Club Asteria’s goal is to help the people of the world find new ways to escape the chains of poverty by providing services, products and resources that can be used to market and sell a variety of products online.

The goal of any business is to make profit and grow, but when the second half of this goal becomes too much to handle, what do you do?

Growth is always a positive sign of success, but when it occurs too quickly, it can outstrip your plans, resources and inventory!

The secret to managing growth is planning ahead, and having the resources in place to accommodate it.

As always, you’ll want to balance your spending – investing too much up front commits valuable dollars, underestimating the costs will have you scrambling for funds when crunch time begins

The Plan

Your first tool in managing growth is having a plan in place that maps out the growth of your business and what to do in case of rapid growth.

1. Chronicle – track your growth over the year, and do it every day! This will allow you to create a record of growth and begin to track patterns and sales cycles. Don’t make it too complicated, a simple list of crucial data works fine.
2.  2.    Forecast – using your history, forecast your growth – figure a modest number, which is about 10% – then order your products accordingly.
3. Sales Cycle – when are you busy and when are you quiet? If you can use the information you have gathered to create a recognizable cycle, you’ll be able to match your marketing plan. so during the slow times, you’re making an extra effort to attract sales.
4. Hiring – when you begin to hire employees, choose carefully! You need quality driven people to keep up with the growth, and help handle it. Plus, you need the right amount of growth so you can pay them!
5. Invest in Equipment – growth means an added stress and strain on your equipment, from computers and laptops to office supplies. One key area to remember is your internet service, when business increases an overwhelmed provider can make things incredibly difficult.  Invest wisely, but don’t over buy!

The effects of growth are usually positive, especially when you plan ahead.

Remember the secret is finding the right balance between estimating for too much, or too little, growth.

Remain true to your plan and you’ll facilitate the growth simply by being prepared and ready – stress and strain cause burnout and translate into costly mistakes.

As Club Asteria continues to develop and offer services, products and resources, it’s a good time to start planning how you’ll be using each one in your business.

One new service that should be available soon will be personalized websites for every Club Asteria member – that’s right, in the near future you’ll be able to have your very own website, and web presence, courtesy of Club Asteria.

The sites will have the capacity to upload a photo and create a bio about yourself – in addition each site will have its own address. This allows you to send out the link to friends, family and business partners so they can visit the site.

Another excellent feature that each site will have is a shopping cart! This allows you to buy and sell a variety of products through your site. The programming and other details will be taken care of by the software, so you won’t have to worry if you don’t have a strong technical background.

These sites will be available to all of our members in the next several weeks, but while you wait there are several important decisions you can make so that once the sites are available, you’ll hit the ground running.

Here are a few things to consider:

Information – what will you include on your site? Do you want to have information about yourself, your business or both?  Remember, when it comes to website writing, the shorter the better!

Pictures – words are always an excellent way to communicate ideas, but pictures make websites more interesting and keep visitors around. As always, there’s a crucial balance you’ll have to achieve, but pick a picture that is vibrant, interesting and show action!

Products – the products you sell through your website will be accompanied by a picture and a description that tells the buyer about the product, and also encourages them to purchase it! – Members will not be able to sell their own products.

The personal websites being offered by Club Asteria are going to make big changes in the lives of every member. They’re another resource we offer to help grow businesses and spread the word about our Foundation.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more information about these websites!

Are you a Club Asteria member? If so, it’s time to visit the Empower Now website and take a look at the new October issue.

If you haven’t signed up for Club Asteria yet, there’s no better time than the present!

Not only will you gain access to professional-grade resources, products and services, you’ll also tap into a network of successful entrepreneurs who share their experiences and business success stories.

Each month, as a Club Asteria member, you’ll be able to take an in-depth look at Empower Now. This electronic magazine is published by our Foundation and includes a variety of interviews, information and free resources – and all you have to do is sign up!

This month’s issue might be our very best yet. Inside you’ll be able to:

• Sign up to win a FREE Club Asteria Tablet
• Join our Social Network
• Access FREE training videos
• Read articles written by our founders and business leaders

As always there are several premium articles included in this issue, you can always go directly to the site to read them, but here’s a sneak peek:

Robert Van Arlen covers an interesting topic entitled, “Rhythms for Your Success”. Robert shares different strategies for how to tap into your rhythm, and allow it to guide you towards a lifetime of happiness and success.

In another article Elizabeth Hills asks “What Would Buddha Do?” Written exclusively for entrepreneurs, Elizabeth brings a fresh perspective to the busy life of an entrepreneur and helps you find balance in a hectic, stress-heavy life.

Finally, Judy Kaplan provides insight and help for everyone in her article “From Adversity to Triumph.” Sure, there will be tough times, but the advice you’ll find in this article will help you get through them and still be on top of your game!

Empower Now is designed to be shared by our members with their friends, family and business partners. The links can be found on the Empower Now page and then pasted into emails, onto websites and shared through social media!

Remember that when you spread the news about Club Asteria, the link to Empower Now gives your message impact, strength and legitimacy – once your audience takes a look at Empower Now, they’ll know that Club Asteria is all about LEARN, EARN and SHARE!

Club Asteria knows that the power of social media is one of the most unbelievable phenomena of our times – social media sites are making the world a smaller place, and connecting people around the globe.

