Up and Running Blog

October 2009

Kelle Olwyler On Myths of Small Business Planning

by Tim Berry on October 16, 2009

This is a lively and easy-to-listen-to audio piece that covers business planning very well. It’s a discussion between Jim Blasingame, Small Business Advocate, and Kelle Olwyler, author of Paradoxical Thinking. Both of them are right on target about business planning in the real world, for real small businesses.

This is not about the academic formal business plan, but business planning to run businesses.  And, yes, I may very well be influenced by the fact that they’re agreeing with things I’ve written here and elsewhere. And Kelle’s list of myths sounds a lot like one I would have written (obviously because she and Jim are both smart and know what they’re talking about).

Olwyler’s business planning myths:

1. No time to plan:

Jim calls this a prescription to fail. Having no time to plan means failing to run your business well. Planning saves time.

2. Once you have a plan it doesn’t change.

Of course a plan changes, because assumptions change, and reality changes. A plan should be flexible and expect change.

3. The fact that things will change makes planning a waste of time.

This one is very closely related to the first two, of course, but it’s worth setting apart because you hear it voiced in these terms often. “Why bother to plan, since things change?” That of course misunderstands the relationship of planning to change: planning helps manage change. As the pace of change increases, planning becomes more, not less, important.

4. Plans are too big to implement all at once.

Very nicely put, and I have to admit, this is one that I’ve never heard before, and never written about; although it seems obvious as soon as you think of it. Olwyler points out that business plans aren’t implemented as the whole thing all at once; you implement a plan one piece at a time.

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Saving the World One Windmill at a Time

by Tim Berry on October 15, 2009

In honor of Blog Action Day, the video here is a six-minute TED talk by William Kamkwamba, author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Facing serious food shortages in his native Malawi while still a teenager, William taught himself some science and physics. And using scrap materials, he built the windmill that supplied electric power and pumped water to his family.

He says to others:

Trust yourself, and believe. Whatever happens, don’t give up.

If you can’t see the video here, you can click here to go to the original on TED.com

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Is Disaster Recovery Possible When the Computing Cloud Evaporates?

by Steve Lange on October 14, 2009

How much is your data worth? If you are a customer of T-Mobile using their Sidekick mobile device, all your personal data, pictures, contacts, emails, calendars, etc., which you had stored with them is worth one month’s service plan fees.

So, do you agree? Well, that’s what T-Mobile is offering users who lost all their data when the Microsoft/Danger network crashed earlier this month, without an adequate backup in place. Unrecoverable is the word they are using.

Now, here is the question every single one of you have to ask yourselves: “In case of a disaster/crash/hack, is my business’ data backed up and recoverable?”

Really now, think hard. If this can happen to mobile phone data, it can happen to your business’ vital records. If all your data…your accounting, your payroll, your invoicing, AR/AP, customer records, serial numbers, inventory, development plans, R&D reports, whatever, was lost, unrecoverable, would your business survive? And if it could survive, what would it cost you in money, time, cash, personnel resources, capital resources, lost customers, investment, fulfillment delays, dividends, tax inquiries, profits, and money to recreate those records, or blindly grope ahead without them? More or less than one month’s service fee do you suppose?

Those of us who started in computers with punch cards (“what are those?” some of you ask) and aged along with mainframes and Apple IIs, floppy disks and LANS have always been conscious of the need for data backup. Always, that is, since our first hard drive got reformatted at the repair shop who promised us we didn’t need to do a tape-drive backup.

The worlds of speculative fiction have, for years, been full of stories imagining and describing the dire consequences of data loss. It could be political opponents, war, criminals, business competitors, presonal enemies, preteen hackers, spies, hurricanes, earthquakes, solar flares, nuclear-powered satellites exploding, or even aliens that cause the data-loss crisis. Unlike books, TV and movies, though, the heroes (you and your business) won’t suddenly be saved by the deus ex machina in the last 3 minutes … unless, that is, you’ve already invested the resources of time and money into data backup.

Cloud computing, wireless access anywhere, online applications and remote-server-hosted data can certainly be a boon to business, but this foul-up clearly displays the hazards inherent in having your data stored elsewhere.

Understand this! Once you hand over your data to someone else, it is no longer exclusively yours.

