An EPIC Opportunity: Sustainable Living Expo Coming to Vancouver

An EPIC Opportunity: Sustainable Living Expo Coming to Vancouver

Common Business Plan Mistakes

Courtesy of Bplans.com
(used with permission)

While including the necessary items in a business plan is important, you also want to make sure you don’t commit any of the following common business plan mistakes:

Putting it off.

Too many businesses make business plans only when they have no choice in the matter. Unless the bank or the investors want a plan, there is no plan. Don't wait to write your plan until you think you’ll have enough time. "I can't plan. I'm too busy getting things done," business people say. The busier you are, the more you need to plan. If you are always putting out fires, you should build firebreaks or a sprinkler system. You can lose the whole forest for paying too much attention to the individual burning trees.

Cash flow casualness.

Most people think in terms of profits instead of cash. When you imagine a new business, you think of what it would cost to make the product, what you could sell it for, and what the profits per unit might be. We are trained to think of business as sales minus costs and expenses, which equal profits. Unfortunately, we don’t spend the profits in a business. We spend cash. So understanding cash flow is critical. If you have only one table in your business plan, make it the cash flow table.

Idea inflation.

Don't overestimate the importance of the idea. You don't need a great idea to start a business; you need time, money, perseverance, and common sense. Few successful businesses are based entirely on new ideas. A new idea is harder to sell than an existing one, because people don't understand a new idea and they are often unsure if it will work. Plans don't sell new business ideas to investors. People do. Investors invest in people, not ideas. The plan, though necessary, is only a way to present information.

Fear and dread.

Doing a business plan isn't as hard as you might think. You don't have to write a doctoral thesis or a novel. There are good books to help, many advisors among the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), business schools, and there is software available to help you (such as Business Plan Pro, and others).

Spongy, vague goals.

Leave out the vague and the meaningless babble of business phrases (such as “being the best”) because they are simply hype. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, and for results, you need tracking and follow up. You need specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and milestones. Then you can follow up. No matter how well thought out or brilliantly presented, it means nothing unless it produces results.

One size fits all.

Tailor your plan to its real business purpose. Business plans can be different things: they are often just sales documents to sell an idea for a new business. They can also be detailed action plans, financial plans, marketing plans, and even personnel plans. They can be used to start a business, or just run a business better.

Diluted priorities.

Remember, strategy is focus. A priority list with 3-4 items is focus. A priority list with 20 items is certainly not strategic, and rarely if ever effective. The more items on the list, the less the importance of each.

Hockey-stick shaped growth projections.

Sales grow slowly at first, but then shoot up boldly with huge growth rates, as soon as 'something' happens. Have projections that are conservative so you can defend them. When in doubt, be less optimistic.

What is a Business Plan?

Courtesy of Bplans.com
(used with permission)

Business planning is about results. You need to make the contents of your plan match your purpose. Don't accept a standard outline just because it's there.

What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is any plan that works for a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities. Unfortunately, many people think of business plans only for starting a new business or applying for business loans. But they are also vital for running a business, whether or not the business needs new loans or new investments. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to priorities.

What's a Start-up Plan?

A simple start-up plan includes a summary, mission statement, keys to success, market analysis, and break-even analysis. This kind of plan is good for deciding whether or not to proceed with a plan, to tell if there is a business worth pursuing, but it is not enough to run a business with

1. FREE SURVEY TOOL    for checking in with who/what/why and where your customers/public/potential customers would connect to your product service...set it up at begining of interaction or at end as an anecdote...use it as a tool for cross-promotion with a small incentive to completing the survey...endless possibilities and USEFUL information...ones I have saved in my bookmarks: http://www.coolsurveys.com/  trial free: http://info.zoomerang.com/  free trial:  http://www.questionpro.com/free-survey-software.html  check out this list of survey sites (not free) http://www.surveymonkey.com/Pricing.asp
2. INTERNET BROWSER/BOOKMARK TOOLS: OK, if you are not already using Mozilla's Firefox web browser, youare working too hard and missing ops for better browsing security, attachment scanning, and multi window browsing...OK, at one point you will want to record something fascinating in your bookmarks...I just downloaded from the Mozilla Add-ons page (google search it) Jeteye , Clipmarks and FireFTP are VERY USEFUL!!! Check em out! Easy to figure out...instrumental for all you searchin souls
   
