Strategy Plan One

May 13, 2012

Mentoring … From our Mothers

Many successful entrepreneurs can dig into their pasts and can identify key factors that had contributed to their successes.  Many will cite and give thanks to their Mothers as a key source in providing advice and helping to build those key competencies and characteristics of a successful entrepreneur.

Throughout the years growing up, your Mother may have provided and supported you with the foundation of necessary characteristics such as dedication, pushing you to never give up and keep working towards achieving a goal.

Hard work ethic carried forward into this generation of entrepreneurs as Mothers demonstrated all the massive efforts necessary to take care of the family needs and outside employment and self-employment to support the family.

Providing us with a solid base of values and ethics, Mothers taught us to respect others, to be fair and to strive for excellence.  Some of these core values are key in life and in business.

Mothers would push us to be problem solvers when we were in challenging circumstances, whether it be at play or at work.  Mothers supported us to be independent, but also to rely on others, as family and teams can work together towards a common goal.

Mothers would support us in our ambitious drives throughout our lives, encouraging us to meet our goals and objectives.  Much positive reinforcement from your Mother has been carried forward in your leadership skills, as you motivate the people around you in a constructive, positive manner.  Whether at home, in the communities or in careers,Mothers showed us great leadership skills that we all apply to our everyday lives.

A big thanks to Moms who had a significant role in our successes.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Strategy Plan One

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Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

Young Entrepreneurs – Strategies and Tips to Keep You Focused

Strategy Plan One

May 6, 2012 

Young Entrepreneurs

Are you a youth and itching for the chance at an entrepreneur opportunity? Does self-employment appear more appealing, more fitting with your aggressive aspirations?  You may feel that you are ready to take the jump, but feeling some anxiety in the riskier avenue of self-employment.

Some are ready to take the step at an early age, and when we reference young entrepreneurs, most reference being under the age of 30 as the youth entrepreneur category.  However, most young professionals take a strategic approach in capacity development prior to diving into entrepreneurship.

As a youth, you may have an early competitive advantage jumping into self-employment early.  Here are some tips you may find valuable for your entrepreneur journey at a young age.

Young Entrepreneurs – Goal Setting

What is your employment / self-employment pathway and what do you intend to do?  You will need to answer the “why” – why do you want to go into business for yourself?  Why do you feel this is your best opportunity?  Why do feel your products and services will meet a target market’s needs?

You need to determine what your personal and business goals are, for the short-term and long-term.  Develop your list of priorities and goals as a starting point step towards self-employment.

Self-assessment – Young Entrepreneurs

As you have ideas of what type and industry you want to be self-employed in, you need to develop a list of essential and asset skills necessary for operations and management of a new business.  Essential skills would be the skills to carry out operational tasks and the normal core business skills to adequately manage the business.  Asset skills would be those skills that would add value to your business, such as knowledge and abilities in a specialty area (i.e.: Branding market specialist, IT tech specialist).

On the other side, you need to accurately and as objectively as possible, complete a self-assessment of your skill set.  You should identify and rank your operational and your management skills.  You have probably recognized that there are some consistent traits and characteristics across successful entrepreneurs.  Complete a gap analysis between necessary skills and the skills you possess, and note skills that are needed to complement your own skill set.

Capacity Building for Young Entrepreneurs

Capacity building involves you strengthening your skill set in those traits, characteristics and abilities you may have identified in your assessment as weaker or needing attention.  Strategically think and plan to build operational, management and financial capacities… all will be required for business.

Young Entrepreneurs need Mentors

Young entrepreneurs jumping into business in isolation is extremely rare.  Very few successful entrepreneurs have done it by themselves alone.  Don’t be afraid to call upon someone you admire, someone you have noticed as being successful in employment or self-employment.  Successful business owners and entrepreneurs that you know may act as a business mentor to you and show you the tricks and tips at the start-up phase and beyond.  Entering into a mutual mentoring relationship is considered one of those key actions that will move you towards success.

