New Media (R)evolution – Walk Before Running
Published September 2, 2011 | 
Of course, when we consider communication strategies, the most effective tactics start inside the company or organization. So let’s contrast this with long-established marketing or public relation efforts before the assimilation of digital and social media channels. If marketing or public relations didn’t maintain goals to support, didn’t understand its targets, had absolutely no bona fide plan for implementation and anyone in any department or branch could offer a story to the media or introduce a campaign simply because it was the traditional action to carry out, the project wouldn’t stand a chance.
The new world of market niche engagement is actually no different. Before you initiate any implementation, you need to clearly understand what you’re striving to accomplish, who your target market niche are and what the tactical plan to carry out looks like, and of course, ultimately have strong support from the highest echelons, across the organization. Predictably, without that, you’re going to be constantly swimming against a strong current.
Establishing early internal cooperation is one aspect, but acquiring funding and strategic ongoing support require actual results. So the questions address is what kind of results and what yard stick will you use to measure them?
If you’re eliminating traditional approaches, leaping headlong into social media because it’s trendy or because everyone’s kids are on Facebook, you’ve failed to see the meaning. On the contrary if you’re implementing new media tools and channels due to the fact one or many of your target market niches have, and by way of strategic listening, you’ve discovered terrific new channels and strong platforms for connection and deliver of ideas, you’re most definitely proceeding in the right direction. You’re ready to create a strategic and tactical plan.
Unfortunately, adopting social media and other digital channels without any plan or objective for engagement is a guaranteed formula for potentially serious failure. Way too many companies and organizations run before they walk. 
Most often as a direct result of their persuasive enthusiasm encouraging them to enter the new world of social media and just start doing it. They don’t understand why they are using social media tools and applications, what their specific goals are, and more importantly how to measure success. In the end, they don’t get the level of return they anxiously anticipated and as a result get frustrated, and in many, many cases, just quit without ever enjoying any level of success.
So how do you develop a plan of the tasks, tools, processes, achievable goals and measurement metrics for target market engagement that is sustainable and will help you achieve your ultimate business objectives and success?
Great Web Entrepreneurs – Organize & Plan
Published April 27, 2011 | 
“I’m incredibly impressed by people who organize to achieve a goal, and believe that they can make a difference and then go ahead and do just that. I think it’s incredible.” – F. Apple
“Of all human inventions the organization, a machine constructed of people performing interdependent functions, is the most powerful.” – Robert Shea
The strong trait of organization skills is necessary more times than not for most highly-successful Entrepreneurs. Processes organized for keeping up with invoices and bills, timely tracking and filling orders, important recordkeeping and fulfilling a sometimes very long laundry list of other business interrelated activities can make it extremely difficult for to maintain your focus as a business owner, but it can ultimately be the one thing that effects whether your business is an enormous success or a huge failure.
Skills for Organizing – Entrepreneurs are able to visualize the big picture. They are able to make connections in the global view that others quite often miss because their brain is wired and works differently than most. Their ability to make connections between previously completely unrelated facts, they recognize real opportunities created by converging trends in the market, or global market niches left underserved by large static slow-to-move companies and their more rapidly evolving customer base.
Making connections is a critically important strength. But on the other hand, Entrepreneurs proficiencies for keeping an office in some kind of order amount to little more than organizing paperwork by the pile. Their innate abilities to spot opportunities that could, and have revolutionized entire industries, make it extremely difficult for them to get very excited about error proofing piles of paperwork.
Organization – 
Understand that you just don’t accidently stumble upon success as an Entrepreneur. You really do have to get organized, and this means everything from your working space to the execution of the marketing strategies in your business plan. Organization of your day leads to organization of your week, your month, and finally organization of your year.
Plan everything – Planning every aspect of your business is not only a must, but also builds habits that every business owner should develop, implement, and maintain. 
The act of business planning is so extremely important because it requires you to closely analyze each business possible situation, perform research and compile data used to make sound conclusions based mainly on the facts as revealed through the extensive research.
Effective business planning also serves a second important function, which is clearly defining your goals and the tactics you’re planning for their achievement, on paper. You can think of and use the plan that you create both as roadmap to take you from point A to Z, and as a yardstick to measure and determine your metrics for success of each individual plan, or segments within the plan.
Great Web Entrepreneurs understand the critical nature of effective organization and planning and the importance of revising detail structure and plans on a regular basis, in order to maintain the most current process efficiencies that ultimately translate directly to increased profitability of the business.
Understand How to Write Your Business Plan for Investors
Published April 29, 2010 | Let me start by reminded you that the audience you will be presenting the business plan to should be the driving fact for the way the document is laid out and constructed, and of course, since different readers expect to see different things in the plan, 
it is extremely important that you completely understand the audiences viewpoint and perception.
If you’re trying to secure equity-based capital, you cannot spend enough time on the executive summary of your business plan, since this is the first and most important thing, if not the only thing, that gets read by an equity investor.
It is very important for you to understand that the executive summary is your business plan in the miniature and it should contain the scope of the opportunity in the absence of the full plan in less than a page, and after reading the executive summary and making the decision to continue reading, equity investors always look to one section of the plan more than the rest, and that’s the management team, as savvy investors know all too well that an experienced and well-rounded management team can make all the difference when it comes to success of the business.
You should be well aware that your management team section should be very comprehensive including citing the background, education, experience, skill-sets, and responsibilities for every member of the team, and also, you 
should include all of the outside professionals that you will utilize such as an attorney, accountant, management consultants, etc.
