Sep
29
Executive Summary
The Sassy Ladies’ Toolkit for Start-up Businesses is a very relevant, useful tool for anyone interested in being her (or his) own boss. The book takes the idea of starting a business and breaks it down into steps. The authors use the metaphor of a journey to aid the entrepreneur in starting down the road.
The book starts off having the prospective business owner visualize a variety of things. She should visualize herself performing the job she has chosen and where that will get her in her life. It also encourages the use of positive thinking and has her change negative thoughts to positive affirmations. In each chapter there is encouragement, bolstered by pertinent advice.
Throughout the book and at the end of each chapter there are exercises to maintain focus to accomplish the task at hand. The questions posed at the end of each chapter ask not only to state what was discussed, but how the business owner will apply the ideas put forth, to her particular endeavor. The exercises require a good amount of thought and provide a practical means to accomplishing each individual step. Approached properly, performing these exercises would seem to make the business start-up process almost fool-proof.
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Sep
27
Executive Summary
Word of mouth marketing is becoming more and more a vital part of a business’s marketing strategy. Conventional marketing through television ads and billboards are becoming less effective and due to technological advances in the near past, word of mouth travels much faster than it did before. Word of mouth marketing incorporates the use of people talking into effective buzz talk that stimulates sales. With word of mouth marketing, you try to dictate what others will say about your product or service to their friends.
There are four rules that marketers using this strategy need to remember. Rule one is to be interesting because if there is nothing to talk about, then no one will talk about you. Rule two is to make it easy. If the message that you want people to talk about is too long it will either get distorted as it is passed along or it simply will not get passed along. Rule three is make people happy. Happy customers are your best advertisers, because if they leave your business in a better mood than when they showed up then they will be much more inclined to talk positively to their friends about you. Rule four is to earn trust and respect. This to me is the most important of the rules because if someone does not trust you they will not use your product or services, and they will pass along negative feedback about your business.
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Apr
15
Paul Hawken wrote the book “Growing a Business.” He was able to learn first-hand about the do’s and don’ts of having his own business. He was pushed into his first business with little interest in business. Hawken was hindered with asthma at six weeks old. He needed a special diet and found it hard to find unless he was willing to spend several hours shopping or spending money on high-priced foods. Therefore, he opened the first natural foods store in Boston.
Hawken mentions in the book that thirty seven percent of all employed men and nearly half of the working women want or intend to start a business. The future of American business is standing at the threshold, not sitting in the boardrooms. “Growing a Business” is a book about growing business and the term “growing” implies about paying attention to the world around us, learning from others, and changing ourselves.
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Jun
4
Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through a Better Business Modelwas written by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. John and Randy met in California in the late 2006, when John was spending several weeks in California researching business models. Randy believed starting and growing a successful entrepreneurial company is a process that can be learned, and he learned some things he was eager to share. John Mullins is an associate professor and holds the David and Elaine Potter Foundation Term Chair in Entrepreneurship at London Business School. He has also published three books and more than forty articles. His researches won national and international awards. Randy Komisar is the author of the bestselling book The Monk and the Riddle, about the heart and soul of entrepreneurship. Getting to Plan B is the product of the experience and the knowledge of John and Randy since 2006.
In this book, John and Randy discuss how and why plan A probably won’t work. The book stated that; “the research on new products success and failure indicates that it takes fifty-eight new products ideas to deliver a single successful new product”.
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