SKK Asken Business And Management Site

This article could have been titled “The Pros and Cons of a 50/50 Equity Partnership”, but the cons far outweigh the pros. When partnerships are formed, the obvious concerns are addressed. How do each partner’s skills-set and experience complement each other? How much will each partner contribute to get the business going? How long will they grow the business until they entertain selling it? Is that it? … hardly.

Once the business gets going no doubt economic and industry variables change which affect the business. Each partner’s perception of the direction the business should go changes as well. There are constant decisions with regards to the mixture of product and service offerings … the decision to get into another line of business or get out of one. Should the focus be on a higher volume, lower profit margin business model or vice versa? What about a shift to a more capital intensive model. If the business becomes a success, many times potential investors creep in, whether an angel investor or venture capitalist. Both partners need to agree on the investment proposal. [...]

More and more jobs now require a two to four year college degree, even for an entry-level position. Every job I truly wanted listed a four-year Bachelor’s as the first requirement. While I could have started in an extremely low paying position, moving up usually required at least two years of college education for me to even qualify. All in all, gaining access to my dream job in Miami required higher education. From specialized skills to learning the basics of working in a fast paced business world, choosing from colleges in Miami was the necessary path.
Improve Job Prospects

The one thing college offered more than anything was better job prospects. I needed to learn the skills specific to my field in order to be competitive. While I could learn some things on my own, colleges in Miami offered a chance for hands on training with equipment I had no access to otherwise. Another plus I quickly noticed was the chance to network with others in the field. I could have applied for a wide variety of positions for months and possibly been overlooked. By networking, I had excellent leads and recommendations to help me land a position directly out of college.

What To Study

I carefully considered what exactly to study. I started with taking two different tests. The first was a career/personality test, which helped me to determine where my interests were. The second was a college test to help me choose which colleges offered the best programs in these areas. I took the time to look at which fields were projected to grow during and after graduation from college. After all, I didn’t want a degree in a career slowly fading away.

The most important thing I did was talk to my school counselor. She helped guide to the right course of study and helped me choose the right college, including one that offered financial aid and an excellent program for my field. I also had regular appointments with my college counselor to ensure I had everything necessary to be the perfect candidate when I began my job search. I chose two different yet related majors to increase my options.

Career Paths

I chose a career path in computer science. Part of the reason was to ensure I had plenty of options upon graduation. Colleges in Miami offer almost every possible major available. It is important to choose which career path or paths to focus on before graduation. I chose database administration and security. A college counselor helps by providing a list of possible career paths as soon as a major is chosen.

I used my connections from college to help discover which companies were hiring. I truly realized how vital college was to my career when a professor recommended that I apply for what soon became my dream job. Often companies look towards highly reputable colleges for talented individuals. Having a Bachelor’s degree in my field placed me above applicants without one. I was also able to apply for a higher paying position and felt extremely proud of myself. Essentially, college helped me discover the best career path and prepared me completely for ultimate success.

Have you ever wondered whether you’re cut out to be an entrepreneur? Nurses sometimes tell me they aren’t sure if their nursing career has prepared them to start and succeed in their own legal nurse consultant practice. Yet even the most routine nursing job is full of life lessons that apply to the business world.

My first job as an intensive care nurse in a major medical center prepared me for business success. Subsequent jobs reinforced those early messages. I invite you to look closely at your own nursing career and discover the lessons that will help you succeed as a legal nurse consultant.

Success Lesson 1 — Find Your Passion and Turn It into a Business
As much as I loved my work with critically ill patients and their families, my inner voice told me I wouldn’t be working in a hospital forever. As a young nurse, the vision of myself working in the ICU at age 40, 50 or 60 just wouldn’t come into focus.

With only 6 years of nursing experience, I left the hospital and started my legal nurse consultant business. From there, I listened to my inner voice and reconnected with my first passion teaching. At age 8, I spent hours every day teaching an imaginary class. Today I am privileged to teach, coach and mentor nurses to live their career dreams. I turned my passion into a business, and since then I haven’t worked a single day.

Listen to your inner voice, and you will find your passion. Many nurses have reconnected to their passion through legal nurse consulting, a choice unknown to them before they took my program.

Success Lesson 2 – You Have the Power to Take Control of Your Career Destiny

Patients heal faster when they take control of their health and practice healthy habits. Even the smallest positive action can give a patient a sense of control and empower the healing process.

