Displacement Principle in Startups and Small Business
By Tim Berry
It’s really pretty simple. Intuitive. I didn’t learn about it in business school; I learned about it while building and running a real business. I decided to call it the displacement principle. Displacement Principle: In the real world of small business, everything you do rules out something else you can’t do. My favorite metaphor is... Read More »
The Lean Business Plan for Small Business Owners
By Tim Berry
“What? No, I don’t have a business plan. I’m not a startup.” Too bad so many small business owners think that way. A good lean business plan for small business owners ought to be a great tool for running a business. Set strategy, tactics to match, major milestones, metrics, tasks, responsibilities, and essential business numbers.... Read More »
Some Recent Blog Posts Elsewhere
By Tim Berry
Because you might be interested in these … I posted How to project expenses for a new business overnight on the SBA (small business administration) Industry Word blog. It’s a step-by-step how-to piece on exactly what it says in the title. Yesterday and today I posted two different posts on James Altucher’s Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Starting a... Read More »
10 Lies About Business Planning (Video)
By Tim Berry
Business plans are a waste of time? That’s a dangerous lie. Don’t bother, because nobody’s going to read it anyhow? That’s another lie, because it’s about running your company, not whether somebody else reads your document. The lies matter because they interfere with business planning, which ought to be part of your management. Planning is... Read More »
Is Your Business Either Growing or Dying?
By Tim Berry
True story: there were six of us at lunch together on a beautiful late spring day in 1996. We sat on an outside table in the shade and discussed the next big growth spurt. Would we take this marketing-on-steroids proposal, at a high cost? Would it work? Could we afford not to? I’m not sure... Read More »
Business Plan, Marketing Plan, or Both?
By Tim Berry
“if I have a marketing plan, do I need (or want) a business plan too?” Good question. And so is its opposite question too, “if I have a business plan, do I also need (or want) a marketing plan?” As for a lot of these planning questions, you’re going to get different answers from different... Read More »
Seth Godin on Rethinking Business Plans
By Tim Berry
It’s about time that business writers, assorted experts, entrepreneurs, academic and the rest start focusing on the huge damaging and wasteful misunderstanding that most of us have contributed to: that completely out-of-date idea that a business plan is a document, done once, related to raising money. So I’m delighted to see Seth Godin jumping onto... Read More »
Business Plans, Plan A vs Plan B. Real or Fiction
By Tim Berry
Very interesting talk from earlier this month on Stanford’s Ecorner. This is Randy Komisar, of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as part of a one-hour talk built around his book Getting to Plan B. That’s a two-minute piece. Interestingly enough, it was followed immediately by an additional one-minute piece, called the Benefits of Mapping Plan... Read More »
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