While creating business plans involves a lot of guess work, and most plans end up having to change in order to respond to ongoing realities in your market and in the business world, it’s important to engage in business planning as a process.
The discipline involved, of doing a comprehensive plan, forces you to think of things you might otherwise have not considered. It’s not so much about the plan, but the process of building the plan that is of value.
There are really THREE stages of business growth for small businesses (defined as having less than 100 employees). The first is the solo entrepreneur who starts the business and operates it as the sole person in the business, perhaps sometimes assisted by external resources (family…
Whether you run a small business blog or website, or use social media as a means of communicating with prospective and current customers, there’s one essential principle you should keep in mind. On the surface, it’s a simple idea, but beneath the idea is the…
Note: This was written during a particularly unpleasant stay at a Studio 6 motel in Toronto, Ontario in 2009. It’s a simple rant, until you think of it from a business strategy point of view, and also consider that how one positions one’s business in…
Focus Your Startup By Identifying What Its Success Means To You This is an excerpt from Perfect Phrases For Managing Your Small Business, which is available in book stores and at amazon. Please click the picture for more information. Running a small business can be…
Assessing The External Resources You Need For Your Startup This is an excerpt from Perfect Phrases For Managing Your Small Business, which is available in book stores and at amazon. Please click the picture for more information. It’s nice to think a person can succeed…
Products, Services, and Describing The Target Market In this major section you explain what you will produce and/or what you will sell, and you provide information about the market and your marketing strategies—past, present, and future. Give details and be specific. While you don’t want to…
One of the advantages small business have over larger companies is the ability to change direction, or expand directions “on a dime”. If you aren’t making changes, you are going to get buried by competitors you should be able to compete against using this innate…
Your Small Business Plan: What To Write In The Business Overview Section In the business overview section of your business plan, you want to provide enough information so the reader understands where your business is right now, where it has been, and where it is going in the…
The SINGLE Thing I Did To Launch 25 Years of Small Business Success To celebrate my 25th anniversary in business, I’m sharing some of my stories and reflections on being successful for a quarter century. I suspect that the decisions that make enduring impact…
This is an excerpt from Perfect Phrases For Managing Your Small Business, which is available in book stores and at amazon. Please click the picture for more information. While planning to start up and regularly throughout the life of your business, you need to identify (or…
Recent Comments