There is no possible guarantee that your vital records won’t be, with evil intent, hacked, perused, copied and sold, simply stolen, corrupted or, by accident, just plain lost, deleted, or unrecoverable. Each technological generation becomes enamored of the possibilities and capabilities of the gizmos we invent. We can’t help it. It is, then, up to we geezers, ancients, oldsters and curmudgeons to holler:

“HEY! Pay attention! It is going to break! There are going to be screwups! Someone is going to mess with it! Watch out! Protect yourself now!” “We know this because it happened to us!”

So, if you’ve embraced the-sky-is-the-limit cloud computing, you owe it to your business and its survival to buy some information insurance, as it were, and back up all your data locally, and frequently. This doesn’t have to be on-site necessarily, but out of the clouds and firmly on the ground. Because, really, seriously, once your data is gone, the likelihood of successful disaster recovery is mighty slim. You are S-O-L.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor, and Oldster who’s lost data before
Palo Alto Software

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51 Tips for Saving Money on Technology

by Tim Berry on October 14, 2009

Anita Campbell published “51 Tips for Saving Money on Technology” on her Small Business Trends blog last week. Four of the 51 came from me:

Eliminate Paper and Filing with Screen Shots
“I’m finding I can eliminate a lot of paper and filing expenses–not to mention filing and recovery of documents–by taking quick screen shots of web orders and travel documents and such. I save them on my CPU unless they’re travel documents, in which case I save them as JPGs and put them onto my iPhone.”

Use the Amazon Cloud
“We’re saving several thousand dollars a month now by having moved our servers from a server farm somewhere else to the Amazon cloud. We get much better up-time and response time, but for significantly less money.  We’re also using the Amazon cloud for storing files and backup.”

Insist on Price Reviews from Existing Vendors
“When the recession was at its worst we pushed our vendors that provided phones and the office internet bandwidth to redo their pricing. We found that vendors we’d been with a long time were giving new customers much better deals than existing customers, and we insisted on a review.”

Hold Meetings Online Instead of Traveling
“We’re using the web conference for webinars and to host meetings, often one-on-one meetings, to reduce our travel costs. We’ve had success with both WebEx and GoToMeeting. We’re finding the simple meeting online as quick and easy, and a lot more effective, than getting on the plane.”

I’ve included these here because they were mine, which makes them automatically my favorites. But they aren’t the best of the bunch. The entire post is good reading.

Save Money on Technology | Small Business Trends

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A Simple Sales Forecast Inside Out

by Tim Berry on October 13, 2009

I posted here last Friday about the new business planning tutorials posted on the (relatively) new business.gov information site for small business and entrepreneurs. I’d like to point out a special section of that focusing directly on the problem of forecasting sales for a new business.

I get that question a lot: “How do I forecast sales for a new company?” Or a new product, or new service, of course. A lot of people make the implicit assumption there that if you don’t have data on past sales, then you can’t forecast. In the illustration here below, you see part of the video where we look at how you would forecast a new restaurant–just one example–using the specifics of the chairs and tables available during prime meal serving time.

The three videos covering sales forecasts take a combination of only about 20 minutes to watch. They cover the standard structure, a simple example, and a lot of tips on how to develop a sales forecast for a new business.

The way that site works, you can select from 11 different portions of the business plan tutorials. If you’re interested in the sales forecast portion, browse down the page and find the ones shown here.

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Process Demystified: Filtering Opportunities from Ideas

by Tim Berry on October 12, 2009

One of the real core values of business planning is filtering ideas to pick out the opportunities. Ideas are of little or no value, and opportunities are potential businesses only if somebody actually makes it happen. In “Beyond Eureka” at BusinessWeek.com, Amy Barrett has an excellent summary of how that process really works in actual cases. She explains:

On the pages that follow, we outline the methodology followed by successful entrepreneurs to find, vet and develop their ideas. We’ll show you how to outline your goals for the business, brainstorm possible concepts, screen opportunities and test your ideas’ viability. Sure, you could wait for a bolt from the blue–but isn’t it better to create your own?

The story breaks it into five steps. For each, the story goes first for the theory, then examples in practice. The following is just a bare summary:

  1. Set the stage: Basic parameters, such as lifestyle vs. high-end high-tech, establish your strengths, and directions.
  2. Brainstorming ideas: Quantity first, sorting for quality later.
  3. Picking a winner: This is selecting from those ideas–based on more research and planning–the one that has the best chance of working.
  4. Feasibility: Answer three questions: Can we do it, do they want it and what will they pay.
  5. Prototype: Make it real, put it up, get customers, get feedback, get going.

