Do Business Well

Another important aspect of the change in your company from survival oriented to management oriented is the way in which you establish goals and monitor them. The following questions are designed to take you through a process of developing a new set of goals for your company:

1. What do you want the company to do for you in the next twenty years? Ten years? Five years? Twelve months? Are you primarily interested in the income stream that can be generated? Is wealth building as opposed to income generation your most important desire? Possibly you’d prefer a lighter work schedule, even if it meant less income. Will you be happy if you aren’t growing? Is it a high priority for you to broaden markets?

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The key criteria for building a Brand Identity are: appeal to prospects, relevance, the right personality for the market, user friendliness and the offer of an important benefit that is not currently being made by the competition.

A good brand is easily recognizable and its name must be easy to pronounce. Simplicity is the key to success. Consumers must remember it easily. This is what branding is all about: occupying the number one spot in a consumer’s mind to ensure repeat sales. Another important consideration is whether the brand name can be protected or not. Intellectual property must be registered as soon as possible and must be difficult to copy. Generic names are difficult to register (for example, The Coffee Place is a generic name whereas Joe’s Coffee Place is attached to a name and easier to protect). A good brand name cannot be copied easily (think Compaq, Intel, Coca-Cola and Nike). Continue Reading »

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So far I’ve talked about using savings accounts and CDs to save up stacks of cash. There are lots of other investments out there— stocks, bonds, precious metals, commodities, and many more. Most of these kinds of investments don’t really work for teenagers because they require large amounts of money to get started.

There’s one nonbank investment that works just fine for teenagers—mutual funds. They don’t require lots of money to get started, and they can make your savings grow faster than a bank account. Here’s how they work.

Let’s say you have $500 to invest in something. You could buy 100 shares of a stock trading at $5 per share, but that’s putting all your eggs in one basket. If the stock does poorly, you’ll lose some or all of your investment. Not a good idea. Continue Reading »

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I don’t know your financial situation or what you dream of doing in your future. But if you’re like most teenagers, you have a specific high-dollar dream in your immediate future, whether it’s a car, a college education, or even a three-month overseas mission trip after you graduate from high school. Whatever your next big financial goal, this four-step strategy can help you reach it.

1. GO FOR GROWTH

Your number one investment goal is to make your money grow. Right now you have few expenses compared to your income. But soon you’ll be paying for cars, education, furniture, entertainment, clothes, food, housing, medical expenses, and a thousand other things that someday will obliterate your paycheck. Make the right investments now, and your money will grow substantially until you really need it. Continue Reading »

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2. Investors. Investors are most interested in factors that can help predict growth, because growth is essential for them to get an attractive return on their investment. These factors include the market’s likely future, the management team’s experience, evidence of fast-growing sales, and so forth. They want to see their investment go into marketing rather than R&D expenses. The existence of tangible assets is less important to investors because they aren’t as concerned with being “repaid” in the same way. But investors do want to see a concise plan—preferably 40 pages or less. Continue Reading »

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Now that you’ve determined whom you want to addressyour business plan to, you need to consider what—and howmuch—that audience really wants to hear. Fred Gibbons of Software Publishing Corp. says that he intentionally kept his business plan to a maximum of ten pages because he knew that venture capitalists appreciate conciseness and brevity. And, indeed, he received compliments (not to mention offers of financing) from each of the three venture capital firms he presented the plan to. He was also able to show the same plan to potential suppliers and key employees because, in addition to being easy to read, it emphasized the company’s plans for aggressive sales and marketing that would lead to substantial but controlled growth. Continue Reading »

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Market strategy number two is a logical outgrowth of the concept of core competencies, which is the idea that, in a world where specialists increasingly outperform generalists, a business should focus on what it does best and what is essential to its success. All other tasks should be farmed out to people who perform them better. Consistent with that credo, more companies are having components assembled by someone else, as well as delegating chores that include payroll, bookkeeping, manufacturing, even research and development, to specialists who have the scale of operations to perform them efficiently. Allocating as much of what you aren’t good at to someone who is better will free your own time and capital to devote to myriad other tasks. Continue Reading »

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