Larkland Morley’s Professional Blog

Ran into this great blog post yesterday about the steps you should take in launching your small business or product. The post is saying that you should approach potential customers first before you get too committed to building the product. The whole philosophy here is that you should let the customer guide you in the process instead of coming up with this great idea, build the product then no one wants it. Sometime you end up building something totally different after checking out the market place.

In the world of internet marketing, this is actually easier process as you can look at keywords, setup test pages or even design a quick survey and put it on pay per click or other platforms. If your product is B2B then you may not get much help from the Internet, you will need to find businesses that could be customers and ask them how they think a specific problem could be solved or present your idea and ask for feedback.

As the article says, when you have good feedback, then getting funding is way easier as now you have lots of interest out there in the market place. Take a simple example, you run a survey online for a product that would sell for $1400.00 and you get up to 20,000 responses with an affirmative interest in this product, do you think it would be hard to get someone to help you pull this off?

The issue in this article is not that you should not do a business plan as that is important to write down what needs to be done. Instead the writer is saying that you should look at how to increase your success factor closer to 100% by knowing what you need to be doing from your potential customers.

You can read the full article here at Business Model versus Business Plan

I was reading the other day and ran into one of those life coaching programs. It was going for less than $1000.00 and you get certified by taking an exam which makes you a certified professional Coach. Immediately you could have a business around that.

Coaching, life or business is an interesting field and can apply to any specific area of specialty. It could be an Engineer who would like to be a Manager or Someone that wants to achieve a certain level of wealth or even to lose weight. The coach is basically not necessarily the expert in the profession but that person will help an individual to set goals and actions to achieve them. The coach would also follow up on milestones and ensure that the individual stays on track or recommend recovery options.

Now, lets look at how this could work for you.  Here are the points I recommend to decide on this.

1. Interest – Do you like working with people and help them to succeed at whatever? do you have an area in life that you are passionate about? Then life coaching could be good for you in that context.

2. Research – Do some research on what life coaching really is. I am sure there are both books and lots of blogs and websites about this. Try to understand whats going on in the industry for your education.

3. Certification – Once you have an idea that you really want to do this, the best option is to pick a Certification program. My personal approach is to put them into a comparative spreadsheet then make a decision based on your comfort level. As mentioned earlier, there are several for less than US$1000.00 out there that looks rather reputable. This will also help with your marketing as well.

4. Business Setup – Once you complete the course and exam or even during that process, you could form a business entity to manage this overall business. You can look at several options such as LLC, C-Corp, S-Corp or a Non-Profit Structure. I personally believe once you start to deal with the public its good to formalize a business entity for many reasons. This should cost no more than $500 in most states with the required elements.

5. Marketing – Most of the certification programs do offer help in this arena and in fact some of them have memberships so you can ask for advice along the way. The best approach is to start with friends and you can even do it for free in order to build your reputation. Make out time per week to meet potential clients and other related activities. You would also need to have a pricing structure depending on how you plan to offer the service. For example you could do one-on-one approach or use group options. With the Internet, you could offer your service anywhere and have sessions online with free tools like Skype and others.

Overall, I think life coaching is a good low cost business venture to look at for anyone at any level. You could be seen as someones personal assistant at the low end or at the high end being the expert in the profession of choice to really help others to reach the top of their potential.

Another short and quick post. Most times you may think that a business plan is aimed at sharing things with outsiders but actually at the initial stage, its much more important for you actually. Its important to convince yourself objectively that you really have a good grasp of what you are trying to do. If you want people or banks to invest into the venture you need to convince them that it makes sense. Now, it does not mean your business plan has to be perfect upfront but the overall trust should be there to make the pitch without too much effort.

Some keys I can share to help with this off the top of my head.

1. Market research – this is a critical piece to see if there will be a demand for the service or product that you have in mind. Also look at the competition in terms of whats being offered in that market. If its a physical business; which location would suit you better?

2. Value Creation – How will your business add value to customers, employees and owners/investors? This is important piece of delivering something that will take you to the next level.

3. Cashflow Projection – Even without too much details, the key to success is to generate cash as fast as possible. You could get millions in orders but how much of that is cash in the bank to at least pay the bills soonest?

4. Execution Strategy – This is a critical piece before you get into details of operations and tactics. What are the strategies you will use to succeed long term. As we speak, lots of large companies are failing as they don’t have strategy in place to guide them for the long term.

Those are a good start for now, we will look into more details as I dig more into a useful and effective business plan approach.

Haven’t posted anything for some time now, but this is an area that I have been researching a lot almost a year now.

I decided to check a few of those government funded groups to provide new business help and what I realize is that most times what they throw at you is the textbook. This is very much the case in terms of financing. They basically say go and talk to the bank. No creativity at all.

First of all even if you can get a good loan from the bank personally, its a not a good idea long term to do this. In general, its best to form a corporation and get business funding through that corporation.

Now to get to the point about Corporations and funding, one simple approach is to purchase an existing company.  Now, I am sure your question is; where should I get money to purchase a company since my goal in the first place is to get funding?

The company you will purchase will not have an established business as such but would have a developed credit profile generated by the existing owners. These companies are called Shelf Corporations.  The pricing could be based on the age and other factors like how much funding you can get right off the bat.

I am sure the nagging question. Whats the cost like for something like this? The price range from what I have seen is about $10K to $20K and that gets you a company with about $200K to $500K in funding which is most times a line of credit. Now you could get those numbers with personal credit but this is just the start for these guys, one group I know, provides a Shelf Corporation that gets you about $2M in funding within a 2 year period with not much additional cost. They also help you develop a business plan geared towards funding sources.

In the end, your focus would be generating the maximum $20K to purchase the corporation and then its smooth sailing from there. You may not have to use the money but with funding you have credibility to raise other funds to put your business in Top Gear.

I am thinking of people that lost their jobs recently in this economy, you could use this to fund a franchise business, services, software development or any business type that fits your fancy.

Check out this little write up I did on the topic – Business Funding Guide.

If you want more direct details on sources, let me know.

Here is a great video that discusses some Social Media. Very informative.

Well, plan to discuss a lot about business on this blog, since thats the mode that I am in right now. There is a lot of information out there that’s useful and can take you to the next step. Here is one from the SBA.