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Rolfe Larson provides consulting and training in areas such as strategic planning, market research, feasibility analysis, business planning, marketing, and implementation strategies.[Read more ...]
business planning
Seed Money From Crowdsourcing?
In the old days, people raised money for their start up ventures in traditional ways. They put in their own money and sweat equity. They borrowed against home equity, insurance policies, and credit cards. If they were lucky, they also got money from friends, family, even “angel” investors. They collected gifts, loans, forgivable loans (“pay [...]
Halloween Special: Five Business Plan Tricks
Here are five tricks from business planning expert Tim Berry. Excellent advice to follow to avoid getting spooked by your business: 1. Keep the planning simple and practical. Your plan should be measurable, and include strategy, dates, deadlines, metrics, and basic projections, plus a review schedule. This is critical: when will we review and revise? [...]
Ten Common Startup Mistakes
To err is human. To do the same thing repeatedly and expect different results is insanity. And to learn from the mistakes of others is a good way to improve your odds. Here are ten major mistakes, inspired by a recent Wall Street Journal article (link below): 1. Going it Alone. Forget the solo entrepreneur [...]
Incentive-based Compensation
Many startup businesses set up incentive or commission-based compensation systems for their initial employees. This is often done because they can’t afford to pay staff what they’re worth. As an enticement they offer the opportunity to earn much more than a smallish base salary if these early staff achieve great success. This is common in [...]
Case Against Business Planning
One of the hallmarks of good business planning is being open to disconfirming information. Now let’s apply that principle to the decision on whether to do business planning itself. We think it’s a good idea, but maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it’s OK to do what most business owners do all the time: just wing it, [...]
Make a Business Plan and Reduce Chances of Incurring Debt
Guest post from Ryan of Debt Consolidation Care Community It is imperative to make an effective business plan when you start a business. A good business plan helps to reduce your chances of incurring business debt. Lots of people don’t give much thought about creating a good business plan and make costly mistakes. They incur [...]
Business Planning Doesn't End with Your Plan: Part 2 of 2
Rolfe Larson is on vacation. This blog was written by guest writer Jan Cohen. Regardless of how thorough your business plan is, the start-up period always brings surprises. This is the second of a two part series on lessons learned, based on experiences working with many business ventures. 3. The product or service won’t be [...]
Business Planning Doesn't End With Your Plan: Part 1 of 2
Rolfe Larson is on vacation. This blog was written by guest writer Jan Cohen. When you start a new business, whether for profit venture or social enterprise within a nonprofit, you’ve spent a lot of time and effort on the business planning process. And now you are ready to “execute”. The start-up period always has [...]
Sample Business Plans
People are always asking us for examples of business plans, which is a bit ironic, in that every credible plan I’ve ever seen has “Confidential” stamped all over it. That said, there are samples out there, which is fine as long as you don’t assume you should do it the way they did it. Here [...]
Ten "Best" Business Planning Web Sites
Sometimes the best things in life are free. So if your preference is to find out what’s available on the web before investing in a business planning book (see previous blog entry for a list of books), here’s a quick list of ten “best” business planning web sites. My next blog will indicate where you [...]