Business Planning for Young Entrepreneurs

You will need to conduct strong and detailed business planning prior to diving into your business venture.  Due diligence will be required on your part to analyze your industry and markets, your business operations, and your intended mix of products and services to offer the masses.  This could be considered one of your final steps in preparing you to present you business case to financial lenders, partners or investors.  The more prepared and the more work you put into business planning, the better the plan will be to implement and be used as your blueprint.

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Best Practices – Encourage, Promote and Share Best Practices

Strategy Plan One

March 28, 2012 

Best Practices

In your business or organization, teams and units work to find effective and efficient operations, methods and procedures.  Most of the time through the normal course of business evolution, teams find brilliant solutions.  As a leader it is in your realm to bring teams together to encourage them to share best practices, to bounce great ideas off each other, and to create a constructive learning environment.

The sharing of best practices across multi-functional teams is one method of implementing continuous learning and improvement processes.  Success is achieved at many levels when best practices are shared and implemented across business units.

Identification of Best Practices

As a leader in your business you may note differential results between units that do the same work.  In your regular meetings and briefings, investigate the methods and successes that are isolated or behind the scenes.  Best practices may be revealed from frequent communications and engagement with individual staff members and with teams.

Encourage and Promote Best Practices

Great work and efforts should be recognized.  Incorporate recognition in your organization as a way to illustrate appreciation across colleagues.  Promote an environment where teams can openly share what works well for their units.  Promote an environment where teams can learn.  The combination of sharing best practices and open learning environment spells potential success broadly across the organization.

Best Practices Forums

If your organization is large, establish a formal setting for the sharing of information and effective practices.  Forums or working group meetings assist in bringing large groups together to share a broad array of topics.  Structured, these forums can result in improvements to cross-functional units that are not related, such as an administrative efficiency that improves the general operation of all units.

Intellectual Property

As a leader ensure you identify any process, product or design that may fall into your business’ intellectual property rights.  Pay close attention to the best practice or method as it may warrant protection of intellectual property.  Investigate whether patents, trademarks and copyrights should be filed with your Federal Patents office.

A very effective way to improve your organization across individuals and business units is to share and implement best practices.  Allow your professional teams to help others be successful with results-based best practices.

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Time to Give Back as a Successful Entrepreneur

Strategy Plan One

March 25, 2012

Achieving Success

Achieving success as an entrepreneur can be interpreted a number of ways at a number of different levels.  No matter how you slice it, you most likely achieved success through your own efforts AND from the people, contacts and professionals that helped you get there.  At some point you should be willing to continue that good-will cycle and help other budding entrepreneurs.  Do your part to help the business environment thrive.

What You Received Along Your Way to Achieving Success

On your pathway to success you were educated and gained experience in operations and management.  Through mutually beneficial arrangements you gained most of your valuable on the ground experience from some employers who took the time to help you build capacities.  Not only did the employers enjoy the fruits of your labor but you also used this to your advantage, to be later applied to your ventures.

Early on in your entrepreneurial endeavors you may most likely had the benefit of being coached and mentored by a successful business person.  That successful entrepreneur was a willing participant to assist you in your own business pathway.  You probably noted that person was also benefiting, with sharpening his or her leadership skills or observing your business dynamics.

Your family and friends were most likely very supportive as you dedicated much time, money and resources to achieving your goals.  Many were patient, and many were willing to assist you to achieve those goals, lending moral and sometimes financial support.

What You Can Give Back as a Successful Entrepreneur

Looking at your pattern and pathway to successful entrepreneurship, you may be able to give back in the same manner to those who are building capacity to be a successful entrepreneur.  Here are some of the constructive things you could do to give back to the business community:

• Volunteering to business organizations
• Hosting workshops and presenting successful methods
• Blogging on business topics
• Mentoring and coaching
• Assisting youth entrepreneurship groups
• Taking an employee under your wings, under your guidance
• Donating money and other resources if you don`t have the time
• Encouraging and empowering your business teams to contribute to the same entrepreneur causes
• Creating a network of professionals across multiple industries that help build capacities
• Advocating for change and capacity initiatives to the local and Federal governments

If you had the benefit of achieving success and you know others assisted you on your pathway to achieving success, you should consider giving back.  This continuous cycle of good-will is essential in helping the current and future business generations thrive, and strive for success.

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One