Your Business Plan Does Not Need to Be That Hard
If you have ever read Guy Kawasaki’s book, Art of the Start, then you are familiar with how he suggest that you put your business plan together. If you haven’t read the book, I am going to outline his 10 components for an effective business plan. Whether you need to raise money for your business or not, your business plan does not need to be that difficult. According to Guy Kawasaki, your business plan should contain the following: 1. The problem that exists 2.Your solution to the problem 3.Business model; i.e. a brief description of the type of firm you will operate 4.Underlying magic/technology; this is crucial. Basically, it explains
Book review of “The Knack”
The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky My rating: 4 of 5 stars Certainly some great tips for business owners. It has information on the challenges that businesses face regardless of the size of your business. Great insight for future business planning. Especially liked Norm’s breakdown of gross margins and why it’s important to keep track of your sales numbers on a regular basis to make sure you aren’t selling yourself out of business. I recommend this to any entrepreneur or would be entrepreneur. View all my reviews
Why You Need a Business Plan
All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved. Sun Tzu Once you have clearly articulated your mission, vision and values, the next piece to your business should be putting together a plan. There are varying opinions on whether or not you should spend the time putting together a business plan. There are several reasons that a business plan can help you and your business get started on the right track. The first reason is to have a road map for your business to guide you in where you are going and how you are getting
How Well Are You Cultivating Your Existing Relationships?
Utilizing the power of people when we are building are business is, as I mention previously, an underutilized tool for your business. A resource that is often overlooked in helping you build your business is your friends and family. How well do you cultivate your existing personal relationships? I don’t make the friends and family point in a MLM sort of way where you list them out and then try and get them in your down line. I am talking about have meaningful conversations with people that you care about so that you are aware of what it is they do professional and what types of projects they have been
Steps To Good Business Networking
Whether you are an entrepreneur starting out or an employee for someone else, networking can be a tool to enhance your business through expanding your reach inside your industry and out. Sometimes knowing where to go and what to do once you get there can keep us from getting out and doing it. Today I want to go over each step of the networking process to ensure that we are involved in good business networking. The first step is figuring out where to network. Some questions to ask include; How much time do I have to devote to this? Do I have a budget that I can spend on networking?
New Entrepreneurs: Shorten Your Learning Curve with This Simple Strategy
Building a business from scratch is no doubt challenging. One way new entrepreneurs can increase their chances of success is through making great connections. Specifically, making great connections with the people that already work in their industry to help you shorten your learning curve. I am currently reading The Knack by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. This is a book about how to build a business with street smarts and managing change. One story towards the beginning of the book that really has stuck out to me so far is a story about a woman who wanted to start her own day care center in New York. The woman had
What’s The Best Way To Manage Relationship Capital?
Relationship capital is the most underutilized capital that all of us have at our disposal. The best thing about it is that with a little effort and decorum, you can build it quickly and easily. There are different schools of thought about managing relationships which bring to the question: What’s the best way to manage your relationship capital? What got me thinking about this was after I recently read Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. The last chapter is titled The Art of Being a Mensch. Guy wrote a blog post about what a mensch is as well as his 5 guidelines to follow. His 5 guidelines are: Help
Building Your Business One Value At A Time
The last time that I talked about core values, I was referring to using them as a tool for personal productivity. Core values are not only necessary for personal success but are also vital to an organization as well. Like your vision and mission, core values are another set of bricks that you use to build your business foundation. Despite the stain that certain companies have brought on businesses in general, there are a lot of companies that are still doing it right and core values are at the front of what they are doing. Two examples of this are Starbucks and Zappos. Before I get started talking about Starbucks,
The Ingredients For A Great Mission Statement
Moving on to the next step in your business foundation, your mission statement asks the fundamental question, why do I exist? Sometimes business owners have a hard time incorporating the necessary ingredients to make their mission statement great. The first part I want tackle is the basic content of your mission. One Page Business Plan gives the following questions as possible questions to answer in putting this together: • Describe the WHY customers will buy from you • Define your product or service clearly • Define your ideal customer • What benefits do you offer the customer? • What makes your product or service different from the competition? These are
Vision: See It, Live It
Creating a solid foundation for your business starts with clearly understanding your business. Your vision for your business is a great place to start. Once your organization has a clear vision you are able to see the vision and live it as well. When your organization has a clearly defined vision, you have answered the fundamental question of “Where am I going?”. When you have this set, everyone in your organization knows where the business is going and can use this to guide their decision making. By using a vision effectively, you can also better dictate the culture that you want to create in your organization. As far as building
