Finding a career you’re truly passionate about can be challenging.

If you’re like most people, you were brought up to believe there was only one way to succeed in life: to get an education, get a steady job working for a respected company, and live happily ever after.

As we all know, this isn’t often the case – especially not today.

Most people don’t realize they’re not meant to work for others

Whether you’re a mid-career professional making a career change, a veteran transitioning to civilian life, or a college graduate, sending out resume after resume to jobs you may never enjoy can be a draining experience.

(And that’s before you even begin working one of these jobs.)

For most people, they don’t see that they’re meant to work for themselves – though what they subconsciously write about themselves in their resume, and where their past has taken them, can reveal a lot about where they’re destined to go.

Here are 5 Signs Your Resume Screams ‘Entrepreneur’:

1. Leadership Experience. You led teams that succeeded, whether in the workplace, military, sports teams, or elsewhere. Others looked up to you to guide them to success. Entrepreneurs are natural-born leaders – they make everyone else around them better, as they work towards a greater goal.

2. You Got Fired or Quit Jobs. Many entrepreneurs struggle to hold jobs working for others, because it goes against their inner grain. Instead of listening to the commands of others, entrepreneurs want to forge their own course of success. This can often lead to getting fired or quitting jobs easily.

3. Unique Design/Layout. Entrepreneurs love to be different, because that’s what makes the best businesses so successful. Sometimes without knowing it, their resumes will have a unique design/layout that almost gives them their own personal brand to stand out from the pack.

4. Creative-Thinking, Problem-Solving Skills. Do you highlight your creative-thinking and problem-solving skills? That means you thrive at finding solutions under pressure – something entrepreneurs need to have to survive in business.

5. Wide-Ranging Areas of Expertise. You’re not knowledgeable in one or two areas – it seems you’re an expert in many. For entrepreneurs, they need to wear many different hats to keep their business running smoothly. This could be a sign for you to take an exit route on applying for jobs, and to become an entrepreneur.

To learn more about entrepreneurship through franchising, attend our free monthly webinar, Franchise Ownership as a More Stable Career Path. The webinar is free, but you need to pre-register, which you can do online by clicking on the linked seminar title.

You may also register by calling 866-246-2884.

Military veterans have an uncanny ability to thrive as franchise owners.

That’s why it seems like every franchise – from billion-dollar brands to emerging companies – wants vets to be franchisees in their business, both out of respect for veterans and because of how high they value their business skills.

Once they become franchisees, however, how can veterans fully optimize and tailor their military skills to their new civilian role?

Draw upon process-oriented, meticulous execution of details

The best franchisees are often ones that really follow the franchisor’s tried-and-true processes. For military veterans, this means honing in on your military experience and following objectives closely, while working with comrades to complete a successful mission.

Just as in the military, straying from processes can lead to mission failure. Something as simple as forgetting to have a team meeting before a shift could lead to a loss in quality control, customer service, and sales.

To prevent this, ensure you take the same approach as in the military (without sounding like a drill sergeant, of course!). In this scenario, you can start off a positive and productive meeting on a lighthearted note before explaining key tasks, and then asking your team for their contributions – they’ll appreciate this and want to work harder.

Use leadership, problem solving skills to overcome challenges

Like in the military, unexpected events will occur that will sidetrack your mission. In order to get back on track, franchisees must rely on strong leadership and problem solving skills to overcome challenges.

Military veterans are no stranger to this. So, when problems arise for them as franchisees, they should turn to their military training and experience for guidance on how to best lead teams to success while finding effective and efficient solutions under pressure.

Doing so will help them complete their next mission in life.

This time, as a successful franchisee.

To learn more about entrepreneurship through franchising, attend our free monthly webinar, Franchise Ownership as a More Stable Career Path. The webinar is free, but you need to pre-register, which you can do online by clicking on the linked seminar title.

You may also register by calling 866-246-2884.

If you spend a lot of time traveling for business, you’ve probably already figured out some helpful tips—like how to fold your clothes to maximize suitcase space and minimize wrinkles or which rental car company offers the best rates. To make the most of your time away from the office, it’s also important to know which online tools are the most beneficial for work and travel. As you charge up your tablet before your next flight, add the following tools:

Kayak.com

For business owners and entrepreneurs who travel a lot for work, Kayak.com is an essential tool to have at your disposal. When planning a business trip, simply enter what you need in terms of flights, rental cars and lodging, and the travel search engine will query every travel website you can think of to find thorough results and display them in an organized way. For example, you can filter your results by the flights’ arrival times or which airlines have Wi-Fi. After deciding on your ideal itinerary, Kayak sends you directly to the specific airline, rental car and/or hotel websites to complete your booking.

MozyEnterprise

If you share a lot of documents, files and projects with co-workers and clients, MozyEnterprise can make your life so much easier. Just install the file syncing and sharing program on any computer or tablet, and then easily access everything that you are working on in one place. When you finish up a project at 11 p.m. in your hotel room in Phoenix, you can upload your work to MozyEnterprise so that your client can access it the next morning before your big meeting. All data is stored in the cloud, so if the worst happens and your tablet or laptop goes missing during your business trip, all of your vital data and documents will still be secure and accessible. The entire program is designed to adhere to strict corporate IT policies, which helps ensure that the files you are saving are safe and protected.

