business plan

Creativity Contest: Fun Way to Say Business Planning. With Prizes.

September 29, 2011

Here’s a challenge: Donna Maria of INDIEBusiness asked: what’s a fun way to say business planning? That’s the tweet you see here, which I saw a few minutes ago as I sat down looking at the Willamette River drinking my coffee and starting my day. I think I know exactly what she means. Business planning [...]

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When Is a Business Plan Not a Business Plan?

June 29, 2011

This has been bugging me for a long time now: It turns out that the phrase “business plan” is a homonym, exactly as in these examples from yourdictionary.com: Just like the different meanings for crane and date, there are at least two completely different meanings for the two-word phrase “business plan:” Business plan: what’s supposed [...]

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Closing the Loop: How Planning Is Management

April 6, 2011

A couple of weeks ago the editor of my entrepreneur.com column poked me sideways a bit with the suggestion that I explain how planning is management. He said (I’m paraphrasing): What do you really mean when you say planning is management? It’s not immediately obvious. Can you explain how a business plan becomes better business [...]

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Business Planning Isn’t About Pages

January 17, 2011

Somebody asked me about a one-page business plan. That’s a fashionable idea, and can certainly be a useful exercise. I’ve written in this space how a one-minute elevator speech, for example, can be a useful exercise. And obviously a pitch deck and a pitch presentation can be useful too. Summary is good. Everybody should be [...]

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Top 10 Business Planning Mistakes #1: It’s Planning, not Just a Plan

November 9, 2010

(Note: this is the tenth and last of a 10-part series listing my revised top 10 business planning mistakes. The list goes from 10, the least important, to 1, this one, the most important.) Planning is vital for your business. Start with a business plan and a regular review schedule, then track results and changing [...]

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Top 10 Business Planning Mistakes #5: Doing It All

October 28, 2010

(Note: this is the sixth of a 10-part series listing my revised top 10 business planning mistakes. The list goes from 10, the least important, to 1, the most important.) Let me start this with one of my favorite quotes, from Bill Cosby wrote: “I don’t know the secret to success; but the secret to [...]

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Top 10 Business Planning Mistakes #7: Buying Instead of Building

October 25, 2010

(Note: this is the fourth of a 10-part series listing my revised top 10 business planning mistakes. The list goes from 10, the least important, to 1, the most important.) It drives me crazy: I see all those ads for prepackaged business plans, with preposterous claims like “investor-proven” and “guaranteed success” and “just fill in [...]

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Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes #8: Making Financing the Goal

October 22, 2010

(Note: this is the third of a 10-part series listing my revised top 10 business planning mistakes. The list goes from 10, the least important, to 1, the most important.) It’s just too damn bad that so many entrepreneurs assume to start a business you do a plan, get financed, and then you start. As [...]

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Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes #9: Pitching Without Planning

October 19, 2010

(Note: this is the second of a 10-part series listing my revised top 10 business planning mistakes. The list goes from 10, the least important, to 1, the most important.) I’m guessing that the idea of doing a pitch – meaning a slide deck driving a presentation, about 20 minutes’ worth maximum – instead of [...]

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Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes, #10: It’s Not a Hurdle

October 14, 2010

I’ve decided I need a new top 10 list for business planning mistakes. This isn’t the first I’ve done and I hope not the last either, but it’s a good thing to give these lists a fresh look every so often. And this morning I do a workshop on this topic as part of the [...]

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