Category Archives: Positioning

Have you found your “teacher customer?”

 Your customers know what they want more than you do.  Find one to teach you. This week’s insight came from personal experience and from a good friend who advanced the notion of the “teacher-customer” years ago.  I internalized this phrase, … Continue reading

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Is your product ready for your market?

You might be here: You have a great new product or service that you and your associates love.  Early adopters should climb all over each other for a look. But are you HERE? But what have you done to test … Continue reading

Posted in Finding your ideal niche, Positioning | 3 Comments

What’s the difference between your budget and forecast?

Hold it! These are confusing terms. When does a budget become obsolete? Do we rely upon constant changes and call it a forecast? So, let’s spend a few moments defining this sometimes-confusing set of terms. This is a budget: A … Continue reading

Posted in Positioning, Protecting the business, Raising money | Leave a comment

Make your detailed strategic plan!

In these past weeks, we explored the need for a tangible goal and strategies that are measurable as steps toward achievement of your goal.  Today, we explore how to create tactics to accompany each strategy, and even suggest a number … Continue reading

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So, what’s the plan?

It’s time to speak of some sort of business plan.   As a professional investor in early-stage companies, I have long discounted long, detailed business plans in favor of a concise “executive summary” followed by a believable spreadsheet-based financial forecast … Continue reading

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Can you guess 10 tests for your success?

Your success must be based upon data that is solid and sometimes flexible enough to pass several critical tests if it is to guide a business enterprise to greatness.  Here in brief are ten tests for your business success.  Try … Continue reading

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How are you at setting your goals?

We’ve spent several weeks discussing your vision for success, and whether you could be the next Ford, Jobs or Musk.  Now it’s time to make this more tangible, more real – by attaching personal goals to this vision we’ve created … Continue reading

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Sharpen your business vision!

I love absolute statements. Pardon my English. But this is one of my favorite statements.  You’re at the ignition stage of your newest business venture.  Of course, you have a vision for what you will do to change the world.  … Continue reading

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How will you ride the next wave?

“Re-imagining” our lives The world is experiencing a new era of re-imagination, in which virtually all our old ways of doing things are being uprooted by new, more efficient and more widely available methods of accomplishing old tasks. We collaborate … Continue reading

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You name the price; I’ll name the terms.

I admit that my dad taught me this when I was just a fifteen–year old kid starting a business and negotiating with suppliers for the first time.  But I learned it again and again in my various business lives. Here’s … Continue reading

Posted in General, Positioning | 1 Comment