5 Tips to Prepare Your Family for Entrepreneurship

Coordinate your schedules. Each week, sit down and coordinate your work/errand/family schedule with your husband’s, so there are no surprises.

Your marriage is a partnership; don’t try to do it all alone. Ask your husband for help with the housework and the children.

Carve out family time every weekend, so you can maintain a sense of balance, and your children and husband do no feel pushed aside.

Schedule quiet time during the day when the kids are home for the summer. Ask them to read or play quietly for an hour, letting you focus on work. Follow it with family time.

Let your children help. Helping you out in your business, even in very small ways, will encourage their support and understanding.

5 Tips to Jump Start a New Business

Create a brand. Spend a little money to create a professional logo, business card and stationery. Present a professional image.

Ramp up Online. Make creating a Web site a top priority. A Web site is today’s calling card. You really shouldn’t do without one. Give people a place to go to learn about your business.

Make Your First Sale. This is key. Get that first sale even if it’s friends or family at a discounted rate. This counts as getting started, so go for it.

Promote Testimonials. Get testimonials from your first sales. Start building credibility for your business from day one.

Build Buzz. Be creative. Look for a special promotion, big event, email campaign or something out of the norm for your business to get people talking about you, your product or service.

5 Tips for Developing Policies for Your Business

Think ahead. Establish policies before you need them. Doing so helps avert crises and awkward situations, and helps solve problems before they arise.

Determine what policies you need. Some you’ll want early in your business include a mission statement, as well as compensation, performance evaluation and employee policies.

Get input from key employees, as well as from members of your advisory board, your board of directors, and/or your professional advisors and consultants.

Communicate policies to everyone in your business.

Review policies on a regular basis—once a year, for example—and revise them as necessary.

5 Tips for Making the Most of Your Business Plan

Take the long view and do long-term planning. Map out where you want to be five years from now and how you plan to get there.

Write the plan yourself. You will learn more about your business by doing so.

Think of your plan as a living document. Review it regularly to make sure you are on track or to adjust it to market changes.

Share the plan with others who can help you get where you want to go—such as lenders, key employees and advisors.

Understand that you might pay a price in the short run to obtain long-term business growth and health.

5 Tips on Budgeting

Think of a budget as a useful tool—a written financial plan that helps you set goals and measure progress.

Start by coming up with a sales revenue target. Make it your best estimate.

Based on past experience, estimate your cost of goods sold (e.g., 70 percent of sales) and subtract it from the sales revenue to come up with your estimated gross margin.

Forecast variable expenses (items such as travel and commissions that vary according to the level of sales) and fixed expenses (items like taxes and rent that stay the same, regardless of sales). Subtract these expenses from your gross margin to arrive at your estimated net income (before federal taxes).

Break your annual budget into quarters and monitor your progress every three months to detect problems and make corrections.

5 Tips on Building a Sound Business Plan

Write a business plan with a complete financial and marketing plan.

Your marketing strategy should be built around your strengths, your competitor's weaknesses and your customers' desires.

Test the reality of your business—know why it will work and how you will make it work. Think your business through step by step.

Allow at least two hours every week for thinking and planning. Do not allow anything to interfere with this time. You run the business. Don't let it run you.

Establish an annual operating plan. Review it and update it monthly with appropriate employees.

5 Tips for Effective Business Planning

Clearly define your business idea and be able to succinctly articulate it. Know your mission.

Examine your motives. Make sure that you have a passion for owning a business and for this particular business.

Be willing to commit to the hours, discipline, continuous learning and the frustrations of owning your own business.

Conduct a competitive analysis in your market, including products, prices, promotions, advertising, distribution, quality, service, and be aware of the outside influences that affect your business.

Seek help from other small businesses, vendors, professionals, government agencies, employees, trade associations and trade shows. Be alert, ask questions, and visit your local SCORE office.

5 Tips to Get a Good Mentor

Think about the end result. Let your mentor know what advice you want for success. Do you need advice on managing cashflow or a mentor to help keep you energized and motivated? Both are good. Be clear.

Be prepared. Share a snapshot of your business today. Share goals, so your mentor has a picture of your dream for success. Then, ask questions and listen for great ideas.

More is better. Develop a network. No one person has all the answers. Not you, your CPA, your mentor. You may want a mentor for business planning and a mentor for finance and cashflow.

Cash is king. Good cashflow is important especially at start-up and growth stages. Always, be wary of economic slowdowns. A mentor can help you plan a collections policy, make plans for a line of credit and project cash flow based on sales.

Seek industry expertise. Find a mentor who can address industry specific issues. Get a mentor.

5 Tips on Preparing for Change

Examine your corporate culture to discover any impediments to change. Some traditions and practices may need to be revamped to meet new needs.

Keep talking about change so that employees think in terms of change and help make it happen.

Make expectations clear. Key employees should know that embracing change is part of their responsibility.

Monitor company procedures and systems to be sure they support change.

Plan far ahead for the biggest change of all: your retirement or exit from the company. Develop new leadership.