SlideRocket

If you make a lot of presentations on business trips, you’ll love SlideRocket. Import your PowerPoint projects to the online tool for universal access from a variety of devices, including tablets and smartphones. SlideRocket also allows you to easily share your presentations with clients. It even comes with professional design tools that you can use to create sleek presentations.

SeatGuru

SeatGuru helps to make the entire business travel experience less stressful by providing you with airline seat maps, seat advice, user comments, photos and a comfort rating system for different flights. The online tool provides information for domestic and international airline seats, and will let you know which seats are close to a bathroom, which ones have power ports and which ones to avoid.

Square

If your business trips involve making sales and accepting payment, Square will help take care of transactions in a secure and organized fashion. The tool, which connects to an iPad or iPhone, allows clients to swipe their credit cards for payment. In addition, Square will also track your transactions and inventory—just sign into the free Square Dashboard from your laptop or tablet to keep tabs on the latest statistics. Square also offers a standalone unit with a card-swiping area built right in, if you want a freestanding alternative to traditional point-of-sale systems.

The Federal Reserve just released a report documenting financing results for small businesses in 2015, indicating that approval rates for small businesses had gone up compared to 2014 levels.

The Role of Small Businesses

Small businesses have had a hard time since the financial crisis in 2008, as small firms depend more on access to financial capital from banks to fund their growth.  When credit dries up, the boost businesses receive from the credit markets slows and accelerates the economic downturn.  It’s important to remember, small businesses create two out of every three net new jobs and employ half of the private sector workforce according to Harvard Business School.  During the post-2008 economic recovery, small business lending took a long time to recover as lending rates declined 20% causing small business loans to drop from composing half of all loan volume to below 30%.  This credit crisis has slowed the recovery of an integral part of the economy.

Small Business Lending Comeback

The Federal Reserve’s credit survey for 2015 showed that financing rates for small businesses have been improving, with 79% of firms reporting being approved for some financing, and 50% being approved for all their financing needs. It seems that small banks are picking up a lot of the slack left by big banks reducing their lending volume to small businesses.  Small banks have 18% higher approval rates than big banks for small business loans, earning a customer satisfaction rating of 75 compared to a rating of 51 for large banks. 

Still a Long Way to Go

Unfortunately, the full financing needs of small businesses are not being met.  Business owners continue to report that managing cash flow is one of their top business challenges.  50% of financing applicants in 2015 had a shortfall in the amount of money they received, reporting that an insufficient credit history and collateral were the main reasons only part of their request was met.  Both large and small banks will have to increase their lending volume to meet the demands of American businesses.

Who Businesses are Turning to For Financing

Under these new conditions, small businesses are turning elsewhere to meet their financing needs.  20% of employer firms applied to online lenders, who have been lending money out with approval rates of 71%.  However, the satisfaction score they received from the businesses they lend to was only 15, much less than that of small and big banks.  Other businesses turn to credit cards for any financing needs.  The best place for small businesses to go to for any of their funding needs remains small banks, however, as they boast the highest approval rates, satisfaction ratings, and transparency ratings of any of the options.

According to Cisco Visual Networking Index, consumer Internet video traffic is rapidly rising and will account for 80 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by the year 2019. This shows a 64 percent rise since 2014 with no signs of slowing down. Meanwhile, Media Post reports that mobile devices dominated views of Super Bowl 50 advertisements on YouTube, and 60 percent of the 330 million views came from mobile devices.

The numbers are clear. In order to compete in today’s marketplace, you need a video marketing strategy in place that’s also readily available and watchable on mobile devices. Need more convincing? Here’s a run down of why video can significantly impact the bottom line for your business and what to do next.

Video showcases your brand’s culture

You can write about company culture and engage with customers at length, but it still won’t properly translate without a video to show instead of tell. A spirited video of your company at work, emotional testimonials from clients and a behind-the-scenes look at employees at work speaks volumes more than a print campaign.

Brand culture videos help consumers forge a sense of trust and camaraderie with your company simply by giving them a visual view of what’s going on. For example, Amway features a video on its YouTube channel showing how its distributors spend their time away from the 9-to-5 work day and build up their businesses. Consumers can check back and watch more footage to dream of how their life would look if they owned their own business.

Video increases sales

Online retailer Stacks and Stacks reported that consumers who viewed one of their product videos were up to 144 percent more likely to add it to the cart than customers who didn’t.

Giving customers a chance to see products in action and moving in real time, even if it’s just being held or turned to show different features, provides a more realistic view. Instead of needing to come into your store or order your product to see if the photos do it justice, customers can view videos to get a closer look.

Social media is embracing video

YouTube spent years dominating video search, but other search engines and social media platforms are seeing a rapid conversion taking place.

For example, Facebook reports its daily video views doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion in a period of a few months. Video ads are also becoming wildly popular across social media and other online platforms alike, and particularly on mobile devices. YouTube reports the number of hours people spend watching videos on mobile is up 100 percent.

Companies jumping onto the video social media bandwagon are also seeing impressive results. Old Spice pitchman, Isaiah Mustafa, famously answers tweets by video on YouTube, driving consistent traffic across multiple social media platforms. Their videos are also the stuff of viral legend with its new Mom Song.

Video says much more than text

Businesses may feel intimidated to produce compelling videos that spark action, but in reality, they can be more effective at converting customer engagement than print alone.

According to an article by Forrester Research, a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. That’s certainly more words than you can ever put together in a single ad copy or white paper. Instead of potential customers having to figure out what you’re saying by digesting copy, they can see it quickly unfold by video.