Even well-put together plans can flounder because of the failure to appreciate the crucial difference between entrepreneurs and investors. You must understand that Entrepreneurs focus on the potential of an idea, while investors focus on its risks, and the key to raising capital is therefore lowering risk, not hyping the upside, and the Entrepreneurs with this clear understanding, and who say how they’ll reduce risk are the ones who get the capital.
Of course, investors and growing companies understand that risk is always a part of the equation, but they want to see evidence that an Entrepreneur recognizes the risk factors facing the business and has taken steps to control them, which means addressing questions about market risk, financial risk, and technological risk, stressing not the dazzling upside but the return investors can reasonably expect, weighted against a limited and carefully chosen and defined set of risks.
If an investor likes what they see in the management team section, they will usually proceed to the financial projections, and obviously one of the most important things an investor wants to see is what the potential return might be weighted against the clearly defined risks, and for this they turn to the projected profits of the business. Finally, keep in mind that while your business plan need not discuss the amount of ownership you were willing to give up (that will be negotiated later) it should give the investors some idea of what returns they might expect to receive from their investment in your business.
The Game of Business!
Published April 13, 2010 | To become really good at any game including business, you need to live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it, and business is no different, especially the fact you need to have fun and realize the game of business is a lot more enjoyable when you are trying to do more than just make money including helping others meet their needs.
When you learn to look at business as a game with many rules, you start to realize that it’s no different than a card game, than poker for example, and you will never stop learning, and continue to read books to learn from the many Entrepreneurs who have gone before and been successful at the game. You should come to also realize that you can only learn by rolling up your sleeves and executing the game/business plan, since nothing ever replaces actual experience, and just because you might win a hand doesn’t mean you’re good and there is nothing more for you to learn, you simply might have just been lucky.
You will come to know that part of the game is learning to adapt and change your style of play as the dynamics of the business game change, and remain ready to change as the dynamics can become very fluid, meaning the most farsighted players with the most stamina and focus will usually win, and be most mindful that hoping and wishing are not part of a good game/business plan, and you must stick to your principles.
Finally, know that you will both win and lose some along the way, but it’s the results of the long term that matters most, and never go for something that’s less risky over positive expected and perceived value, since least risky many times means least value, and the player that wins all the least risky hands will never be the player that makes the most money in the long run.
In closer examination the more some Entrepreneurs apply lessons, strategies and insights they have learned as part of their success at games similar to business, serve them well in the never ending, and ever changing Game of Business.
Questions a Business Plan Must Answer
Published August 26, 2009 | 
Many Entrepreneurs and businesses have already been able to develop and implement clear, concise business strategies critical to successful, efficient and more profitable operations, but other businesses and Entrepreneurs that have either ignored or refused to consider developing a business plan for many different reasons, far outnumber them.
The Entrepreneurs and businesses that fail to plan (plan to fail) have also failed to consider that developing a business strategy doesn’t have to be restrictive (a common fear), and can be really as flexible and simple as they prefer, especially when first starting the planning process.
Following are questions and issues that need to be addressed as part of a well thought-out, clear and concise business plan, and of course other issues specific to the individual business project will also need to be addressed as they are identified.
What does the business stand for now and what will it be in the future?
- This question addresses the questions of mission and vision for the business.
- It should not only address what the business is but also what the business is not.
What does success look like?
- This is about goal setting, and if you don’t know what success looks like then you might never find it.
- Goals should always be set for specific time frames.
- Ask yourself: What do I have to accomplish by the end of this year to achieve my definition of success?
What do you make?
- Every business must create “value” and ultimately make something.
- This is about the basic “value proposition” of the business.
How do you make it?
- This question is about your craft, systems, and your way of doing business.
- It addresses your inputs, processes, and outputs of the business.
How do you sell it?
- While making something is about the creation of value this question is about marketing or capturing value.
- Many entrepreneurs are great at creating value but many failed to capture it by dropping the ball when it comes to marketing execution.
- As management author Peter Drucker wrote, “There are only two functions of business: Innovation and Marketing.”
Who are the customers?
- This question addresses the people that the business services.
- Most successful Entrepreneurs and small businesses operate in turbulent and uncertain markets catering to small niches of customers that a big business does not want to serve.
- By doing this they are able to stay off the competitive radar screen of the big companies that can’t afford to take huge gambles on such uncertain market segments.
What can you or business contributed to the world that no one else can?
- This is about the understanding of what your “one big idea” is.
- It involves a deep passion, understanding of what you can be the best in the world at, and a sufficient economic engine to drive it.
Who will manage the business and how?
- Who are the people who will operate and grow the business and how will they be organized? This speaks to the organizational structure of the business, as well as, the legal structuring.
- Having a great idea is never enough. Greater ideas are common, but the people who can successfully implement are rare.
How are profits generated and where do they come from?
- At the end of the day, the business must be profitable or it is not a business.
- You should be well versed in the revenue and cost drivers that make business profitable.
- Without profits the company cannot grow and will never be anything more than just a lifestyle business.
What stands in the way of success and how will you overcome it?
- This is about your future story, the enemy and how you overcome it and ultimately win.
- Up until now, you have been addressing questions that concern your business model which is essentially your business in the vacuum.
- But sooner or later, your business will confront internal forces or external competitors that will potentially keep you from achieving your goals.
- Dealing with this reality is, in essence, your strategy.