Not Sure Yet if Social Networking is for You
Published August 14, 2009 | 
So you have been looking into LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Blogs to try and figure out what the importance of social networking is to economic development organizations, municipal organizations and businesses, and you are still trying to determine if you need to take that first step towards the development of social media technology for yourself and your organization.
Of course, there are many people that have embraced social media, find it a lot of fun, and have connected with hundreds of others that they would not have thought possible just a few months ago, and they represent the majority of users and members of all social media platforms, which leaves the remainder that are still trying to figure out if it will really help in growing their specific organization or business.
There are a few good reasons that indicate why all businesses and organizations should begin using social media platforms if they have not already:
- Social networking sites have become the easiest way that people can share information about your organization, as you can easily upload any of your presentations, pictures, documents, and videos that people will be more than willing to share with their friends and associates.
- A critically important reason is that social networking sites is a great way to increase your search engine optimization (SEO) and rankings of your organization’s website, since every link that points back to the organization’s website adds to the improvement
of the websites page rankings, and organizations should most definitely take advantage by including links to their website in other posts and any of their social networking pages. - As a source of gathering information, social networking can be used to both gather and share customer feedback, and in the future, links to social networking sites will become a standard piece of information along with phone and fax numbers as ways to communicate with any company or organization, and in addition to gathering customer feedback, social networking platforms can be used to share this information, because customers can quickly find and read recommendations from their friends, associates and peers.
Finally, one of the questions that most comes up, is how much time is required for social networking? It really all depends upon what you define as your social networking goals, at a minimum, you only need to check in a few times a week to add comments, pictures, 
videos or other documents and information, and to quantify the time it takes on a daily basis, for those who want to find new friends or generate leads, one or more hours per day will typically be they average time spent, and people that are most involved with social networking and add least 10 comments per day, will of course spend more time.
Now that you realize social networking is for your organization or business, rest assured that it is not too late to start taking advantage of the benefits social media technology offers and can bring to you in greater awareness and connectivity with your market, the first step to starting the social networking process is developing a well thought-out and focused strategic plan of the results you want and expect, and how you are going to accomplish them, so what are you waiting for, get started planning.
Entrepreneur Alert: Twitter Experiences Major Security Problems
Published July 15, 2009 | 
Team Altman Interesting News:
Entrepreneurs and business owners should always maintain a constant vigilant guard against someone obtaining confidential personal and secret information either through use of online technology and fraudulent system access by individual hackers, or covert espionage operations for either corporate or government infiltration of offices and systems.
Security is a very fundamental component to the integrity of Internet usage by both individuals and businesses, and without having adequate security assets and their most effective configurations as part of your overall strategic technology plan, it is only a matter of time before the inevitable security breach happens, and many times with severe consequences, so remember, Entrepreneurs must always be vigilant to safeguard their most important information assets.
The Rest of the Story 1: http://mashable.com/2009/07/15/twitter-security-meltdown/
The Rest of the Story 2: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/in-our-inbox-hundreds-of-confidential-twitter-documents/
Understand the Results of Your Business Plan
Published June 30, 2009 | 
I need to make one statement right away and get it out in the open, and that is the fact that no business plan is ever 100% dead on accurate, but of course having no plan is absolutely never the right thing to do either, so as a result it’s important to examine the actual results of the business compared to those projected in the business plan.
Most plans are wrong and yet vital, it’s an unexpected and surprising thing to hear especially if you have never put a business plan together, so after making a statement like that where else do we go, except to the very core of what business and strategic planning is.
Let me start out by saying that those who are deeply involved in plans prepare projections that many times are incorrect, and no one I know even came close in predicting the steep plunge in the global economy last year in the fall of 2008, so it goes without saying that those who are deeply involved in business planning processes around the world have been going through a lot of changes, adjustments and corrections, and multiple reviews and revisions.
So you see why my opening statements about needless ineffective business plans, and yet their importance starts to make sense, and as we look ahead to the rest of the 2009 many upbeat forecasts are still in the review and revision process and starting to reflect the reality of the global economic situation, which always brings up the question why do business and strategic planning in the first place, is everyone just wasting their time developing plans and forecasts? And the answer becomes obvious that although the results are inaccurate at times, how can we determine where we are if a map hasn’t been produced to show us how we got there, and of course where we are going.
If when you look at your plan prepared last year, and of course the results should be greatly different from what actually took place, you would compare the two in detail and look not only where the differences are, but where the greatest differences exist, for example, where expenses were tied to sales, where sales performed as expected, and look for how all the numbers were supposed to tie together, not just why they didn’t.
And if you are like the many thousands of global entrepreneurs that did not have a plan, then this might be a really good time to get the process started in order for you to develop and have a much clearer view of your future business, and you can start by making some simple projections for sales, costs and expenses, and at this time don’t worry about whether they’re wrong or not, just try and make sure that you check each month to determine where and how and in which direction the numbers were incorrect so that you can correct the information, and this whole process should bring you much closer to the action of what is taking place in the global markets and increase your awareness of the actions you need to take to increase your success.
