Archive for February, 2010

Prepare an Investor Ready Business Plan

February 28th, 2010 admin
Investor Ready Business PlanA Business Plan, as all good entrepreneurs starting out in life should know is the foundation, or rather a springboard, towards the establishment and growth of a new business. A business plan is an essential tool for companies raising capital – and your business plan needs to be Investor Ready.

What is an Investor Ready business plan?

An investor ready business plan is a document that has been professionally prepared to meet the needs of both Venture Capitalists and Angel investors. In your business plan, you should be able to see your own project through the investor’s eye. Your plan must be able to answer the concerns of an investor.

Both Venture Capitalists and Angel investors are risking their hard earned capital by investing in your venture in the hope of long term returns that are worth many times their original investment. An Investor Ready Business Plan demonstrates to investors that you are an expert in your industry and that you have a clear mission. An entrepreneur addresses these needs by preparing a comprehensive and detailed view of their business objectives and goals.

Some important business plan sections that address different concerns of the investors are below:

Management

Investors invest in management – not just ideas.

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Internet Marketing And Starting A Business At Home

February 25th, 2010 admin
Starting Home Business
Many of us hope of being our own bosses. The lure of good money and flexible work hours is quite attractive. Never the less, many are scared to try out on their own. They fear that they do not have the capital required to start a business or they don’t want to risk the security of their steady job.

By taking advantage of the Internet marketing programs that are now available, you can generate money and improve your own marketing abilities. Remember, you can always expand into more areas and try out totally on your own later. Right now, get marketing and get clicking.

If you’re bored of your work and really hope to work for yourself then stop making excuses and do it. Through Internet marketing programs and selling services you will find that owning your home business is faster than you believe. All it takes is effort and a compromise to achieve success.

If you need to start working for yourself but sense you don’t possess the money then you’re wrong. If you have a computer and room to put it then you have all you need. You could also begin your business at home and work it around your job.

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Turning Networking Opportunities Into $$$

February 24th, 2010 admin






Do you make the most of every networking opportunity? Do you have effective strategies for face to face meetings? How do you best convey the purpose and value of your business? How do you turn each networking opportunity into cash?

If you’re having trouble answering these simple questions about networking techniques, then join us for another engaging and standing room only workshop as our speaker, Kevin Monahan inspires and challenges you to step out of your comfort zone and discover how to turn networking opportunities into cash! Social networking is explored in its true context, accelerating an opportunity to meet people face to face, while showing you how to work a room!

This is the UNF Small Business Development Center’s own Kevin Monahan who is an acknowledged expert in networking for small businesses!

Thursday, March 4, 2010
Beaver Street Enterprise Center
1225 West Beaver Street
Jacksonville, Florida 32204
10:00am – 12noon
Cost: $15.00
TO REGISTER: call us at (904) 265-4700
Speaker: Kevin Monahan

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Estimating Unknown Expenses

February 24th, 2010 admin
Estimating Unknown ExpensesHow do you estimate specific costs for a new business? How do you predict expenses? Normally you need some experience. If you have no idea, then you might think again about starting this business. Maybe your team should add somebody who does have experience, and can make estimates. Here is why.

In the real world, there are no standard costs for anything. Your expenses will depend, not on the type of business, but rather on your specific strategy, your specific location, and other specifics of your business situation. You might be able to find recommended expense levels in some books, websites, or other sources, but don’t expect that kind of information to be available for all businesses. Don’t think that there is some source you’re missing that lists standard costs for different kinds of business start-ups.

One general exception to this rule is franchised businesses. If you look to start a business as a franchisee, you can expect the franchiser to have some starting lists of normal costs. This is part of what you pay for when you decide to build a franchise business instead of developing one completely by yourself. Since you are going to pay for this information, make sure you choose a successful franchiser, one that provides real business value.

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Small Business Owner and Entrepreneur Experts Wanted

February 23rd, 2010 admin
Small Business OwnerWhat is an expert? Are you an expert? Do you call yourself an expert? Do your customers refer to you as an expert? Undoubtedly, it provides value to be viewed as an expert in a certain field or line of work. Is aspiring to attain such status a worthy goal, or is attaining such status really just a byproduct of ones efforts towards larger, bigger picture goals?

My current business is helping people and business in the process of buying and selling businesses. My perspective or “area of difference” is from the perspective of a small business owner that has personally bought many businesses over a 20 year period to add to my existing business. The interesting component of what I do in helping people buy and sell businesses is that most people only buy or sell a business once in their life once, most never do at all. So when someone is looking to buy a business or sell a business and only do it once, it can be accurately stated that that person cannot be an expert in that process.

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Comprehensive 3 day course in health entrepreneurship offered at UNF

February 23rd, 2010 admin









This is an amazing course offered through the UNF Division of Continuing Education in association with the Small Business Development Center. Attendees will learn how to navigate the path from an idea to commercial success. Scholarships are available! This comprehensive three-day course will cover the following:

Day One: Basics of entrepreneurial management.

We will review basic business principles including discovering unmet market needs, competition and strategy, financial management, and sales and marketing. This is not a course on small business administration, however, particularly considering that many of our students may wish to be involved in the critical entrepreneurial arms of large companies. We will review a working knowledge of these principles that any business person should be able to discuss, but our students will be differentiated by our constant theme that business success is about the “nuance”- partnerships, strategy, negotiation, insights to unmet market needs – not rigid accounting or textbook concepts that are often never used in the real world.

