What’s in a Business Plan?

So you’ve got the idea, you’ve got the drive, and you’ve got the support of your wife to quit your job to pursue your dream of becoming an entrepreneur… you’re a lucky man, but one thing is missing, you’re business plan.

Business plans are what separate the financed with the struggling in the entrepreneurship game. A concrete business plan will outline exactly what you expect to achieve with your idea and when you expect to achieve it. This form of risk reduction is detrimental if you hope to receive financing from banks, venture capitalists, or angel investors.

Now, you can have the best business plan in the world, but when push comes to shove, how do you get the investors to bite? If you hope to generate interest, Dave Dambro of The Capital MatchPoint, recommends highlighting your strengths and downplaying your weaknesses as much as possible.

So there you have it. Companies are looking for strong ventures to invest in. If you can convince them that yours’ is just that, then you should be riding the investment train in no time!

Good luck!

Your key to success: the Elevator Pitch!

For my last blog entry, I will end on what I believe to be the most valuable piece of advice: prepare your elevator pitch!

You will often find yourself in situations where you have to introduce yourself along with what you do in less than a minute, the time of an elevator ride, for which you need to be ready. It will assist you for networking, career and investment opportunities. Too many people do not have a speech prepared and in consequence miss out!

There is no established method to create the best speech, but make sure you do some research because there are a wide variety of resources available to help you! Once Swimming with sharks is setup, make sure you visit the website to find the most useful information gathered on the elevator pitch.

Good luck with all of your endeavours!

 

Jessica

What Do You Do For A Living?

When someone asks you what you do for a living, do you want to be proud of what you say – or do you only care about the $$ sign on your next paycheck? Personally, I’d like both, but for some people, it’s whatever pays the mortgage! Check out this list of 37 weird jobs people have at http://www.jobprofiles.org/library/guidance/weird-jobs.htm.
My personal favorites are “The Chicken Sexer”, “The Dog Food Tester” and “The Professional Whistler” – who I’m pretty sure I met a few years ago oddly enough. Anyway, the one that really caught my attention was “The Odd Job Journalist”. Yes that’s right, someone actually gets paid to write articles on other weird jobs -how ironic is that? Must be a pretty fun job though, and in the end, isnt that what counts? My theory in life is to do what you love, because in the end, that’s when you’ll be you’re happiest.

Thanks guys,

Christa

What’s the big idea?

It’s a night like any other… it’s 1am, you’re sitting at your desk doing something completely unrelated, and then all of a sudden, it strikes you – the greatest idea of all time. You mull it over a million times in your head, write it down somewhere, and then put the piece of paper in a box that won’t ever see the light of day again.

So what’s the problem? If this idea is so good, how come you’re not out there bringing it to life? Simple, it’s because you don’t know how to get started. However, luckily for you, in an era of online social networking and real-time information, the resources available to you are limitless! So before getting your hopes down about the pitfalls of entrepreneurship, here are a few sites that might help you on your path:

1) sprouter.com

Sprouter essentially operates as a Twitteresque style website, where members post short blurbs/updates relating to entrepreneurial thoughts and ideas. It’s a great way to make a few good connections, discuss business ideas, and navigate through a long list of entrepreneurial events taking place from coast to coast.

2) bulbstorm.com

Bulbstorm goes a bit deeper into online social networking and really creates  a forum for discussion about your thoughts and ideas. This site allows both regular entrepreneurs and large companies to receive feedback on new product and service ideas. Posters are also awarded points for different activities, which boosts their ranking and status within the site.

3) partnerup.com

Partnerup is another online social networking site for entrepreneurs, that focuses almost exclusively on linking business partners and financiers through “opportunities.” Other perks of the site include  registries to search for commercial real estate and service providers (i.e. marketers and/or accountants).

Because we love top tens

Having a business degree does not assure the success of one’s own business. The opposite of this principal doesn’t find absolute validity either. Nonetheless, some interesting pointers could help. Here is the top ten Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs (obviously we could find thousands of them, but let’s take a closer look at these ones)

1. Think success.
2. Be passionate with what you do.
3. Focus on your strengths.
4. Never consider the possibility of failure.
5. Plan accordingly
6. Work hard!
7. Constantly Look for Ways to Network.
8. Willingness to Learn.
9. Persevere and have faith.
10. Discipline yourself.

These 10 tips are applicable for any career path, and not only for entrepreneurs. For in depth explanation of each secret check out the following website powerhomebiz.com

Have a good one,
And please take about 30 seconds to realize how beautiful life is!

Annie

What if you’re not in the right place?

The top 10 entrepreneurial countries!

1 New Zealand
2 United States
3 Canada
4 Australia
5 Singapore
6 Hong Kong, China
7 United Kingdom
8 Ireland
9 Denmark
10 Iceland
What to do if you don’t belong to one of these, and does this mean that you can’t perform up to

your full capacity in a country that does not rank in one of the top 10??

Just like values in every culture, there are entrepreneurial facilities in every country.

Depending on the general environment of a country and the general values and acceptances

some countries have more or less facilities then others.

So let’s say that you were born in one country that is not very entrepreneurial friendly,

Here are a few tips that would get you on the right track:

1- If your idea is really not suited for the general environment in which you are, you have two options,

either to travel to a country where your idea would have more chances to be adopted, or to think out of

the box by either travelling or researching how others did it previously, in order to tweak your idea and

suit it to the current population that surrounds you.

2- Don’t be stubborn and be more lenient towards different and new ideas.