I learned this lesson time and again as I struggled to gain control of my own nursing career. Each time I refused to give in to the frustrations of working within the healthcare system and took a positive step on my own, I felt better. With every step I grew, I thrived and I came up with new ideas to further my sense of control and satisfaction.

The same is true about your career. You have the power to practice the healthy habits essential to take control of your career destiny. Educate yourself about the steps to achieving career health, including new career options like legal nurse consulting. Then take action on those steps. You really can take control of your career destiny.

Success Lesson 3 – Don’t Give in to Fear

As a nurse, I frequently treated patients who had the same progressive disease, yet experienced dramatically different outcomes. We all have known patients who lived years after their predicted demise and other patients who should have lived but didn’t because they gave up or didn’t want to live. The fact that so many elderly patients die within months of losing a spouse is a solid example of the mind-body connection. In almost every case, the patients who died too soon had given in to fear.

There’s also a mind-business connection that will influence the health of your business. When I give in to fear, I become the biggest obstacle to my success. That was true when I started my business 19 years ago. That is true today.

Fear will paralyze you instantly. Practice mind control and exercise your mind daily for positive thinking. Shake off your lack of confidence and negative thinking. Don’t wait for an MI to stop inhaling the toxic smoke of fear. Don’t let fear be the reason you don’t live your career dreams. Always remember the mind-set of the patients who live and the patients who die.

Success Lesson 4 – Nurses Can Do Anything

As nurses most of us have brought patients back to life. We all can recall at least one miracle story a case where, with our help, a patient survived against all odds.

Whenever I face a business crisis, I remind myself, “I’m a nurse and nurses can do anything.” I’ve repeated this same message for 19 years, and it has helped me overcome every obstacle.

If you can heal sick patients and handle life-threatening emergencies as easily as you make your bed in the morning, you really can do anything – especially something as straightforward as starting a business.

Success Lesson 5 – You Can’t Climb Mount Everest without Practicing on the Foothills

I had to have extensive education and training just to qualify for my first nursing job. All the lessons from that job helped prepare me for the next. Each successive nursing position required new and different skills necessitating more training and education.

The same applies to owning a business. Today I handle things easily and successfully that seemed impossible 19 years ago. But that’s because I’ve been in training for what I do now ever since I became a nurse.

If you’re frustrated with your nursing career, don’t feel like you’ve thrown your life away. No experience or job is a waste. Everything you have done has trained you to move up to the next level. Above all, don’t let the fact that you’re not trained to climb Mount Everest stop you from pursuing your dreams of becoming an independent legal nurse consultant. Your nursing training and experience was the first step. Start the next step of your training today, and you will make that climb to start your successful legal nurse consultant business.

Success Lesson 6 – The Nursing Process Is Your Friend

When I left clinical nursing, I thought I could set aside the “nursing process” forever. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Business requires that same process of assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. Every project I take on requires me to assess the possibilities and needs, diagnose the problems, plan how to achieve my goals, implement the plan and evaluate my results.

Your nursing jobs have prepared you well. You can apply the nursing process to any business situation and challenge. You will thank your nursing instructors for this one. Every time you review a medical-related case, interview with an attorney or face a challenge in running your business, you will rely on the process they taught you.

Success Lesson [...]

At the heart of any legal undertaking is the mass of data that legal professionals need to perform their jobs. The demanding job of acquiring and organizing the documents that comprise this data is known as litigation support. It’s a demanding task that requires a high level or organizational ability and a painstaking attention to detail. And with these documents increasingly in electronic form, litigation support professionals need even more skills and knowledge.

The legal system runs on information. Any law suit or court case involves a veritable sea of documentation ranging from witness statements to affidavits to any documents that can be applied as evidence. And the legal system demands impeccable documentation with accuracy, security, integrity, speed and efficiency. The management of this rigorous process is known as litigation support.

Litigation support can be defined as any operation involving human and mechanical systems to process information for use by attorneys or expert consultants in preparation for a lawsuit or a trial. And in these high-tech times it’s an especially demanding task.

Nowadays, a major part of such documentation is likely to be in electronic form and stored on a computer system. The retrieval and authentication of such digital documents is a field in itself and one of vital importance in a successful legal undertaking.

What’s more, paper documents also have to be scanned and stored in digital format. This allows easy access to concerned parties. It’s a process that demands impeccable organisation and supervision. Documents have to be tagged and indexed and stored in document management centers in a way that they’re instantly retrievable.

Clearly people working in this field have to skilled in both technology and law. And generally employees in firm that offer litigation support services are qualified paralegals.

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