Okay, you’re finally writing your business plan.  But will it help you secure the funding you need?  Will it be your road map to success—helping you to build a successful business?

Most entrepreneurs write their business plans with one goal in mind:  to raise money.  Even so, a business plan is a double-edged sword.  While it allows you to introduce and sell your business to the reader, it also gives the reader the opportunity to say “No, thanks.”

Don’t blow your big chance.   Now more than ever, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.  Below are 7 mistakes to avoid—7 sure-fire ways to shoot yourself in the foot.

Note:  If you are writing your business plan for the purpose of developing an operating blueprint, it is just as important that you avoid these 7  mistakes.

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Have you ever heard a business owner talk about a marketing activity they’ve been doing and thought ‘if I try that it will work for me too’? Perhaps someone has tried cold calling or sending out sales letters and has found it has worked particularly well for their business – maybe you’re thinking about doing the same to see how well it works for you.

I think in marketing generally, there is a lot of pressure to follow the crowd. We’re all educated to think that cold calling, direct mail, advertising and networking will work really well for our businesses – after all, if it works for someone else, there must be a chance it will work for us too right?

The thing with marketing though is that every business is different. What works well for one business is not guaranteed to work well for another. And this is even true in the same industry.

Why is that?

Well, for a start we’ve all got different customers. They’ll congregate in different locations. So, if your potential customers are likely to go to networking events, networking as a marketing strategy is probably going to work for you. If they don’t go to networking events, even though this strategy may work for other businesses, it’s not going to work particularly well for you.

Also, we’re all different people and we have different ways of doing things. I like speaking at groups, for instance. But I know that this strategy for some people would absolutely fill them with dread.

A third reason is that often business owners are stuck for marketing ideas. They may have tried quite a few activities, but if nothing has really worked, they may be stuck as to what to do next. Therefore, if another business has tried something that has worked really well, it’s only natural that you’re likely to want to give it a go too.

The trick is with marketing to be an individual.

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Finding the perfect medical practice for sale can be an overwhelming proposition for many people.  There are different aspects about a medical business for sale that you need to keep in mind before investing in a medical practice.  You can avoid sinking a lot of money into a medical care business for sale if you follow some guidelines for the process.

Pre-consult with Your Advisors
The first step to finding a medical care business for sale is to have a business or financial advisor that knows about the legal issues regarding the acquisition of a medical practice.  Not only will you need a consultant that understands the legal issues but one that is experienced in buying a medical practice.  This will enable you to have sound advice from the very beginning of the purchase process and in the long run this will save you a great deal of time and money.

Prior to making any deals to set a price and details of buying a medical practice, consult with your business and financial advisors.  It is amazing at how many details and terms are discussed and even agreed upon prior to investors talking to their advisors.  The end result is that many decisions are made without enough information and a great deal of money is lost by the investors that could have been saved in the long run had they talked to the advisors first.

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Larry Page and Sergey Brin are famous entrepreneurs that fulfilled the lifelong dream of many individuals all over the world by creating something from scratch that effectively made them billionaires. In fact, they did not just create any old thing but the company that revolutionized our use of the Internet. They founded Google Inc and the Google search engine. Both Page and Brin are still in their thirties and are worth around $18.7 billion each as of February 2008. Their entrepreneurial skills are an inspiration to millions, who all dream of doing the same thing.

Google Founders – The Early Years

Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin come from an extremely academic background. Larry Page, who was born on March 26, 1973, is the son of an influential and esteemed computer science professor, Doctor Carl Page. His mother also taught computer science at Michigan State University. As such, it was perhaps inevitable that he would also dedicate his academic career and his life to the sciences. He achieved a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan before moving on to Stanford University, which is where he met Sergey Brin.

Sergey Brin, on the other hand, serves as a different sort of inspiration. Larry Page proved that anything was possible in the entrepreneurial world with a good education, but Sergey Brin became an entrepreneur despite extremely humble beginnings. He was born in the Soviet Union in August 21, 1973 to a mother and father that were both mathematicians. Feeling that they could not give their children the life they deserved, Michael and Evgenia Brin moved to the United States in 1979. He followed the same academic path as his family but moved into computer science at the University of Maryland before enrolling in Stanford University.