Sometimes your idea could be great, but it’s not because of the area you’re in that it won’t work,

it could simply be because it is not well developed or well presented.

3- Be consistent and believe in your idea. If you do not take risks and push the limits to the end,

you will never know if this would have worked or not!

thank you for reading,

Ralph

Top resources for student entrepreneurs

As finals approach, the search for the best resources for class material is on! Assembling this bundle of information is what all students learn to develop! Yet, innovation is rarely aimed for in this context even though it may be the key to your breakthough or success as an entrepreneur! Here is a list of references to some innovative guides, tips, or resources that you may not have considered:

The top unexpected books for entrepreneurs: http://www.toiletpaperentrepreneur.com/blog/best-entrepreneur-books-that-you-never-expected

The top 100 blogs separated by the user demography (age, gender, type of entrepreneur, innovation, college transition,..) along with brief descriptions for each website: http://onlinecollegedegree.org/2009/03/12/100-best-blogs-for-young-entrepreneurs-2/

All of the information on the 21 most popular entrepreneurship competitions – Extremely important as it is a great way to build your network, meek potential venture capitalists, and mostly raise money for your project: http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessplans/article73208.html 

The top FREE resources that will allow you to achieve success: http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/january/199052.html

The top 10 interview podcasts of great entrepeneurs: http://jonbischke.com/2009/03/27/best-entrepreneur-stories-podcasts/

The top advice to interact directly with Venture Capitalists: http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2009/02/top-ten-ways-the-best-entrepreneurs-interact-with-vcs.html

Finally, for all you students that can still take classes, check out this global view of the skills that successful entrepreneurs need so that you can learn to gain more from your classes as well as select the best ones for your entrepreneurial endeavours: http://www.collegecrunch.org/feature/top-skills-and-classes-necessary-to-become-a-great-entrepreneur/

This list is not exhaustive, but it gives you all an overview of some websites that you should be checking out next!

If you have any other suggestions, please post them! Thanks

 

Jessica

Success stories

With the purpose of inspiring all of you entrepreneurs out there, I want to share a few success stories from Entrepreneur.com. I think that a recurring feeling that a lot of us have experienced at some point when we have come with a good idea, is the uncertainty of not knowing if it is going to actually work and that we are not going to waist our time and resources. With this in mind I think is helpful to share a few stories about people that may have gone through the same stage but at the end decided to go for it, and succeeded.

The Irony of the Safe Bet

This is the story of Michael Khan, who became a successful entrepreneur after walking away from a 10 year career on Wall Street.
More Than Just a Number

Jennifer Walzer was young and fearless but tired of feeling that she was only a number inside a huge company. She felt she was overlooked, overworked, and unappreciated, until she started her own successful company called Backup my Info!
Master of Munchies

Keith Mullin created Gamer Crub: “I needed some help. I started thinking about various designs of different ways to snack while you’re computer gaming or multi-tasking. He needed a low-grease, non-crumb-causing snack with a performance-enhancing edge.”

For the complete list of success stories go to the link below

http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/successstories/index.html

Daniel

Social Media Buzz

Social Media. It’s been buzzing around for a while now, but what exactly is it? I wasn’t really sure either so when I got asked to start doing some research and integrate this into my company, I figured I better take action. Last Friday   attended a social media presentation at Mcgill, by Jeff Scott. It was very interesting to see what tools are out there to help you ad your company broadcast itself, and sometimes, it’s completely FREE!

Applications such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are 3 of the biggest Social Media tools available right now. Advertising on Facebook costs next to nothing AND can give you thousands of impressions. Linked In connects you to  the business world and is your business network. You can refer people to jobs, post your own CV, and converse with other business professionals to learn more about a certain field. What great system! Twitter is something else too! And no, its not just about knowing what your next door neighbor had for breakfast. In fact, Jeff told us of one case where someone used it in a crisis situation and had his friend bail him out of jail when he was all traveling in Egypt. Check out the whole story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/18/AR2008041802803.html.
Companies also have to keep in mind that monitoring is very important. Finding out what people are saying about your company in blogs, on Twitter or wherever it might be, is important for you to know, and if need be, react! For example, the two videos posted above were posted on Youtube. The first is of a very bad parking job of someone running over a Hyundai car, caught by the parking lot security camera. The second, is Hyundai’s response via Youtube once seeing this video. A classic example of monitoring,  finding something on social media and responding via Social Media! How cool is that!

Social Media is everywhere now and to keep a competitive advantage and be visible to your audience, you’ll most likely have to start getting on board with this. Good luck and have fun! This is only the beginning.

Get started with:

www.Facebook.com

www.twitter.com

www.linkedin.com

Anyone else have any cool stories you’d like to share? I’d love to hear them and Im sure others would too!

Montreal entrepreneurs unite!

If you’re an entrepreneur, a self starter, or just someone who’s interested in

Guest speaker, Saul Colt, is guaranteed to wow the crowd on Tuesday.

the latest business trends and opportunities, you should seriously consider making your way out to Brutopia (1219 Crescent St.) this coming Tuesday night from for Sprout Up, a “free event for forward-thinking Montreal-area entrepreneurs to gather and mind-meld.” If you’re looking for a great opportunity to brainstorm and network with fellow entrepreneurs, this is definitely the place for you!

The event is hosted by Sprouter and is guaranteed to be insightful, not to mention it’s at Brutopia, which has some of the best microbrews in Montreal!

The event starts at 18:00 at Brutopia (1219 Crescent St.) and runs until 21:00.

Click here to register.