Building A Successful Business

Second edition, December, 2014.In its first year, about half of all businesses fail. Five years down the line, depending upon which study you look at, only 1 in 10 to 1 in 3 businesses are left standing. The main reasons businesses fail are no business plan and poor management. That is why this book covers both topics. However, this book goes beyond other books on these topics. The book not only provides a road map for writing a business plan, but also provides a strategy for writing a business plan. A business plan is both a strategic document and a sales document. It also provides the reader with a look into the skills, knowledge and personality of the business owner. Therefore, a good business plan is written to satisfy all of these uses. In addition, this book provides information on how to research and organize the information needed for a business plan, and has worksheets the entrepreneur can use to help make the process easier. Likewise, management topics such as strategic planning (SWOT analysis plus), advertising, branding, project management, customer service management, cash flow management, sales skills, business writing and more are explained, and a method is provided for each management skill that can be implemented and used in the business. There are worksheets for many of the management topics as well.While many business book writers know and cover business writing, it's amazing how few actually apply that knowledge to their business books. I do. The information in this book is presented in bullet points, assuring the reader that he or she does not have to wade through four paragraphs of writing to get a couple of key points. Even the size of the book is practical for the end user. An over-sized book might attract attention in the book store, but would make it difficult to copy and use the worksheets in the book. An under-sized book might demonstrate value by the sheer volume of pages (same amount of information, but more pages), but would mean compressing the worksheets into smaller sizes rendering them less useful.In addition to entrepreneurs, this book was written so that venues teaching entrepreneurship can use it as a text book. In fact, I have been teaching entrepreneurship courses since 1997. This book was written to be a stand alone book, to support my business plan mentoring service (I review the worksheets for clients), and to be a text book for my course, How to Start, Grow and Manage a Business.The book received a very good review from the Midwest Book Review:"Too many businesses are started without the experience needed to keep it alive and going. "Building a Successful Business" is Jay Goldberg's advice manual for those embarking on the entrepreneurial path, with tips on how to avoid the common pitfalls that strike many first time business owners. With advice on strategically planning your business, cautious advertising, business writing, managing the funds and more, "Building a Successful Business" is a strongly recommended pick for any first time business person."Author's personal note: While the review concentrated on new business owners, the book was written for both first time business owners and established business owners. Many people assume that established business owners are utilizing management tools to help ensure success. However, many do not and that is one reason for the high failure rate of existing businesses. My book provides management tools, with associated worksheets, that existing businesses can use to help them achieve or maintain success as well as tools and worksheets for new business owners.

More people than ever are becoming entrepreneurs, but the perils of starting your own business are well-documented. Two lecturers on the subject from Imperial College, London, have written 'The Smart Entrepreneur' to show how to avoid these pitfalls and make your business a success.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Most people dream of owning their own business and being their own boss. The first, most important step to personal financial success is a plan. Entrepreneurs of action must organize their genius to share with partners, investors, vendors and future employees. Building A Successful Business Plan: Advice from the Experts is an indispensable resource to assist you in taking the first step. Book jacket.

A collection of simple tried and tested marketing ideas that business owners can implement easily and cheaply.

How can all the nuts and bolts of a business be analyzed effectively in one comprehensive model and translated into a business plan? At various points in the life of a business, entrepreneurs will need to take stock of their ideas and plans and reformulate them in business and financial terms. How to Create a Successful Business Plan is about dynamic planning for businesses and provides a structured approach to business planning that focuses on the main components of the business model, while addressing key issues often raised by investors and potential business partners. It gives the company order and structure and helps managers optimize team integration and resources. The book provides a framework in which professionals from a broad range of backgrounds can work together on a successful business plan. Readers will find that the business model is discussed in depth, yet in accessible and easily understood terms. Contents:An Introduction to the Business Plan:What is a Business Plan?The Goals of the Business Plan ProcessPlanning the Business:Gathering Information and Analyzing the Business EnvironmentPlanningThe Written Business Plan:Writing the Business PlanConfidentiality and DisclosureGetting the Most Out of Your Business Plan:Promoting Your Business Plan Readership: Undergraduate and graduate business and management students; independent entrepreneurs; executives (in high-tech firms or in the more established industries); investors (such as angels or venture capitalists); and other potential business partners and service providers.

Provides a practical and easy-to-follow guide for developing a business plan and follows a unique format that both explains what to do and demonstrates how to do it. This book is ideal for traditional classroom use and distributed learning, whether through online teaching and learning or when blended with classroom delivery.

Is it possible to describe in a book a universal, industry-independent step-by-step guide that anyone can practically implement in times of digitalization? In this book, you will find the answers to what the essential universal structures, processes and content for business success are and how you need to build them up, step by step in detail, in order to build up a successful company with a high probability. Beginning with the company idea to a highly automated company, you will find all the necessary information. It is an attempt to democratize business success and to provide all people interested in building a successful business with this information in as concrete and condensed a way as possible. No matter what level of business development you are at, you can start from scratch with this book, but of course you can also re-evaluate your existing business as a whole and continue to work from where you currently are with your business. This book is intended as a long-term business companion for future or existing CEOs and is suitable for start-ups, small businesses and SMEs. It serves as an industry-independent foundation for learning to fundamentally understand business success, but also as a concrete workbook for building a successful business step by step or helping an existing business to be more successful.