take a mobile phone with you that works overseas, so they can contact you if they need to. The agents will be able to arrange viewing of properties for you while you are in the country, and hopefully, will be able to find several properties in each area you are interested in.Be open minded, it may be worth considering purchasing a plot of land, rather than a house that already exists. Design and build properties are easy to find and are a very popular choice. Check if the plot has planning permission. It is often automatic if the land has road frontage, with all services (water, etc) nearby. If the land is within the town planning area it should also be buildable, but always check, and get it in writing. Prefabricated buildings are available in Greece now, they can be built by the manufacturers, or by yourself. If you plan to build any property yourself you it is important to remember that you have to build to Greek and European building and safety regulations. These are very different from UK regulations. All buildings must be built to withstand earthquakes, for example!When you have found the property you would like to buy, it is advisable to get a survey done. This is a step that is often missed out in Greece. Some areas are prone to flooding, earth tremor damage, or sink holes (A large hole that suddenly appears in the earth when the limestone beneath is eroded away by water). Save yourself a lot of trouble in the future by paying for a good survey. When you have found a good lawyer (who speaks your language, as well as Greek) and a good accountant (to sort out a tax number for you, and some financial details), you are ready to make an offer.It is normal to pay a deposit of 10 – 20 % of the agreed purchase price. This seals the contact between the seller and buyer. If the seller pulls out (which is unlikely) he must return the money plus the same amount again. If the buyer pulls out the deposit is forfeit. However, if previously known problems are revealed the deposit will automatically be return. Property purchase is generally completed in a short period. It can take as little as 48 hour to 2 weeks. However, if the seller has not collected all the necessary documents for the transaction, it can take up to 3 months. You must not pay the full amount until all the documents are in place and your lawyer has made it all legal!Good Luck with the purchase of your dream Greek property. Enjoy your little piece of Paradise, you’ve earned it.

How many times have you heard that “money is not enough and I am not happy with my finances”? Alright, this is actually the voices from my heart. I use to blame the government because our education system does not include financial education classes for us to manage money well, sometimes I would blame my parent for not managing their money well enough for their kids to live better in future. But wait a minutes, is it their responsibility? This really got me thinking.

When something is at fault, there is always someone to be blamed. Let’s think about it, before pointing finger to others, look at yourself what have you done. Let me share with you, recently I open a poll in a well known finance forum asking about how many people who has emergency fund on their hand if they do not work for 3 or 6 months. I wasn’t surprise with the results, there are only 5 persons out of 53 that have emergency fund on hand. This is so common I was not shocked. From the 53 people that responded to my polls, I am sure they are smart and disciplined person. Emergency fund is essential in personal finance and why do this people not following? Perhaps it was just one example and I can’t justify overall about personal finance but why do this good personal finance fail in the first place?

It kept me thinking for awhile and I think you may know how important it is to budget and manage your money. No doubt that there are still many people I know still don’t keep track of their expenses. Hmm…I use to think, if everyone is practicing, personal finance would not exists and this blog will not exists neither. Probably this is what I want it to happen.

To get a picture why these good personal finance idea is hard to follow and fail, I would use myself as an example and additional feedback from the poll that I had gathered. Here’s some of the reasons and obstacles:

1. Not taking action and lazy to get started

Lazy could be the number one reason. They simply do not want to take action to get it started, all sort of excuses popup such as lack of time or rather spend the time in leisure to rest or do things they always wanted to do. In fact, the first step to get started will not take you long to plan and budget your day-to-day financial affairs. Despite doing all these planning will enable you to do the things that bring you satisfaction and enjoyment in later days. After all, it is completely up to you to take the first step. In my opinion, I think everyone should track where their money goes and I have not met people who is good in their finances that don’t need to track their money unless they have a personal finance adviser.

2. Get lazy along the way

I know I know is lazy again. The second big obstacle required discipline and you may lost focus follow through. At this stage, even though you have make the right move to get started, but along the way you get lazy and the intention to give up is strong.

Since many will give up at this stage, if you continue to sticks to your goals, you’ll will be better off others. You can cultivate good habits to keep you stay focus, for example, writing journal to remind you to sticks to your goals like I did, to blog about personal finance, and each time I wrote and reread what I wrote, it will automatically entered to my subconscious and keep me stay focus all the time.

See, this works for me, there is other ways to stay motivated, such as keep yourself a to-do-list all the time to force a daily routine to track your expenses. You can take about a minute or two a day after dinner or before you go to bed to list down what you had spend for the day.

3. It is not the right time yet

I know you may have a better important things to take care, you may thought of it is not important enough to take care personal finance now . But let me ask you, when is the best time? It is always the best time to start right now, start it small and you will eventually formulate a plan for yourself in long run that works for you. What’s more important than paying attention to yourself. As with anything else in life, without financial goals and specific plans for meeting them, we drift along and leave our future to chance.

I always heard this anywhere in self development books or website -> “most people don’t plan to fail; they just fail to plan.” So, it reminds me that if I fail to plan, I will fail to reach my financial goals.

There is a disconnect between the market rally indicating the economy may soon recover and small businesses who continue to face a challenging environment. First, you must keep the market rally in historical perspective and you must interpret the market’s rally. The market rally has caused some excitement due to being one of the strongest market rallies in history. However the 50% rise between March and July 2009 should be compared to other historical benchmarks. According to Barron’s Market Week (August 3, 2009), in July 1997 the S&P ended at 954 and the S&P ended July 2009 at 987. The return during a 12 year period was only 3% (total return, almost no return on an annualized basis). Additionally, the July 2009 S&P level is well below the October 2007 all time high of around 1,580 (over 37% lower according to Yahoo! Finance). The current market rally is indicating that for large and publicly traded companies times are beginning to stabilize. Perhaps not improving, but less bad news is good news in the current environment. Smaller businesses, however, face more challenging times ahead.

The financial lending institutions need to flow monies form Wall Street to Main Street. The credit markets are thawing and larger companies can once again qualify for loans. Qualifying for loans will allow the larger companies to calm their cash flow nerves. However, small businesses are facing increased scrutiny when applying for and renewing loans. Even with a high credit score and a large portion of collateral small business owners are having loans not being accepted or renewed. If the loan is not renewed the small business may not be able to raise equity and to take advantage of their local market conditions. Then loans are not renewed, small business owners are forced into repayment. A lot of small businesses and small business owners do not have the assets to repay the called loans. The cash outflow to repay the loan (if available) can potentially lead to a financial hardship for the small business by crushing liquidity, working capital needs and accelerate the cash burn rate. All of which make it more difficult to qualify for a loan from other lenders. These obstacles place more pressure on small businesses (even in a recovery). In additional small businesses will be forced into tougher lending standards which could potentially increase the number of small business failures at the same time the economy recovers for larger companies. Understanding this situation is important for small business owner because they can (immediately) begin to review their operations and focus attention on their financial position in order to take steps to strengthen their overall position before they request a loan or apply for a loan renewal from a financial institution.

Second, financial lending institutions currently are trying to figure out the new lending standards. The new standards are tougher than small business owners want them to be. Small businesses enjoyed the NINJA times (No Income No Job or Assets – no problem). Now small businesses feel they are being hassled at the time of the renewal since they have to provide accurate financial information and they understand the renewal is no longer guaranteed. The small business’s “hassle” is the increase of time involved and higher financing costs, including hiring a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to issue financial statements and attend loan workout meetings. Financial lending institutions, however, have been faced with higher loan failures and are currently finding out the personal guarantees they had signed by the small business owners are semi-worthless. The small business owner protected themselves by transferring all of there assets to their spouse who did not sign the personal guarantee. This leaves the bank with a bad loan and a worthless personal guarantee. Banks may have both spouses sign the personal guarantee in the future for more protection. A troubling sign is a lot of small businesses and owners are not well capitalized (i.e. they do not have many assets, but do have debts and a good life style). As larger companies have built assets over time and made drastic cost cuts and lay offs of the work forces smaller companies have minimal assets and minimal liquidity and did not cut costs and work forces as quickly or dramatically as larger businesses.

Wall Street and the U.S. Government are lending to and bailing out Wall Street Companies, but Wall Street and the U.S. Government is not lending to or bailing out Main Street Companies. As larger companies are beginning to receive financing from financial institutions and bail out monies form the U.S. Government; small business lenders, such as CIT, have received little or no attention from Uncle Sam. CIT is one of the more important lending institutions for small businesses (The CIT Threat By Donna Childs). Small business lenders and regions banks seem to be hurting the most out of all of the financial institutions at the moment. In order for these institutions to lend monies to small businesses in the future they will have to increase their lending standards. For Main Street companies to qualify for loans in the future small businesses need to make major adjustments to their business model including building assets and overall strengthening the financial position of the business and owner (just as their larger counterparts have done).

Third, the economy is still in recession and growth will not be the glory days of the past. David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, stated “What matters is the contour of the recovery” (The Best Five-Month Run Since 1938 By Kopin Tan and Andrew Bary) meaning that the economy still has a long way to improve. The markets might have “improved” 50% between March and July 2009, however the business environment has not improved or not improved that considerably. Continued pressure on the economic recovery and growth over the next several years includes unemployment around 10% and increasing, the US savings rate has increased over the past 12 months, corporate America continues to de-leverage and the U.S. Government is too involved in private markets.

Unemployment of 10% and rising as well as an increase in the US savings rate places pressure on consumer spending due to uncertainty of future employment and income. Consumer spending at the local level directly affects small business performance. A reduction of consumer spending pressures the survival of small businesses. According to “The Recession is Over Now What We Need Is A New Kind Of Recovery” by Daniel Gross (Newsweek August 3, 2009) 5 million jobs are anticipated to be created by 2011, however the economy has lost 6.5 million jobs since December 2007. Consumer spending due to uncertain employment over the next several years can financially pressure local small businesses. As corporate America continues to de-leverage itself it repays debt instead of making purchases and instead of increasing its workforce. The reduction of purchases does trickle down to small businesses and less procurement can affect small business revenues. The U.S. Government involvement in large corporations should be more troubling than the news reports. Our pride as a market based economy and being a Democracy has been turned into the U.S. being Socialist without any major opposition. Yes, we are Socialists since the government owns private enterprise. As taxpayers complain that the government cannot do anything right or efficient at least. Now we are using more of taxpayer resources for Wall Street companies and not Main Street companies will have significant effect on Main Street’s future. Mr. Gross states it costs the U.S. government $92,000 in government spending or $145,000 in government tax breaks to create one job. The average job in the U.S. pays less 1/3 to ½ than this amount. The jobs created will first affect larger businesses, with hope that it will trickle down to small business. At least Main Street will still have its pride (even if it is forced into bankruptcy). Small businesses must be aware of this environment and understand the recovery has many challenges over the next several years to come.

In conclusion, small businesses have several challenges in the years ahead. Immediate action is necessary to continue to evolve their business model and strengthen their financial position. Business owners should expect to sacrifice more and potentially raise equity (diluting their ownership) in order to survive the rest of the recession and to try to stay alive through the recovery. Small businesses should continue to stay vigilant during the potential economic recovery in order to continue operations.