Posts Tagged ‘business plan’
Failing to act on an idea can paralyze the path to success, so a few Silicon Valley kids decided to start while their still too young to shave.
Three boys, Aryan Taheri, 10, Alec Boyer, 11, and Boyer’s brother Shaun, 13, recently launched Santa Clara-based Calsunergy, a company based on the creation of renewable energy products. The young entrepreneurs hope to sell low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels and win first prize at the California Clean Tech Open competition.
These kids are the embodiment of the pioneering spirit shown by entrepreneurs who throw caution into the wind and act on their ideas. Their can-do attitude at such a young age is remarkable, and there’s little doubt these kids aren’t just going to sit back and see where the world takes them. They are creating their own futures.
The book “How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not,” highlights how actions like the ones taken by the Silicon Valley trio are necessary on the road to success. It covers several wealth-building topics, including the art of taking action on an idea like the eco-friendly start-up created by the California boys.
This book illustrates that it takes more than having the best idea, an Ivy League education or catching the breaks to become rich. It centers around taking action, whether you’re a Harvard graduate or a high school dropout.
You can have brilliant vision, a tremendous concept and infallible business plan, but if you are consumed with fear to act on these, you’ll never become wealthy. You can analyze and prepare for executing a plan till you’re blue in the face. But you have to eventually act and not fear failure. As Leonardo Da Vinci once said, ‘Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works.’
You have to acknowledge that fear is part of the process and that overcoming it is easier than one thinks. It is also important to “take care of yourself first” by not overextending your financial, emotional, or physical well-being. “Pay yourself first. Rest yourself first. Reward yourself first,”
Purveyors of conventional wisdom would have you believe that the very first thing you ought to do when setting up a new business is to create a business plan.
It doesn’t matter whether you are selling odds and ends on eBay from your living room or something larger and more complex,
Business plans are excellent and necessary. Far too few of us self-employed and freelance people use them.
They force us to spell out our objectives. We have to assign numbers to our expectations and assign a time-line to our goals. They become our roadmap and keep us on track.
But I suggest that you can’t make a business plan that is worth anything until you’ve done your homework.
And that means knowing what you want to do and how you want to do it. And determining that there is sufficient demand for your product to generate enough income to cover your costs and allow a profit.
In other words, before the business plan comes research.
If a body of knowledge already exists, it makes sense to tap into it and save you some work. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics and other such sources, for example, publish a great deal of demographic information. Some of it is very useful.
But it is also likely that as a creative sole-proprietor, meaningful statistics don’t exist about your specialty.
Many micro-businesses target a very specialized niche. And many owned by creative types exist to sell a product or service that don’t follow well-worn prototypes.
It is particularly difficult for such people to find meaningful published data.
If you fall into these categories, you’ll have to generate your own information.
Don’t limit your research to purely business data. You are building a life as well as a business.
Are the demands and conditions of your proposed business compatible with the life you want to create?
For example, illustrators often work on short deadlines – meaning that sometimes they have to work far into the night to complete a project on deadline. Plus, some clients are demanding and some do not pay on a timely basis. After all of that, can you still “love it” enough?
Or, maybe your business is such that sales fluctuate during the year. How will you make it through the lean months? Can you handle the uncertainty of a fluctuating income?
So, how do you find information?
First, if other people provide services similar to yours, talk to them. You will gain a lot of information quickly. Their answers to your questions will save you a lot of legwork and open your eyes to factors you may not have considered.
Try to talk to at least five or six people so you can get a range of viewpoints.
You can find them through trade associations, schools, word-of-mouth. If the locals are reluctant to share information – perhaps because they see you as direct competition – look for similar people in a different locale.
Second, create the information you need.
Mimic and simplify what large businesses do. Reduce their methods down to a level that is practical and affordable.
For example, perhaps you want to survey potential clients and customers to get feedback.
If you are a creating a micro-business on a shoe-string, it may not be affordable nor practical to commission a focus group. But you may be able to speak to potential targets informally or use direct mail to send a simplesurvey.
Eventually you’ll have to ‘put your toe in the water.’ Try it out in a small way – so you won’t lose much if it doesn’t work – and observe the results. Then experiment and modify as needed. Once it works to your liking you can plunge right in.
This approach, known by the technical term “trial and error,” can be applied to any facet of your business.
After all, even the largest producers test market new products before rolling them out.
Put some parameters around your efforts. Decide, in advance, how much time you want to allow and how much you want to budget.
Then test, test, test.
Use trial and error for every aspect of your business. Experiment with different ways of packaging your services, different rates and prices, different types of marketing, etc.
You’ll soon find that certain approaches work better than others. Eventually your experience and data will suggest viable strategies.
And then you’ll be ready to create your business plan.
Discover why you need business coaching, and why which business coach you choose is so vitally important to your business.
A business coach is like a personal trainer–for your business. A good business coach will help you to realize your dreams, goals, and achieve success through careful step by step planning and processes. The business coach is there to help you with resources, support, motivation, and planning of your business venture. If you already have a business, the business coach is there to help your business succeed and grow in ways that you could only imagine. You can find a business coach in a number of different ways, and in many places. The key is to find the right business coach for you and your company.