By implementing the review process on a monthly basis, if you are wrong you are only wrong one month at a time, and as you use the plan comparison to actual results and associated analysis to see more closely what is happening exactly, your adjustments will improve, and in the future results will be much more accurate and in tune with market activity, and you should see monthly improvements.
These planning and analysis steps will put you in a better position to forecast more accurately when the markets should start to improve, and they will at some point, and you will be able to use what you learned in the process to see the signs, anticipate what will take place, and plan your actions accordingly.
So although the results of planning may be wrong and inaccurate, it is still a critical key to successful business and an essential tool for successful global entrepreneurs, as they learn that in addition to preparing an initial strategic plan, an important part of the process is making necessary changes and adjustments in determining how to recover in the most effective and efficient manner, and how would you know what steps to take in the recovery process if you didn’t prepare the business and strategic plans in the first place.
The Most Common Business Planning Mistakes
Published June 25, 2009 | 
The time tested adage “A failure to plan is a plan for failure” is more true today then ever before, and one of the most important tasks facing an entrepreneur is the development and completion of a clear, concise, and effective business plan that addresses the many aspects of the business in a sound cohesive manner that communicates a well thought out and concisely written road map for entrepreneurial success. Following are some of the most common business planning mistakes entrepreneurs need to be aware of and avoid making.
Not Disclosing any Weaknesses
- It is a difficult aspect of writing a good business plan, the dealing with problems, obstacles, and weaknesses is part of the planning function, but every business has weaknesses without exception and savvy investors to their due diligence in seeking these out, and the best way of handling such issues is to just get them out in the open and to have a detailed action plan that effectively addresses these problems.
No Strategy for Distribution
- How your business takes its product and services to market is one of the most fundamentally important questions your business plan addresses, so at all cost resist the temptation to cover all bases by listing every possible channel possibility, since what this tells the investor is that you really don’t have a distribution strategy.
Lack of Information Integration
- Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of not integrating the narrative with the numbers in the feasibility, for example, if you site in your marketing plan the advertising media you plan to use and its associated costs and scheduling this should show up in the exact same way in the financial projections. Another example is stating in the plan narrative that you need a loan in the amount of $X amount of dollars, and yet there are no loan payments be made in the financial projections, so always check for such integration between the two sections of your business plan.
Poor Competitive Analysis
- It is not sufficient just to list the name and address of your competitors, since this is not, an analysis, and an investor is interested in knowing such things as what you expect to see from your competitors near term and long-term, their strategic direction, their core competencies, what makes them tick, why customers buy from them, their marketing and sales efforts, their funding the position, and their weaknesses and how they can be exploited. Failing to take your competitors seriously only hurts you and your business, so remember every business has competition, whether it is direct or indirect, and show a healthy respect for the incumbents while demonstrating a compelling and believable way to compete with them, so if you downplay the competition or state that you have no competition in either means that there’s no market or you don’t know how to use a search engine.
Failing to Address Risks
- An entrepreneur likes to hype the up side while an investor likes to evaluate risk versus reward, so if you need to raise outside capital you may need to subdue your visions of “grandeur without boundaries” and instead focus on the “external future risks” that could prevent your plan from being successful, and remember a clear analysis looking at market, financial, management, and technological risk and any action plans you have for overcoming these obstacles always works best.
Legal Problems
- Savvy investors are always on the look out for potential legal snags your plan may have, such as the product developed while you were employed somewhere else, any employment contracts or “non-compete agreements,” any possible patent or trademark infringement, clear ownership of your product or service, so remember that full disclosure of any of these issues is a must to avoid larger problems later on, and see an attorney if you need advise on any such issues.
No Sales Assumptions
- Business plans that simply state a projected sales number without detailing the precise assumptions made to arrive at the forecasted sales levels are useless to investors, as the assumptions themselves are often more useful than the final sales number anyway, because they breakdown the drivers of the company’s revenue model, you should be able to provide some rationale for how your projections were put together, and chances are an investor will expect more than just your “best guess.”
Unrealistic Profitability
- Lenders and investors usually have a number of companies that they fund in their portfolios, and it is important to note that a good majority of these companies are not wildly profitable, and a good number of them are actually losing money. So the lesson is it is hard to pull the wool over investors’ eyes about the profitability you put forth in your projections, as they are keenly aware of the cold, hard reality of the competitive business landscape. You should also know that most lenders subscribe to information services that summarize financial statement data that tells them the actual profitability of businesses in your industry, so in order to avoid this mistake it pays to once again do your homework, as financial statement studies such as those produced by Dun and Bradstreet and RMA Financial Statement Studies can be found at your local library usually at the reference desk. Be sure and use this data and compare it to your projected financial statements, and know what the numbers say and be prepared to answer any questions about why your numbers may vary from those companies found in your industry.
No Target Market
- Most small businesses cannot afford to market to the general consumer and/or industrial markets, as resources are just too limited and failing to identify a particular customer niche that is being sought is there for a major mistake many business plans make, and not only should the target market be identified, your plan and market research has to be included to demonstrate how this market segment has been identified.