The Making Of Google

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Henry Ford is one of the most prolific American entrepreneurs to ever have lived. Not only was he successful in his own right, but he also shaped the modern model of industry by improving his business practices and manufacturing lines. He is officially known as the founder of the assembly line today and made mass production of goods much easier and more cost effective. As a result, he is certainly an entrepreneur that individuals in the modern world can aspire to be. He was innovative, hard working and ambitious, three qualities that are essential to improve your station in the modern world.

Humble Beginnings

Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863 in Detroit, Michigan. His parents tended a farm so the entrepreneur grew up working the land alongside his father. However, he did have an interesting hobby that was to act as a sign of things to come even at that age. He was an expert at taking watches to pieces and then reassembling them. Ford was absolutely fascinated by the mechanics of it. He had already resolved that he would not take over the family farm because he absolutely hated working the land. As such, he worked hard to achieve an apprenticeship with a machinist in Detroit.

Henry Ford moved from company to company, forming a great career as a machinist and later as an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company, where he was promoted in 1893 to Chief Engineer. The position was extremely well paid and gave the entrepreneur the money and time he needed to be able to do what he loved – designing engines. He had discovered this passion a little earlier when he worked for a steam engine company but he wanted to experiment with engines that ran on gasoline. He did just that when he created a Ford Quadricycle in 1893. Effectively, the entrepreneur had just made his first car.

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I see many organizations, both large and small, continue to communicate fragments of important policies and processes to employees through one-time emails and the like. This could include a new purchase authorization policy or a new data entry procedure. Expecting employees to forage through past emails and other transitory type documents only leads to wasted time and exasperation.

Process clarity is one of the three key foci in effective organizational design, along with people and technology. Yet with the haphazard process management common in many businesses, it is little wonder that employees struggle to do a good job. How an invoice is processed, customer complaint handled or engineering drawing approved in many organizations depends more on who does it and what day of the week it was done on rather than on sound business reasoning. Where process and role clarity is lacking, personal idiosyncrasies and political maneuvering take over.

Moreover, research indicates that less than 20 percent of product defects and service problems are due to non-random factors, such as malicious employees, machine breakdown and poor raw materials. The other 80 percent or more of problems is due to systemic deficiencies with processes. So, although mapping your business processes is relatively simple to do and involves no costly capital expenditure, it pays huge dividends in business efficiency and employee commitment. If you are thinking about mapping your processes, here are ten key pointers to keep in mind.

1. Involve employees who actually do the work in the mapping

Employees who do the actual work are in the best position to know the detailed steps in each process. They are also most familiar with the common roadblocks and bottlenecks and the key contacts in the organization to get things done. Involve your employees up front by inviting them to join process-mapping teams.

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Do you find yourself struggling with how to deal with people problems at work? If so, Manager’s Desktop Consultant: Just-in-Time Solutions to the Top People Problems that Keep You Up at Night is a worthy addition to your library of business books. Written by organizational development experts Louellen N. Essex, Ph.D. and Mitchell E. Kusy, Ph.D., this book provides practical advice for helping managers effectively deal with people problems at work.

This book is designed to provide leaders at all levels within modern organizations with practical tips and suggestions for effectively handle people related issues. It touches on techniques for managing all types of people problems that arise in the business world, including tips for improving one’s ability to communicate effectively with peers and subordinates alike.

One of the biggest challenges faced by managers relates to effectively managing change within their organizations. Coping with employees who are resistant to change can be particularly challenging and difficult. This book provides guidance for creating a systematic process and plan for leading organizations through change in a manner that will include and engage employees in the process. Encouraging employee teamwork and collaboration is another important people issue of concern to managers. The authors do an excellent job of providing substantive tips for cultivating a culture of teamwork that go beyond the often “touchy-feely” suggestions. Their emphasis is on how to improve productivity and efficiency via team work.

In any environment where people have to work together, conflict is inevitable. Managing conflict in a constructive manner isn’t always easy, but it is something that today’s managers have to face.

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