5 Steps for Calculating Your Startup Costs

You can’t create a realistic business plan without knowing how much it will cost to get your business up and running. If you don’t have an idea of your startup costs, you won’t know how long you’ll have to bootstrap, how much funding you’ll need, how quickly to scale. In other words, without calculating your startup costs, you don’t really know where you’re going—or how you’re going to get there. And your company could fail before you even hit the break-even point.
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How Entrepreneurs Qualify for Funding from Banks

A common question I get is “How do I get a bank loan to fund my startup?” The default answer is that it probably won’t happen, because most banks just don’t make bank loans to startups. The failure rate is just too high, and startups typically don’t have the assets or revenue stream to back up the loan. That’s why Angel investors are so sought after by entrepreneurs.
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Don’t Let Your Beliefs Limit Your Pricing

As a business owner, you want your prices to be fair to both you and your customer. But your price should also reflect the value that your customers are getting. Don’t limit your pricing based on your fears of what customers will think. If you’re still offering value, then you’ll find the customers you need.
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The Marketing Plan: Essential Elements

Have you thought about your marketing plan? To compete in a crowded marketplace, you have to go in with a plan that you’ve thought about and put together carefully and intentionally. No matter what stage your business is at, you should have a plan for your marketing efforts.
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How Big Is the Market

Do you know how many people out there might be interested in your product or service? Any investor or lender is going to ask how big your market is as one of their first questions, and the answer is an important factor in a business’s long-term success.
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Applying Political Terms to Marketing Segmentation

There are important insights for product marketing that actually come from the political world. One of the most important lessons is in how to segment the market, identifying which customers to go after and which ones to ignore. You can save time and money by focusing on your most productive targets.
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Invent Your Opportunities

You never know which opportunity will end up being the one that really turns into something big, but if you don’t ever try, then you’ll never get anywhere. You have to always be thinking, always moving, always improving. The one thing you can’t do is sit back and wait for things to happen to you.
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