Day Two: Entrepreneurship in Healthcare (and Other) Companies – large and small.

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Are You Sabotaging Your Reputation and Business Online?

February 22nd, 2010 admin
Reputation and Business OnlineHow you conduct yourself online can adversely affect you as a business person, professional or employee/employer. No one wants to be seen in a negative light so how you handle yourself online is very important.

Your words on screen can be seen by thousands of people every day. Search engines crawl and spider everything or almost everything. Even if you went back to edit your posts days later, it’s possible search engines have already cached the pages that can be viewed like archives. The damage is done.

Lately, I’ve seen way too many topics on work at home forums become personal and heated debates. Angry words attacking the person’s character and rebuttals injecting just as much sting like two children fighting on a playground. Many of us can get caught up in our emotions without thinking twice and without thinking about the repercussions. This is ill behavior and it will hurt you and/or your business. What would this look like to your potential customers, business partners or employees/employers? Would you want to do business, employ/work for this person/company?

A recent example of this was a new member joined a forum and right away started off on the wrong foot.

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SBA loan fees returning

February 22nd, 2010 admin

Thanks to Florida First Capital Finance Corporation for this update that indicates the funds for eliminating soft costs for SBA 7a and 504 loans are exhausted so we are returning to the pre-ARRA regulations unless the Obama jobs bill is passed. The bill includes a provision to eliminate loan fees through September 2010. Read on…

The Small Business Administration (SBA) has announced plans to simultaneously wind down the temporary enhancements for the 504 and 7(a) programs and bring both programs back to pre American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) terms.

In December, Congress and President Obama extended the temporary elimination of most up-front program fees for 504 and 7(a) loans as well as an increased guaranty percentage on 7(a) loans. Those enhancement funds, however, are now exhausted. Given this, the SBA has re-activated its Recovery Loan Queue effective Monday, Feb.22.

As was the case in November, 504 applications submitted as Recovery Act loans will be processed up to the point of approval and then will be placed into the queue awaiting the availability of funds. Sometimes previously approved loans are later cancelled or never disbursed for a variety of reasons.

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Small Business Ideas

February 21st, 2010 admin
Small Business IdeasThis article tells you how you can make the best use of your time and earn on your own by just choosing one of these small business ideas. There are many types of small businesses that you can choose from. You should also know small business strategies which you can implement in your business too. Here are some of the small business ideas I have for you.

Small Business Ideas From Home
Here is a nice chance for all the housewives, teenagers or anybody who wants to make good use of their time and for making profits just by sitting at home and working a little hard.

A Boutique
Having a boutique is a great idea, as this will while your time and help you make profits. You can start off with buying clothes at a wholesale price and sell them off at your ‘own reasonable’ prices.

Bake and Sell
If you are really good at baking, then you can try your hand at this. Don’t get into complicated baking like cakes and pastries, but you can try out muffins. Bake some muffins, chocolate-chip muffins, blueberry muffins, walnut muffins etc. and sell them.

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What’s The Truth About Working From Home?

February 21st, 2010 admin

Working at home has never easier to do at any time in the past. If you trust everything you read about making cash with an Internet based business of your own really does not need much work.
In this article we want to take a look at some of the realities involved in having a business based on the Online. We will divide out some of the reality from fiction!

When you look at the sales pages for Web based business opportunities it nearly sounds too good to be true. In truth it is never as easy to make cash on the Internet as it sounds.

This is the fiction part of building a business on the internet. You certainly can earn money but you’re going to have to work hard at it.

The truth is there are thousands, possibly even millions of individuals who earn cash on the Online every day. This ranges from earning a few dollars a month to earning six or even seven figure incomes.

One more reality is for every five individuals who generate cash online 95 people will not. Why you think that is?

There is no doubt that billions of websites compete for attention every day.

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Starting A Network Marketing Business

February 18th, 2010 admin
Starting Network Marketing BusinessNetwork marketing has become a huge business opportunity nowadays. If you want to start a business with full intentions of having success, network marketing is for you. It’s important though, that you consider a few things to get you a good plan and vision for this marketing business you want to start. Here are ideas to consider:

Does the Shoe Fit – Does starting a network marketing business seem like it fits you? In trying to make a profit for yourself, you’ll want to study things out first. Understand the product and service that you’ll be selling, inside and out. You shouldn’t force yourself to learn a product that you don’t have interest in. You want there to be passion between you and your product that you’ll sell through your network marketing business. You want the shoe to fit, or else you don’t want to get into this at all.

What will your commission be – Paying off commission rates to your downline needs to be understood. This means you have to take the time to figure out all the calculations and figures, unless of course you hire an accountant.

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Women owned business peer mentoring available!

February 18th, 2010 admin









ASPIRING BUSINESS ADVISORY COUNCIL

About this Program

The Aspiring Business Advisory Council (BAC) is a mentoring program of the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center. This BAC is a facilitated, peer-to-peer mentoring roundtable made up of dynamic business startups. This mentoring program provides the members with a confidential and interactive forum to expand their business knowledge, develop and apply critical skills, and reach their business potential.

Why Women Business Owners Participate

Entrepreneurs commit to this program because they are willing to give and take advice, openly and honestly; to share ideas, brainstorm, network, and form a mutual support system of encouragement and accountability with other business owners.

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