MaRS

Time to draw up a plan?

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
~George S. Patton

Do you need a reason to finish that business plan you’ve been working on?  It might help knowing that not finishing it could affect your chances of business success.

An interesting study has emerged from Silicon Valley’s Tim Berry, a popular blogger and founder of Palo Alto Software.  His company did a study of the correlations of completion of a business plan with different success variables such as business growth, securing investment and securing a loan.  Although the study was for people who had completed their business plan using his company’s Business Plan Pro software, the results still shed some light on the difference in business success metrics between those who complete a business plan and those who don’t.

Stopping can be a success strategy

From marketing guru Seth Godin’s book The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), here are seven reasons you might fail to become the best in your industry:

The goal: I heart your product

Imagine the art of developing an emotional tie to your product.

In a world where we have so many products, so many competing and complimentary products, it is really difficult for small business owners to differentiate themselves from their larger opponents. Every business needs a strategy to gain a competitive edge and none is stronger than the emotional connection to your product. Large firms purchase millions of dollars of advertising to try to affect and develop this, but I believe that the smaller business has the advantage.

Kerri Golden on financial planning

At last week’s lecture on financial planning, I spoke about the basics of building a solid financial plan for your business opportunity. I weaved in lessons I’ve learned as a venture capital investor having reviewed many new business plans.  More importantly, I’ve learned a lot from being an entrepreneur and creating plans that help me effectively launch and scale my business and attract the funding necessary to succeed on the global stage.

Get the latest news

A review of the latest news on business models in digital media.  In this post, we looked at Time Warner, Ngmoco, Dow Jones, Apple, and Corel.