If you are wondering about starting your own business, there are some questions you need to ask yourself first. I have two businesses. One is my own brand and one is someone else’s. Neither are scams, and both have been profitable even in 2020…
How to Find Vendor Contracts
07/05/2020
I had been talking about force majeure awhile back, and apparently it was interesting enough to catch the attention of one of my colleagues. Phil is a hard-charging product manager who works in the telecommunications space and he just sent me an email that was talking about another story where a vendor had to declare force majeure…
Jim,Shortly after we talked about force majeure I saw an article that said that Royal Dutch Shell has just announced that they won’t be able to meet a big piece of their Nigerian oil-export obligations for their customer for the next two months because of militant attacks on their facilities. The force majeure legally protects Shell from not meeting contractual obligations because of factors outside of its control. So much for gas prices going down anytime soon!
PhilSenior Product Manager
When I was talking with Phil, I had spent some time making sure …
First Things First
Setting up your own coffee shop is certainly an exciting venture, but you’re going to want to make sure that the business plan is rock solid from the start. As a matter of fact, your plan for your coffee shop business is one of the first and most important steps that needs to be taken in order to get your business up and running properly. The unfortunate thing is, many people tend to make some mistakes whenever putting together a detailed plan and this can really hurt you in the long run. Here are 3 things to avoid.
Get Your Finances in Order
The first thing that you should avoid is speculating as far as finances are concerned. A good coffee shop business plan should be based on market analysis and solid research. This is what the lending institutions are going to want to see whenever you …
Planning For Success in a New Business
04/05/2020
Any would be business operator is usually exhorted on the various discussion lists to “do a business plan.”
I have sometimes joined that exhortation but when I was called on to write a book on retailing I told my co-author “I’ve never had a business plan.”
He then took me through how I had started a couple of businesses, and managed to justify his own “always have a business plan” position. He claimed I had had quite a detailed plan in each instance — it was just that I had not written it down! So, as a writer, the one thing I have never written down, is my plan for success. Fortunately, more of those businesses have gone according to plan than those which have not.
You will need a formal plan if you are going to borrow money. However, even then a business plan can be drawn up on …