Archive for January 2012
Business Plan: The Simplest Business Plan Ever
If you’re a solo professional like I am, you know how tough it is to find any time at all to do any business planning. Doing a full business plan is a must if you’re planning to seek financing or investors, but most solo professionals don’t need anything that complicated.
Don’t get me wrong, business planning is one of the most important things you need to do to succeed in your one man or woman show. Without planning you’ll drift aimlessly from one crisis to the next and one idea to the next, never really getting anything done.
So, what’s a solo pro to do? Here’s what I do in my own business:
My business plan consists of one page with very little on it. It simply lists the three goals that I must achieve this year. Then, I list a statement for each goal: To achieve Goal #1 I need to….This is followed by two to five activities or action items I need to do to make that happen.
That’s it. That’s the whole plan. The beauty is the simplicity. I simply cannot handle more than that. I don’t have a staff. I don’t have “people”. Everything has to be structured so that I can get it done simply and systematically.
So, let’s say one of my goals is to increase sales by a certain number, like $25,000. I then ask myself, “What do you need to do to make that happen?” Maybe I want to develop an ebook or add a new service. How many potential or current customers will I need to reach? How much time will I need to develop the book or service? How will I market it?
From those answers, I develop my schedule. What do I need to do monthly, weekly, daily? I break it up into small pieces that take an hour or less. For example, if I decide I need to send out 100 marketing postcards in a month, I break it into 25 cards a week. Then, I put it on my schedule each week, just as I do my appointments with clients.
To keep myself on track, I place my mini plan in front of my keyboard so every morning it’s the first thing I see. I also include a note to myself. It reminds me that “Nothing Else Matters.” I follow it with my company slogan: Get Knowledge. Get Focus. Get Results.
Complex plans take tons of time to develop and many (if not most) end up gathering dust on a shelf. Using a simple plan improves your focus and helps you to achieve great results.
Business Schools – The Top 5 Business Administration Universities
Business Administration is a very popular major for undergraduate students and graduate students alike. Because of the various specializations that one can study within that major, the degree has many uses upon graduation, and opportunities are numerous. Business Administration degrees can be earned online and in a traditional classroom setting and can be found in all degree levels. If you have ever considered earning a BA degree you want to make sure you are getting a top-notch education from a fantastic school. Here are the top 5 schools that offer undergraduate BA degrees according to US News & World Report.
1. University of Pennsylvania
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. University of California – Berkeley
4. University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
5. New York University & University of Virginia (tied for 5th)
If you are seeking a graduate Business Administration Degree, like a MBA or DBA, here are the top 5 schools for those programs:
1. Harvard University & Stanford University (tied for first)
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Business)
4. University of Chicago (Booth campus)
Many of these schools offer traditional on-campus degree programs for their masters degree programs however some of the top 5 undergraduate programs may offer online programs for their degrees.
A business degree can find you work in small and large companies and even prepare you for starting your own business. If you had a concentration in accounting or marketing, you can also find a career within those fields without that having been your actual major but more of a focus within the business administration. It’s because of the structure of the business administration degree program that shows how versatile the degree can be and why so many people choose to major in business administration.
The Best Online Business Home Opportunity
I’ve been doing business on the Internet for 13 years now. I talk to many business owners, like myself, as well as many people looking to start businesses online. I am very frequently asked “what is the best online business home opportunity that I should look into.” I’ve done some research on this topic and have not been very happy with what I’ve found. Researching this online is extremely frustrating, and not due to shortage of information. The frustration comes from the many claims for instant income through this or that online business home opportunity, just send us $500. You’ll be making $10,000 a month with no work. Yeah, right.
So, what kind of straight-talk can I offer you? What is my recommendation for the best online business home opportunity? I take a different approach. I feel very strongly that you need to form your own strategies. You need to do research, invest time, and learn. You need to experiment. Ultimately, nobody is going to tell you exactly how to do this. You will have to figure that out by yourself. If you are really serious about finding an opportunity to start an online business from home, expect to put in the hours required.
So where do you start? Start with trusted names. Join Google AdSense. Then register for Amazon Associates, Commission Junction and ebay. These are big programs that are extremely well established. They are extremely trust-worthy and therefore, are a great place to start your home business experimentation. It’s very important that you learn how to fail as inexpensively as possible. One of the best articles I ever read was all about how successful businesses understand two things:
1) Failure is unavoidable. No business has it right at first.
2) If you accept #1, you need to learn to fail has cheaply as possible so you’re money won’t run out!
And you will see this in action. Just spend some money on a program that makes wild claims, and then check back in on that decision a month later. A few of these will teach you the lesson very quickly. What I’ve done to avoid this is to really look for the opportunity where I can pull in a little money to fund the experimentation I want to do. At least try to break-even. This has not been to hard for me because I have the technical skills to try things and see what works very inexpensively because I’m only spend my own time. If you don’t have these technical skills you have a couple of choices.
1) You can outsource your technical tasks to a developer at a cost.
2) You can look for tools that allow you to do Internet marketing experimentation through admin panels.
I can highly recommend IncomeStores.com as one such tool that will allow you to build a complete site without programming. I work very closely on this project and have daily contact with people who earn income through it from the big programs I mentioned above, but don’t have any programming skills. There are others out there. As you do your research on the right online business home opportunity for you, I’m sure you’ll find some you can recommend.