3. BLOG  depending on your industry/medium/product/service/  you will want to have the free location on the web to store evidence of development of your efforts.  This is less of an interactive function unless you know a bit of html etc. in which case you could link a survey or a video or mp3 file into your blog and run a free 'almost website'  most companies benefit from the blog's very easy access feel...its less salesy and more personality driven...its the motivation behind the product....depending on the writer, it can be bot very successfully.  I use blogger www.blogger.com  (under google's ownership) and love its simplicity and slick design and mutability in updating images and changing formats... if you are a traveller/travelwriter goto traveljournal.com and be seen, sourced and approached.  Musicians are best to synch their website hub with their myspace account (owned by Fox Media) for the integrated mp3/Videoblog options and the sheer volume of public searching for new music and to appear popular doing it.. this is also where Indie and major labels scout new talent...there is a forum on how the majors can reassemble their admin and legal departments and still remain in control of their artists' profits, so dont worry-cd sales have gone down but music is sourced more by consumers than ever before..its just a time of creativity and a time where many tools are in the hands of the artists. My advice: observe the bands that are successfully integrating the support from fans/music, ticket sales towards evolving the promotion of the vision of themselves ie.e touring more, selling out shows before arriving in town, or producing more studio cds and covering tv mediums etc. The all pervading theme in every single meeting I went to with musicbc.org was good band & poor organization =good band, good band & organization = band that lives well off their music
   
4. PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOL: www.basecamphq.com...nuff said..if you want FREE this is it...and knowing my style, one account wont be enough...but hey, $20 a year for a multi-project account, uh..should I??? hell yes!  Go, see how useful team collaboration (think global capacity) can be tracked simply and start putting that event, tour, book, album, together while tracking all the professionals, stages, useful dates and reminders in one spot --yessa!
5. Group email lists, listserves, invitation tools: When you are at the stage of inviting public to your thang, think about what you want-to impress and invite for attendance-you should have a slick invite system that you can customize visually or aurally too and then depending in the info required, you can track who is coming (good for assessing venue capacity, food/drink, budget issues) also you want easy location tools: maplinks and carpooling forums for making getting there simple E-VITE (free) does this for you well, and even offers a thank you option for the guests and from the guests, you can also join tribe.net (highly recommended) and use their listings service, it makes a page for your poster and details and  a simple tracking invite system, you can add the maplink and a contact info for a carpool coordinator...the benefit is the widespread promotion within a very creative and inspiring community (there is no advertising in your invite to offset costs) Google Calendar can invite people in your gmail account however there is no spot for a sexy image of your event..keeps it simple and you can email out many people at one time this way *an issue with Google groups and Yahoo groups (both limit how many emails you can send at one time to curb any unwanted spamming tendencies) I recommend Yahoo groups for your planningn committe to meet and share info at their own leisure, you can use th chat forum for realtime planning too, plus when someone searches keywords for your event, the group can have a public description of the event/product and of course keep the plans private....
6. Organizing over Long Distance? Use Skype.com to speak with anyone anywhere for free.  Also comes in video chat. Very handy.
   
7. FREE PRESS RELEASE DISTRIBUTION  *teach yourself what a successful press release should look/sound like and they send it out in each category daily HINT: these are tuned to what is new, utilitarian,and how it affects the industry/culture etc. (not a sales letter, these smell ver very bad to readers :) www.prweb.com, http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/ , http://www.i-newswire.com/, http://www.addpr.com/ , http://www.free-press-release.com/, http://www.prleap.com/, http://www.pr.com/press-releases , http://express-press-release.com/