The rest of the story is a good review, step by step, with examples from real people and real companies. And I like this different angle on business planning, which goes right back to some of the core concepts. You might notice, as you read the details, that the planning is very much there; but there’s no talk of the actual plan document.

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Soup to Nuts Videos on Business Planning

by Tim Berry on October 9, 2009

I’m pleased to say that the business.gov site is hosting my  Business Planning Tutorials, a collection of 13 videos I did for the site about business planning–soup to nuts, top to bottom. For the benefit of entrepreneurs and business, these are presented free.

Although I do cover the classic formal business plan, I’m happy to say that my emphasis in this series is on the business planning process, a tool for all the rest of us who don’t have a business plan event (like getting financed) to use to run our businesses better.

I also like the way that business.gov presented the series as 13 separate links on the same page, so you can look at the topics and see what interests you. You don’t have to take it one by one, or in any preset order.

If you’re at all interested in business planning, whether or not you need a business plan document to show to outsiders, I hope you’ll drop by the tutorials page at business.gov/start/business-plan-tutorials.html. It was a lot of work, for me and the team at business.gov that put it together, and I’d like to think it’s very useful. You don’t have to go start to finish in order, either. If you have just four minutes to spend, click on the “Form Follows Function” link and try that one. It’s my personal favorite.

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Law Courts Entering the Social-mediasphere

by Steve Lange on October 8, 2009

It seems that there is no human endeavor that will not be subverted by those with evil intent. The social-mediasphere is no exception. This recent Yahoo! News article, Injunction by Twitter: A Blogger Makes History Trying to Unmask His Impostor reports how the English High Court is using Twitter to serve an injunction against a Twitter user/identity impostor.

The case has many facets, including political campaigning, impersonation, possible slander, character assassination via misrepresentation, mainstream media reporting, and the impact on everyone’s use of Twitter through increased legal action and greater government regulation in social media.

The high-profile court action, says Time, “also highlights the increasing dangers of identity misappropriation” on social media sites. A cited example involved Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, when a Twitter impostor posted, “an elegiac tweet on Michael Jackson’s death [which] was widely quoted by credulous media.”

The plaintiff in this lawsuit is also considering a suit against Twitter, because he experienced Twitter’s own procedures slow to respond. Further legal action could force Twitter to reveal account holders’ identities, which would set a precedent for the wider social media environment.

Another legal response to questionable blog and Twitter activities was posted by Tim Berry on his Planning Startups Stories blog in FTC vs. Social Media Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing. This governmental action concerns people who accept payment to post advertisements in the guise of “personal” reviews, recommendations, and conversations.

Social media, which started out as an unfettered, community-gathering-place-of-sorts is becoming as hazardous and risky as any other commercial or political arena. And as regulated and litigation-bound. Be aware, be paranoid, be skeptical of what you read. Be prepared to defend your good name.

Steve Lange
Palo Alto Software

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The Blog Week in Review — 10/8/09

by Jay Snider on October 8, 2009

For the best customer service: TWEET! — Sabrina Parsons posts about a recent experience using Twitter to get better customer service.

The Big Idea behind every “Young Gun” — An inspiring post by author and guest blogger Robert Tuchman, about finding your niche and excelling in it.

Gee, You Had to Pay $2, Once, to Get News? — Tim Berry writes about the reluctance of some iPhone users to pay a one-time fee for content that includes advertising.

The Impression of Specialization — Having the right email addresses can make a difference in how you are perceived by the people who want to contact you.

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Great Customer Service–Not Quite

by Tim Berry on October 8, 2009

Sabrina Parsons posted For the best customer service: TWEET! on her MommyCEO blog earlier this month. She’d called customer service repeatedly, left messages and gotten no response. Then she tweeted about it, and this (the photo below) is what she got: a new, replacement pair of shoes for her son.

This could seem like a good story of a good company, but there’s that dark side to it, the bad service first, followed by good service after it appeared on Twitter. She said:

Here is a company that produces an excellent product and seems to care about customers. But their customer service process is broken. If only those of us who tweet can get good customer care–then they need to fix their process. Don’t get me wrong, though–I love the personal attention I can get from companies via Twitter. But I know those days are numbered. At some point there will be too many people doing the same thing, and Twitter won’t be a good communication vehicle. So companies like this need to fix their customer service issues NOW.

I agree with her conclusion. Twitter is new and exciting, a classic shiny new thing that we can all play with. But mind the telephone in the meantime.

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