Business Plans that Work: A Guide For Small Business 2/E (Economia e discipline aziendali) - Softcover

Zacharakis, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0071748830 ISBN 13: 9780071748834

Verlag: McGraw-Hill, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Turn your great idea into BIG PROFITS with a powerful, persuasive business plan! With any endeavor, good planning is the key to good results-especially in the launch of a new business or product. Business Plans That Work gives you an easy-to-follow template for conceptualizing, writing, focusing, and revising a business plan that converts your business idea into financial profit. A virtual blueprint for entrepreneurial success, this new edition of the popular entrepreneur's guide provides all the tools you need to communicate the value of your idea to investors and attract key talent, and create a plan you can turn to throughout the entire process of starting and running a business. You'll learn how to: Determine what to include in each plan, why, and for whom Secure the capital you need to get the project off the ground Assess opportunities and risks involved in your project Avoid common pitfalls that cost money, time, and effort With Business Plans That Work, you have everything you need to create winning strategies for development, sales, marketing, operations, distribution, and everything else successful ventures are founded on.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

BUSINESS PLANS THAT WORK

A GUIDE FOR SMALL BUSINESS

By ANDREW ZACHARAKIS, STEPHEN SPINELLI, JEFFRY A. TIMMONS

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Andrew Zacharakis, Stephen Spinelli, and Jeffry A. Timmons
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-174883-4

Contents

Preface
1 Entrepreneurs Create the Future
2 Before You Start Planning, Ask the Right Questions
3 Getting Started
4 Industry: Zoom Lens on Opportunity
5 Company and Product Description: Selling Your Vision
6 Marketing Plan: Reaching the Customer
7 Operations and Development: Execution
8 Team: The Key to Success
9 The Critical Risks and Offering Plan Sections
10 Financial Plan: Telling Your Story in Numbers
11 Conclusion
Appendix 1: Quick Screen Exercise
Appendix 2: Business Planning Guide Exercise
Appendix 3: Sample Presentation
Index
About the Author

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

ENTREPRENEURS CREATE THE FUTURE

The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. Theanswers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in ourlaboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in theimaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people onEarth.

—President Barack Obama Address to Joint Session of Congress,Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Entrepreneurship runs deep in the American psyche. Many of today's heroes arecelebrated for their entrepreneurial achievements. Sergey Brin and Larry Page,Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, Sam Walton, and ArthurBlank among others have created businesses that are household names (Google,Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot). Moreover, manyof today's leading companies were founded at the depths of recession, such asIBM, Microsoft, GE, FedEx, Hewlett-Packard, Revlon Cosmetics among many others.In fact, a study out of the Kauffman Foundation finds that more than half of the2009 Fortune 500 companies and nearly half of the 2008 Inc. 500 companies werelaunched during a recession or a bear market. In 5–10 years, we will seemany new companies on the Inc. 500 and the Fortune 500 that were founded duringthe "Great Recession." If America has learned anything during the GreatRecession of 2008–10, it is that job security is a myth. To succeed,people need to be creative in their career design, which means focusing theircareer on positions that intersect with market trends, taking jobs withinteresting young companies, and developing skill sets that help them understandhow to synthesize inputs. For those of you reading this book, the time might benow. You are not alone in your entrepreneurial dreams. Over 26 million fellowAmericans are in the process of launching a business or own a new business lessthan four years old. Ultimately, the most rewarding and satisfying careers arethose that are created for oneself; create a company rather than take a job.With the current pace of innovation this probably means preparing for jobs thatmight not exist today. Entrepreneurs' unique experiences imbue them with anability to combine human, physical, and financial resources to create advantage.

Babson College, along with the London Business School, spearheaded the GlobalEntrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project in 1999. Today, GEM tracks the rate ofentrepreneurship across 54 countries. In the GEM study, entrepreneurship isdefined as any attempt to create a new business. Best estimates of theentrepreneurial activity rate for adults aged 18 to 74 in 1993 was around 4percent. After peaking at around 16.7 percent during the Internet boom in 2000,the rate dropped to 8.7 percent in 2008, still over twice the level of activitysince 1993. However, not every entrepreneur succeeds in launching a business,and only 40 percent of launched businesses survive longer than five years. Thisbook is designed to help you get beyond the prelaunch stage, successfullynavigate the new business stage, and ultimately grow your business into asustainable enterprise that is both personally and financially rewarding.

This first chapter provides a background of the state of entrepreneurship in theUnited States, which firms beat the failure rule and why. The chapter continueswith an overview of attributes of successful people. Next the chapterillustrates when ideas are opportunities. Our simple but robust framework foropportunity assessment is the Timmons Model.

Entrepreneurship in America

To understand what works and what doesn't work, it is useful to briefly examineentrepreneurs. We can think of entrepreneurs as falling into differentcategories based upon the stage of development of their business. Nascententrepreneurs are those individuals in prelaunch mode. They have yet to paythemselves or any employees a salary. New business owners are entrepreneurs whohave paid salaries and their business is less than four years old—acritical phase in entrepreneurship. Once the business has survived and reachedpositive cash flow, usually by the fourth year at the latest, the business isclosing in on becoming a durable enterprise, and the entrepreneur's task movestoward building upon the foundation already laid.

Nascent Entrepreneurs

Nascent entrepreneurs are those individuals who report that they are takingsteps toward launching a business but have yet to pay themselves or anybody elsewithin the organization a salary or wages. In 2008, 5.9 percent of the adultpopulation (or 1 in 17 adults) were in the process of launching a business. Menare more likely to be nascent entrepreneurs then women (1.3 men for every woman)but the rate of women becoming entrepreneurs has been accelerating in the last20 years. Entrepreneurs are all ages, but most commonly fall between 18 and 44.They tend to be college educated, but there are many who don't even finish highschool. As we can see from the demographics, entrepreneurship isn't confined tohighly educated men; it is an encompassing phenomenon within the United States.Granted, there are periods in life when it is more likely that a person willpursue entrepreneurship (mid-thirties), but exceptions to the rule abound(Colonel Sanders was in his sixties when he launched Kentucky Fried Chicken andMark Zuckerberg was a teenager when he launched Facebook). We often describeentrepreneurship as the art and craft of the creative, the unexpected and theexceptional. The inspiration, if you will, may strike at any time in your lifeas long as you are open to seeing new opportunities.

Not all nascent entrepreneurs successfully launch their businesses. Many willdiscover in this prelaunch stage that the business isn't viable for any numberof reasons. For instance, the opportunity may not be compelling enough for youto leave an existing job. You need to be confident that the business can grow toa level where you will be able to pay yourself a salary that is comparable towhat you currently make, or more. Moreover, you must recognize that it willtypically take two or more years before you approach revenue figures that makesuch earning potential possible. There are opportunity costs to pursuing a newventure. Other flaws may become...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw-Hill
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071748830
• ISBN 13: 9780071748834
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland