Showing category "Business Practice" (Show all posts)
Karen Fischer This article is for anyone who is just leaving or is thinking about leaving the corporate world and is considering starting a business themselves. I have met with several people who are in the process of doing this lately and my biggest fear for them is they will never get their business launched as they are getting caught up in the details and this could be their ultimate downfall.
Whether you have decided to start a business because of a layoff from corporate and a lagging job... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer One of my business partners and I were approached by a company coming into Canada to help them set up their business in the Canadian market. The owners were manufacturers of an offshore product that has done well in Europe, but has no real presence in Canada. They wanted help with all of their marketing for Canada and they wanted us to set up a distribution channel as well as manage it. When it got to contract negotiations, it became abundantly clear that they wanted us to do t... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer I met with a potential client that was referred by the local bank who was looking to have their business plan assessed before submitting it to the bank for a small business loan. They had found a company online that only developed business plans and sent me a copy. The client had already spent over $1K on the plan and owed $1K more. The plan was poorly written and did not even include the required sections a bank will look at in order to determine credibility of the business.... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
This will be a little different than my usual small business blog article. I hope the content is as inspirational for the reader as the person that inspired me to write it. The focus of this article is about a small business success story in my local area. This is about a company that has been in business for almost 40 years and was started from the bottom up that had less than 20 employees which proves you do not have to be large to be successful.
I had the distinct pleasure ... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
I do find that questions that I see posed on social network sites or asked by clients are usually where I tend to get my inspiration to share lessons learned and today is no different. Someone posed a question on LinkedIn on whether it would be more beneficial to spend time on a Marketing Plan or a Business Plan and I cringed when I started reading where some readers said they would definitely spend time first on a Marketing Plan. I am not sure why so many small business owners ... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
Many times within a life of a small business, the owner will wonder why they are not receiving the growth they expect or the business is just not running the way they expected. The owner may want to look for additional financing, but they know in order to secure the funding, they are going to need to improve the bottom line. It also could be that they know change needs to take place in the business to be more in line with the times, but are not sure where to start, or the ow... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
It is estimated that approximately 60% of
the small businesses in Canada today are owned by baby-boomers. Over the next
15 years these business will need to be transitioned to ownership. Estimates
are that only 10 to 15% will be transferred successfully. The other 85 to 90%
will die and leave room for new market entrants. These are not good odds if you
are thinking that your current small business is material in funding your
retirement.
Whether you are transferring, selling,
ad... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
I had the pleasure of attending the MoneyChase which was put on by ventureLAB in Markham a couple weeks back. There were eighteen presenters who presented to an audience of Angel Investors. Since I am a huge fan of the Dragon’s Den, this was like a mini-version but up front and personal.
Since one of our services is working with small business and introducing
investors, it was a great exercise to listen to the presentations and try to
figure out myself why one company would ... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
In the last couple months through providing expertise and advice to a couple non-profit organizations that I have affiliation, I realized just how difficult it must be for small businesses to make informed decisions about the services they purchase from vendors. In one case the organization had been oversold services for their size of business. In the second case, the board member was trying to make a decision on a quotation without understanding what features they would be rec... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
I recently saw a statement on a question/answer board from a consultant outlining why so many start-up businesses fail and have to admit I was not surprised by what was said. An example given was an internet business that failed because they did not have the funding to support the pull marketing that is required for the business. What was listed was the symptom of why the business failed, but not the reason of actually why. Another example was a technology company that the â€... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
Though both my business partner and I have worked for several small businesses over the years, in various phases from start-up to established small businesses and have even been a General Manager for one, it was not until we started my own business that I had a true appreciation of what being an executive was versus the business owner. As a business owner, the buck stops with you and are responsible for the overall direction and financial profitability of the company. I had writ... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
Be sure when you engage someone to write your business plan that you are going to receive a full business plan and not just a financial plan. A financial plan is key to the overall business plan but is not something that can really be done accurately until you have done due diligence on your overall business plan which includes: market analysis, company direction and history, have an understanding of your products/services, product strategy, pricing strategy, promotional stra... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
There is so much more to a business plan than the right template or format. A template is nothing more than an outline but together by those who understand what is needed in a business plan and they provide the headings and few sentences on each section. It is actually the content itself that is most important along with understanding what the bank, grant provider, or investor is looking for in a business plan. Many entrepreneurs are able to articulate the overall premise of ... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
A problem within your business can be very much like diagnosing a cold. There are symptoms like a cough, sore throat, low grade fever, runny nose, and congestion. The difficulty lies in that those are symptoms of several illnesses like the flu or even early onset pneumonia. If misdiagnosed, you could treat for the wrong illness and could get worse instead of better. The same is true in business. A problem can be seen as or manifest itself in one way, but could be a symptom of... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
Have you had an idea in your head of what you believe your company is worth and tried to raise money or sell your business recently and been surprised at the results? Sometimes it is hard to realize that a business that you have given your sweat and tears to is not a viable business to someone else or to others who you have asked to invest. There are many reasons why this could be the case. A very basic reason that a business is sometimes rejected is because of the lack of abi... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
Have you ever been approached by someone saying they can develop a website or a marketing brochure for you for what you truly believe is a reasonable price. You then have them develop the site or brochure and then you still wonder why people are not visiting your site and you have 5000 brochures in the closet that your sales force or channels never use? So many businesses feel that having a strategy is for “big business” and is not important to them, but the truth is not h... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
Strategy for most small business owners is seen a “bad word”. In many cases, rightly so as theyhave been visited by many a consultant that has told them they need a strategy document. They then engage the consultant who spends a few hours in their business and then writes a four hundred page document that is used as a paper weight or sits in a drawer collecting dust. In many instances afterreading the document, they are not even sure this document was written for their bus... Continue reading ...
Karen FischerNot much is written about Activity Based Costing (ABC) these days. It was big in the 1980’s, but other things like the Balanced Scorecard seem to have taken the lime-light. My guess is that ABC was seen as a detailed oriented initiative that would consume vast corporate resources with no substantial payback and besides; the normal accounting systems would allow for various cost allocations – so why bother? ABC can be much more than a cost allocation methodology. As a very quic... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
I found myself a few years ago landing in a position which in the beginning looked like a complete disaster and ended up being the greatest management learning experience of my life. I found myself working for a small business that was acquired by a large corporation. If anyone has been on the acquired side of this, I am sure you will understand and can relate to the challenges. The day I walked in the door it wasn’t the question of what was going well, but if anything was goi... Continue reading ...
Karen Fischer
When you started your business and determined you needed a lawyer for a particular reason, did you find yourself calling someone you knew or someone a friend recommended and didn't really look to see if they were really the person or firm to provide you the best counsel on what you needed? So many times this is the case and can be such a mistake and end up costing you more than you really need. Just because someone charges $500.00 an hour and is on Bay Street in Toronto, this do... Continue reading ...
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