5 Tips to Avert Disaster

Disaster strikes—rarely. But, when it does preparation is what can save your business. Learn more.

Safely store important documents. Keep a portable and fire safe box with insurance documents, legal agreements and a back-up of your monthly financials.

Consider your insurance needs. Evaluate the level of life insurance, liability insurance and property insurance you need. If you have none and disaster strikes you may not have the cash you need to protect your business.

Establish a line of credit. You do NOT have to use the line, but it's there for you to provide capital to bridge the disruption of a fire, flood, or theft of equipment. This is cash to be repaid that provides the short-term buffer you made need.

Document key contacts and processes. In a crisis, it pays to already have a plan in place for what to do next. It can be a massive manual or three pages. Just be sure you and your employees can answer the question—Now, what?

Business Plan Tips : Business Situation Analysis

The key to any business succesfull plan is the situation analysis. It doesn't sound very sexy, but think of it as wearing a "you were here" sign, this where you start. If you don't do the situation analysis effectively, there is no way you can come up with effective strategy. And in fact this is the most neglected part. We don't do our homework before we get started. The good news is that the homework is not hard. It has four basic parts.

The first is, the background. Look at where we came from so that we get perspective on where we're going. Looking at where we've been, would give us a better perspective on where we're going and help us to avoid mistakes in the future.

The second part is mission. Understanding who we are, what we do and who do we serve.

Internal analysis is a review in detail of our internal assets and this isn't just physical assets. In includes ladership, marketing, finance, operation, HR, how do these functions and how well they serve strategy.

The last part is external analysis. Understanding industry attractiveness and what is going to take to be successfull. Peter Druckner refers to the meaningfull outside and that's important for that in order for a company to do well, it must understand the outside first. According to Druckner, this is the no. 1 job of the CEO, in fact, the only cost.


Source: YouTube

Business Plan Tips : Identifying Strategic Business Elements

The third section of the business plan is changing the course anf identifying strategic elements that we're going to pursue. The good news is that there's only three.

First is vision, defining the business that we want to be and in the future, really saying "where we are going".

The second is the strategic road map which is how are we going to get there. I've seen this in a variety of forms.This could be actual road maps, this could actually look like a road map, or often the're bench marks that indicate each year what we're trying to accomplish to gt there.

The third element is resource requirements. What it will take for us to accomplish this objective.

The keys for all three of them is to keep them simple. One of our acid test is if you can get all of these on the back of an envelope, you probably have gotten them simple enough and you can also expand them out to do long, foremost strategic planning documents. But, actually the most important of these is going to be what you can get essentially on the back of a napkin. This is what you can talk to your employees about, it's good to communicate easily.

Three sort of keys here, on the vision, if you got right, it will inspire people, it will make them passionate. If you got the road map right, it will increase credibility for the vision. And if you got the resource requirement right, it will reduce fear.


Source: YouTube

Business Plan Tips : Strategic Business Plans

Why companies need a strategic plan? Most companies don't have one, but even it's unwritten, every company has a strategy. Whether it's written or not, all activities in the firm are related to strategy.

Story about GM: GM for years has struggled to try to compete effectively with the Japanese and other off-shore competitors. And only recently have they begun to really get some traction in trying to create the kind of cars that people want to buy. And so, one of the keys was getting everyone to understand what they needed to do and pull strategically in the same direction.

The key to strategic plans is they tell everyone in the organization what's important and what they need to be doing. If someone's doing some activity, they need to be able to come back and say, is it on strategy or off strategy. If it's off, they need to try something else.

Now the key with strategy is that it's always long term. You recognize it because it has to do with investing now for payoffs in the future. Sometimes they're trying to develop strategy, businesses get caught up in what are sometimes called the tactical weeds.

Now, tactics are extremely important. They really are the legs of strategy. They're the execution of strategy. And strategy gives the guidance to what tatics ae doing. If you get hung up in the tactical weeds, it's easy to get off in a direction that is not really productive for the company.

Strategy has just three basic parts. So the good nes is, it's dificult to get a hold on sometimes, but ideea is fundamentally very simple. It has three parts: vision, where we are going; road map, how we are going to get there; and resources, what it's going to cost us to make the journey.

It's really the number one job of the CEO to develop strategy. It tells everyone in the company what's important and what they need to be doing.


Source: YouTube

Business Plan Tips: Ancient Business Architects

Business strategy actually has its roots in some fairly ancient disciplines. And tho of my favorite sort of ancient strategies are both Asian. One is called Mayamoto Mushi. He's Japanes samurai who lived around in the 15 and 1600s. He wrote a book called the five rings.

One of the key notions about that Mushi brought forward is the idea that if you're going to be succesfull, you have to understand your competitor intimately. What he's going to do. And you also have to be intimately familiar with your own tools of your trade if you're going to be succesfull.

These are keys to strategy today, and we often forget these kinds of things. Study your competition, and understand intimately how to use the tools of your trade and what you do. That's fow you'r going to be more effective.