With all of the changes we’ve been introducing to our members, we thought it would be a great time to unveil the latest resource from Club Asteria: Asteria Connect.

This website is open to all Club Asteria members and functions like other popular social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

The idea behind Asteria Connect is to offer members a place where they can connect, share their success stories, and help one another with business plans and goals.

Joining is simple:

• Visit the Asteria Connect site
• Create a login name
• Create a password
• And press Join!

Once you’ve joined, you can post your questions, observations or even give advice to other Club Asteria members. The simple, but effective layout of the site allows everyone to join in the conversation and add their ideas.

The site also includes a Search function that allows you to search for other members by their name. In addition, you can also search for updates, which allows you to quickly tune in to subjects that are relevant to your interests.

For instance, if you would like to find out more about Club Asteria’s 12 Steps to Success, you would only have to type in 12 Steps. The results you’ll find include conversations and links to resources and Club Asteria’s information about the 12 Steps!

One other place to check is the Feed section, which collects all of the messages in real time – it’s an excellent way to see which topics are hot, and follow along throughout your day. Reading the Feed may clue you in to a Club Asteria product or service that you’ve never heard of, or have wanted to check out.

Asteria Connect represents another resource that Club Asteria has produced so that all of our members can connect, and help each other. As with all interactions online, we ask that everyone remembers to be polite and courteous of each member’s opinion and posts.

Hope to see you soon on Asteria Connect!

A friend of mine is an expatriate and living in Bangkok, thousands of miles away from Chicago, Illinois, where he worked for years before retirement.

Life in Thailand for him was great, his American dollar went a long way and he lived in a beautiful house outside of Chiang Mai. Life was good there; he met a woman and married her and was able to afford a full-time housekeeper.

I had the chance one day to speak with Lek, who was my friend’s housekeeper. She was grateful for the job since she didn’t have any education and still lived with her parents and four sisters. Her dream was to one day own a little store and noodle shop, but the resources weren’t there, especially the financial ones.

I took the time to educate her about micro-loans and soon she and her family opened up the noodle shop. Sure, my friend would need to hire a shopkeeper, but a family had realized one of its lifelong dreams!

The shop has prospered, and the family has been able to send Lek’s younger sister, Fon, to the local community college. Fon had just graduated from high school—the first in her family to do so, and that was a big accomplishment!

The next time I saw Lek, she was happily serving noodles to her hungry clientele. Later that same day, I saw Fon walking home in her college uniform. She met her goal!

And, what’s even happier about this situation is that when I talked to Lek’s mother, she told me that the family was planning to surprise Lek with the opportunity to go back to school too!

Time and time again, qualitative and quantitative studies have proven that access to financial resources have improved the lives of women, by improving their status in their families and communities.

When women own land and have assets, the playing field levels. But the best news, according to CGAP (need to spell this out), is that there appears to be a direct link between owning assets and declining levels of violence against women.

Micro-loans continue to bring hope and prosperity to the inhabitants of countries where before there was only despair. The efforts of every Club Asteria member have helped hundreds of people discover hope, and bring financial success to their families, friends and surrounding communities.

When you use one of our services, or purchase a product, you’re helping people like Lek and Fon – and you’re also helping your own business. As Club Asteria continues to break new ground with our offerings, like the Club Asteria Computer Tablet, the profits we generate will in turn help others grow their business.

If you’re not a member of our organization, sign up is FREE! We’re happy to always welcome new people into Club Asteria.

Club Asteria was founded to help our members do three very important things:

• Learn
• Earn
• Share

When you learn a new skill and then learn how to best use it in your business, that’s going to be a big help. Learning how to use a piece of software or a marketing strategy, and applying it to your business model means that you’ll soon be earning more, and working less.

The earning part is also very straightforward: when you work harder and smarter, you earn money. Nothing in life is handed to us – read the biography of any successful person and they’ll talk extensively of how long they had to work and how hard, before success and earning happened.

The final part of our goal is to share what you’ve earned with other people in the world. We’re not advocating giving everything away, but by sharing what you have with others you’re helping yourself.

Our world is growing smaller everyday as more and more people access the Internet and other forms of communication – when you share with them, you’re helping them contribute to the economy, and that benefits everyone!

With these three ideas in mind, let’s remember that when we all work together, and contribute our time and hard work, we’re helping each other – and that also means we’re creating revenue that in turn gets shared among all members.

Sitting back and waiting for good things to happen isn’t going to help! That’s why we all need to take a look at what we’ve been doing and ask ourselves, “What’s one more thing I can do in order to help the overall Club Asteria community?’

Here are just a few things you can do to help improve the overall performance of Club Asteria:

• Visit our website and review the Programs page (and very soon, our Products Catalog). There are literally hundreds of products and services that will help you get the word out about your business. They’re discounted and affordable, and when you purchase them, we all benefit!
• Talk to your friends, neighbors and family members about Club Asteria and encourage them to join – send them a link to Empower Now, our e-Magazine, which is informative and impactful!
• Post positive, informative comments on Facebook and Twitter; that helps our search engine rankings, and also builds our reputation!
• Download the Club Asteria apps, whether it’s on a Droid or iPhone – they’re incredibly easy to use, help you run your business, and reflect positively on our organization!

When we all work together, and are aggressive in our everyday lives, we help one another and the rest of the world community and economy. Don’t sit back and wait for good things to happen, be aggressive and make them happen!