There are several things to consider when looking for a business coach. The first thing that you will be likely to consider is cost. Many business coaches are quite expensive, but there are some that are extremely cost effective. The important thing to remember when considering the cost of a business coach is the cost of not getting the business coach. Starting a business can be difficult and costly, but starting that same business can be more costly if you are not sure what you are doing. When you have a business that seems to be failing, or if your business is simply not going anywhere, you are more likely to lose money by doing nothing than by spending the money on a good business coach.
There are several steps that your business coach will lead you through to help you create a successful business. First, your business coach will make sure that the business that you want to develop is a sound business venture. To do this, the coach will take your skills, talents, experience, and resources into consideration. Once these assessments are completed, the coach will help you with your business development by walking you through the steps of a marketing and business plan. When you are ready, the business coach will help you to develop your business by implementing the plans that you made while under their care and tutelage. If any problems arise or you begin to have doubts, your business coach will be there for support, guidance, and resources.
You also want to make sure that the business coach that you choose specializes in business start ups and development, not one or the other. Someone that can only assist in business development will not be able to help you start your business effectively. Likewise, you will quickly outgrow a business coach that can help you start your business but not manage it effectively. Our business coaches are trained and educated in all aspects of starting, running, and growing a business. We are committed to building long lasting relationships will all of our clients, and taking your business from conception to perfection.
Our group of business coaches and professionals are available to you with inside information about legal matters, tax matters, registration requirements, and the best structure options for your business venture. This type of information is important and likely one of the reasons that you are looking for a business coach in the first place. Like other business coaches, we will also have information available to you about resources for funding, grants, loans, and other financial resources that you may be unaware of.
I was having this conversation with a business coach colleague yesterday. She deals with a lot of business owners, especially those starting out and those experiencing rapid growth. She’d been doing some research and one article she read suggested that a major reason that businesses fail is because of a lack of capital. This got me thinking about how people fund their ventures and whether they need a lot of capital to start their own business.
To be honest this really depends. If you are a product based business obviously you will need capital to invest in product but, if you were to start a service based business, you can often times get your business started with little or no investment plus time. You will need some capital though and there are some options available to you:
Friends and Family- Many people look to family and friends to fund their business ventures, especially if the funding required is small. Family and friends will generally offer you generous repayment terms on your business loan but make sure everything is done professionally. You don’t want to ruin relationships with friends and family for the sake of a few dollars. Also, if you get money from family and friends, make sure you allow them to share in your business successes.
Business Credit Cards- Business credit cards are another popular option that people look at when they aim to grow their business. Business credit cards can help with cash flow and, if you pick the right card, you can sign up to a rewards program and get points that can be redeemed for flights, accommodation or a variety of other rewards that may be useful to you. These rewards can be a pleasant little bonus for all of your hard work.
Investors- If your business idea is groundbreaking, or if your business plan is solid, you may be able to pitch to investors and get some investment in your company. If you expect rapid growth or you have a ground breaking product, then this may be the option for you. The problem with investors is that you may lose some of your decision making power as you give away part of your business to an investor.
At the end of the day, the most important factors for business success are clearly defined goals, the dedication to achieve them and then a marketing plan that will get your business in front of people. If you do need business finance there are options available to you. I have outlined three of these above.
The traditional method of market research and assessing the needs/wants of a customer are all based around what the company or producer thinks the customer wants or needs.
When faced with existing data on customer demographics or product characteristics, companies make marketing, and indeed product development decisions, on what they think customers need-the problem being that the customer’s needs can be different at different times or different places.
Even after exhaustive market research into test marketing, collating customer feed-back, as well as interviews and surveys, the results are not necessarily going to tell the whole picture, that is: if that product or service is actually suitable for the “job” the customer requires.
The situation or ‘job’ required, as opposed to the segmentation of customers (as in age, postcode or income), should be the defining method of market suitability.
Clearly defining the ‘job’ that a customer is trying to do, will allow the product to better fit the reason it is being bought or ‘hired’. Once this understanding is in place, the whole picture of functional, emotional as well as the social experience around the purchase of the product will be more obvious, and the use of the four P’s:
Product, Promotion, Price, Place, can then assist with the development of the business plan.
The conclusion that customers don’t actually know what they want or need is often used to market products or services that are outside the accepted traditional customer base, some with spectacular results.
The success of the Nintendo’s Wii gaming machine has been due to the company looking outside the traditional market of adolescent boys, to see where they could expand their appeal.
Repositioning themselves as a health and lifestyle choice, overnight they increased their revenue growth by 89.8%.
This was due to the wider marketing approach to include almost everyone in the healthy, active lifestyle choice, (the need) while at the same time being fun (the emotional want).
This has expanded to the aged care industry, which now have Wii machines as part of their rehabilitation and recreation programs, an unexpected bonus for the residents and undoubtedly, Nintendo.
This all points to the fact that customers/consumers are not interested in the expensive Research & Development, or how clever or technologically advanced the product or service is, or how wonderful the company tells you the product or service is.
If it fails to complete a basic ‘job’ which the customer requires, then it is irrelevant and will not succeed, no matter how expensive it has been to get the product or service to the market place.