The second is Sun Tzu, who was a Chinese general who developed thirteen principles of strategy. And I won't try to go into all of them, but one of the keys was, that was probably his most important principle, was that an effective strategy is one that avoid direct confrontation. Costly battles. And the idea is not to run away from them, but convince your competitor that they really don't want to compete in the space you're competinng in.

Two great lessons from ancient strategist that can really help you in your own business strategy today, even thougt those were thousands of years ago.


Source: YouTube

Starting a Business : Writing a Business Plan

A business plan is a road map, that is really created by the company to guide it and help with know where to go. We write a business plan every year and is really there to lay out a series of strategic initiatives and what you want to accomplish for your business for the comming year.

There is also business plans that are written to raise capital and those usually look pretty different that a busines plan that you use to run your company. A business plan to run your company, you have all your objectives laid out for each one of your departments.

What you plan on doing with marketing, what you plan on doing with sales, what you plan on doing in operations, and those are all put in place so that yourself and everyone that works at your company knows exactly what they need to be working toward on a weekly, a montly and a quartely basis, to achieve the goals that you put in place for the year.

So, if you are raising money for your company, trying to raise money off of the business plan, you definitely need to explain a lot more about the business, and what you reason for being this. The size of the market, to find an opportunity of the company, basically what sort of growth you feel like the company can do and then substantiate that. Why do you felt like the company can grow at that rate? You really have to say, why is that realistic. And then, at the same time you are selling your business, almost like you are selling your product. You want to dress it up as much as possible if you are doing it to raise money.

But, even if you are just running your business it is reallly a very important piece of it. When I first wrote a business plan, my very first year, when we first started, I went and get a 'how to write a business plan' book for dumies from a bookstore. There is not a whole lot of science behind it, bur it is really there to help guide you and help keep everyone focued.

And business plans changed. I don't think just because of whatever is said in stone when you first write that business plan. Strategies changes as your business grows and as the market changes. So, you have to be flexible, you have to be willing to try something, fail and then try again. That is how your business become more and more efficient and put you on the right path. And, that is how you write a business plan.


Source: YouTube

Business Plan Tips: SWOT Business Analysis

Anyone whose ever been involved in doing business planning has been exposed to doing a SWOT analysis; strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

There are two components, internal and external. Internally, you're looking for strengths and weaknesses specifically those things that what hamper your accomplising the strategy or the direction you have in mind.

External analysis is looking for opportunities and threats. Again, these things specific to where you anticipate that you're going to go. The result of this is a SWOT profile which is where most people stop. Actually that's a mistake. The key next step is to identify what are, which of these are likely to happen, more likelly or less likelly and what impact do they likely to have, low or high. Things that have low probability an low impact, even though they are key issues, they don't affect you should ignore them.

The second category should be those which have high impact but are likely to happen. These things rather than building a strategy around them should be put on a watch list that you have to keep track of.

Third would be things that have a high probability of happening but they have relatively low impact. Rather than making them the core of the strategy or your business plan, create contingecy plans if they shoul happen.

You really build plan around your strategic issues around those things, those SWOT items that have high probability and high impact.


Source: YouTube

How to Write a Business Plan

Business plans need six components. You need to have an excutive summary, an operation section, a management section, a marketing section, a finance section and an appendix.

The executive summary should be no longer than two pages and be a synopsis of everything in your business plan.

The operation section talks about how you are going to sell your goods and services and operate the business on a day to day basis.

The management section covers the people you are going to manage, who they are, what their job descriptions are and how much you are going to pay them.

The marketing section talks about what goods and services you have and how you are going to market it to the general public, who your target market is and what veues you are going to get the message out to.

Finance section is a very short section, it is only about a page long and talks about when your break even points is, how you are going to be profitable.

The appendix include all the financial numbers of your finance section so your profit loss statement of cash flow and your balance sheet.


Source: YouTube

5 Tips to Help You Prepare for Growth Spurts

Get outside help. Growth is tricky and stressful, so smart business owners rely on outside assistance—such as consultants or SCORE volunteers—to get them through it.

Hire ahead of the need. If you’re growing fast, add a chief operating officer and/or chief financial officer—even if only on a part-time or consulting basis.

Change your own role. Stop "doing everything yourself." Delegate day-to-day operations to others and become the leader, the strategic thinker and the planner—in other words, the CEO.

Weed out customers that don’t contribute sufficiently to your bottom line. Let go of those who distract you from your goal—for example, because they are outside the area in which you want to work or take too much of your time.

Have reserve capital to weather growth’s inevitable bumps. Reserves don’t have to be all cash—they can be excellent receivables or something else that can be turned into cash quickly.

5 Tips on Technology Planning

Create a master plan for technology, just as you would draw up a business plan, a budget or a marketing plan.

Design the plan so that it supports your business strategy and goals. Use it to guide technology buying decisions.

Think of technology purchases as investments, not costs. And, remember, when you have an overall plan, your company avoids wasting money on unnecessary purchases or quick fixes.

Start by determining your company’s needs. Look at what problems need to be solved and how technology can help.

Get expert help to guide you. Check your Yellow Pages under “Computers-System Designers & Consultants,” or ask your local chamber of commerce. As always, get references.