Over-Diversification
- Entrepreneurs get excited about their ideas and see numerous opportunities for marketing them, but you should try to focus the attention of the plan on one main opportunity for the project, as a new or early stage business should not attempt to create multiple markets nor pursue multiple projects until it has successfully developed one main strength, and plans to present endless opportunities without focusing on any one of them just don’t get funded.
The Secrets of How to Organize Genius
Published May 28, 2009 | 
Having a strategic plan is one thing, but the other half of the equation is of course the implementation of the plan and for the entrepreneur, implementation is at least as important as the development of a sound strategy, and indeed for many entrepreneurial firms, superior execution can be the strategy, so let’s look at what the best entrepreneurs know about strategic execution.
There is a strong individualist bent in American culture and the myth of the triumphant individual is deeply ingrained in the American psyche, and whether it is midnight Rider Paul Revere or Basketball’s Michael Jordan, we are a nation enamored of heroes. But the more you look at the history of business, government, the arts, and the sciences, the clearer it is that few great accomplishments are ever the work of a single indivdual and our mythology refuses to catch up with our reality.
For example, who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? It was the famous Renaissance artist Michelangelo right? Actually, this misconception is a result of our individualist cultural mythology, as we know now from historical accounts that Michelangelo actually worked with a group of more than 13 artists in painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Our mythology continues to promote the triumphs of the great individual at the expense of the Great Group or team, but the group is the vehicle how the world actually gets changed today, and in a society as complex and technologically sophisticated as ours, the most urgent projects require the coordinated contributions of many talented people, as there are simply too many problems to be identified and solved and too many connections to be made for any one person to deal with.
Even as we make the case for collaboration, we resisted the idea of collective creativity, but many great entrepreneurs throughout history have understood the limitations and dark side of the hero mythology, and instead, they have systematically organized genius and the power of Great Groups and getting their visions brought to life. And this is the precise skill and discipline you must practice if you expect to bring your strategic plan to life, as your only chance is to bring people together from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines who can be frank about a problem through the prism of complementary minds allied in common purpose.
Every Great Group is extraordinary in its own way, but a study put forth by Warren Bennis who wrote “Organizing Genius” suggests 10 principles common to all, and that apply as well to their larger organizations, and these principles not only defined the nature of Great Groups, they also redefine the roles and responsibilities of leaders, and to be sure, Great Groups rely on many long-established practices of good management including effective mediation, exceptional recruitment, genuine empowerment, and personal commitment.
At the heart of every Great Group is a shared dream and all Great Groups believe that they are on a mission from God, that they could change the world, make a dent in the universe and they are obsessed with their work, as it becomes not a job but a fervent quest, and that belief is what brings the necessary cohesion and energy to their work. They manage conflict by abandoning individual egos to the pursuit of the dream, so conflict, even with diverse people, is resolved by reminding people and each other of the mission.
All Great Groups seem to have disdain for their corporate overseers and all are protected from them by a leader and not necessarily the leader who defines the dream, and this duality of administration can be found in all Great Groups, along with one other important trait in all cases, physical distance from headquarters helped a great deal.
Even the most noble mission can be helped by an onerous opponent which has literally been true in many projects that had enemies both real or invented, as most organizations have an implicit admission to destroy an adversary, and that is often more motivating than their explicit permission, for example, Apple computers implicit mission was to bury IBM (remember the famous 1984 Macintosh TV commercial that included the line, “Don’t buy a computer you can’t lift.”), and the decline of Apple in years since have followed the subsequent softening of their mission.
All successful entrepreneurs inevitably view themselves as the feisty David, hurling fresh ideas at the big, backward looking Goliath, and world changing groups are usually populated by Mavericks, people at the periphery of their disciplines, and the sense of operating on the fringes gives them a “don’t count me out” scrappiness that feeds their obsession.
Membership in a Great Group isn’t a day job; it is a night and day job, and divorces, affairs, and other severe emotional fallout are typical, so such groups strike a Faustian bargain for the intensity and energy that they generate. On one hand, they are all non-hierarchical and very egalitarian, and yet they all have strong leaders, and that’s the paradox of group leadership, since you cannot have a great leader without a Great Group, and vice a versa, and in an important way, these groups made the leaders great. The leaders studied were seldom the brightest or best in the group, but neither are they passive players, but they were connoisseurs of talent, more like curators than creators.
Cherry picking the right talent for a group means knowing what you need and being able to spot it in others, and it also means understanding the chemistry of a group, as candidates are often grilled, almost hazed, by other members of the group and its leader. You see the same thing in great coaches, as they can place the right people in the right role, and get the right constellations and configurations within the group.
Youth might provide the physical stamina demanded at times by these groups, but Great Groups are also young in their spirit, ethos, and culture, and most important, because they’re young in spirit, group members don’t know what’s supposed to be impossible, which gives them the ability to do the impossible, as Great Groups don’t lack the experience of possibilities.