Category: Starting Up

Bplans Blog: Think of it as the heart of the business, like the heart of the artichoke: it’s a group of three core concepts that can’t be separated. Market, identity, and focus. Don’t pull them apart. It’s the interrelationship between them that drives your business.
I’ve been working on this in the context of business planning, particularly the “just enough” planning I’ve been writing about lately, which I’ve also called the “not so big” business plan. Somebody I know and respect suggested that the heart of a business plan is the marketing plan, and that led me to thinking about the heart of the artichoke.
Like the leaves of the artichoke, the rest of the plan is vital and it surrounds the heart. The rest of the plan is a matter of metrics, milestones, assumptions, responsibility and accountability, dates, deadlines, budgets, and of course financial projections to support cash flow. The heart of it, however, is that trio.
And I realize that it goes beyond business planning. The heart of the planning is the heart of the business itself. The trio at the core is what drives the business.
Heart of a Plan: Market, Identity, Focus [Bplans Blog]

AllBusiness.com: Owning a business is the dream of many Americans… starting that business converts your dreams into reality. However, there is a gap between dreams and reality. Your dreams can only be achieved with careful planning. As an entrepreneur, you will need a plan to avoid pitfalls, to achieve your goals, and to build a profitable business.
This checklist is designed to help you get started. It has seven key components:
1. Identify Your Reasons
2. Self Analysis
3. Personal Skills and Experience
4. Finding a Niche
5. Market Analysis
6. Planning Your Startup; and
7. Finances
Each component is comprehensive and is designed to prepare you for self employment. In addition, each component includes an analysis of you responses as well as a menu of supporting resources.
Checklist for Starting a Business [AllBusiness.com]

Entrepreneur.com: It’s fascinating to hear other people’s success stories. One of the most interesting parts is learning how successful entrepreneurs got their start and how they overcame challenges and adversity. Did an idea flash in their minds like a lightning bolt? Or was it something that percolated over the years? How did timing play into their launch? Did experience or desperation drive their plan forward?
The common ground all these entrepreneurs shared was financial success and the gratification of creating something larger than themselves. Here are a few excerpts of their experiences:
Rachel Ashwell, founder of Shabby Chic
Ashwell left school at age 16. She separated from her husband in her mid-twenties–with two babies under the age of 2 to support. These circumstances drove Ashwell to take a chance and start a retail business–Shabby Chic.
Julie Clark, founder of The Baby Einstein Company and The Safe Side
Money was never the motivating factor for Clark. A teacher, she founded her first company, Baby Einstein, to provide educational videos for her own babies. Clark grew Baby Einstein into a cultural phenomenon and sold it to The Walt Disney Company for $50 million, using some of the proceeds to launch her newest venture, The Safe Side.
Tomima Edmark, inventor of TopsyTail and founder of HerRoom.com and HisRoom.com
Edmark was working a corporate job in the late 1980s when she felt she’d hit the glass ceiling. She knew this wasn’t what she wanted to do for the rest of her life so she wrote a book on kissing, sold it to a publisher, and used the proceeds to launch TopsyTail, which became an overnight success and garnered more than $100 million in sales.
What Inspires People to Startup? [Entrepreneur.com]

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com: A common small business start-up formula today is to offer a product or service and sell it online. If you are reading this blog chances are that describes your situation now. Perhaps you are a freelancer with skills to sell, or you decided to have a go at selling a product online, maybe through eBay or directly from a website. Maybe you quit your job or downgraded to part time work to have time to start your business, or you even attempted to do both at once – work a job and start a business at the same time.
Whatever the scenario, we all start at the same place – the beginning – and it’s at this point that we begin to take action to drum up business. Once you have something to offer, you brainstorm ideas for how to market what you do and then, finally, you go out there and “get in the face” of your target market.
During the early days you tend to do a lot of work yourself, and until you actually make sales, you are very pro-active (or at least you should be!) at chasing up more work and more sales. Generally, because the pressure to establish cashflow is so great, this stage of your business involves rapid action and you do a lot of activities that move you forward. I call this swimming.
Are You Drowning, Treading Water or Swimming? [Entrepreneurs-Journey.com]

Sitepoint.com: Executives at large corporations and entrepreneurs in emerging companies struggle with the same question: “How do I write a strategic plan that actually gets implemented?”
A solid strategic plan delivers the following benefits:
1. You focus your time and energy on activities that are most likely to achieve your goals.
2. You know how to allocate resources.
3. You put a solid strategy in place to set your business apart from the competition.
4. You can communicate your plan to employees, and hold them accountable for results.
5. You can track the results of your efforts and make mid-course corrections to get back on track if you need to.
6. You can adapt your plan to create a second business plan to raise investment capital or get a business loan.
The process of writing the plan is often more valuable than the plan itself. That’s because the process focuses your thinking, and challenges you to answer some fundamental questions about your business.
Start writing today. You can write the plan on your own, but it’s better to work with other people to test your ideas. If you have a management team, you can work with them to write your plan. I know many entrepreneurs who spend a weekend with a colleague, and they work together on each other’s plans, like a strategic retreat. Or, you can hire a consultant/coach to walk you through the process.
Remember that quote from Alice in Wonderland. Too many of us are like Alice at the fork in the road, not sure where we want to go or how we will get there. Stay out of the rabbit hole and write your plan today.
Write a Business Plan that Works [Sitepoint.com]