Startup
Include Your Labor Value in Your Plan
Investors love it when entrepreneurs draw little or no money from their startups. It extends the cash available for research and other necessary fixed costs and gives the fragile, young company more “runway” to get to breakeven.
How to Get Startup Ideas by Interviewing Customers
The first step in building a product people love is to identify a problem that some group of people have. Solutions to clearly defined customer pain points make for the most compelling value propositions. You don’t need to start with a “startup idea.”
Tell a Story to Build Your Brand
Gone are the days when brands could just broadcast their message and reach their audience. They now need a good story to break through the noise.
Does a Low-Cost Franchise Mean a Low Return?
With a low cost franchise, you will typically be looking at the opposite end of cost factors than the higher-priced category. Items such as less employees, less physical space needed (sometimes none at all!) and less overhead to get started are all valued features of lower-cost franchises.
How to Make Sure Your Work Aligns with Your Values
A mentor once told me that the only way you truly know what your values are are when they are violated. When you betray your values, you feel awkward, uneasy, and even sick.
Accurate Assumptions Lead to Defendable Plans
The biggest error in planning may not be spreadsheet calculation error. Or cost estimation. It is most often missed assumptions about the market, the competition, the speed of adoption, or other critical metrics you’ve researched, or selected, or even just guessed at to create your plan.
Entrepreneurial Lessons from Detroit
Guaranteed lifelong employment and the comfortable pensions enjoyed by our parents and grandparents are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The once-risky path of entrepreneurship seems increasingly less fraught with peril when compared with the ever-present prospect of layoffs faced by regular employees.
Realistic Options for Financing Your Startup
One of the first challenges new entrepreneurs face is finding a way to finance their businesses. You have a great business idea but little money to implement it; and, like every entrepreneur before you, you try to scrounge enough money to launch your startup—your dream.
Networking for Your Franchise Business
Networking can really help grow your business—including a franchise business. The name recognition your franchise already has can help you gain attention and clout more easily in organizations like the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club, so it makes sense to take advantage of opportunities to speak or to head up committees in these groups.









