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Lean Business Planning

Get what you want from your business

Lean business planning simple but powerful way to get what you want from your business. Get focused, grow faster, and adjust to change. A lean business plan is an easy and practical way to align strategy, tactics, milestones, assumptions, and essential cash flow without the fuss of a full business plan.

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New Conversational Commerce App Increases Online Sales

Is “conversational commerce” the next big improvement in online shopping? I hope so. I’m closely following the success of the new Octane AI conversational commerce app. It was announced this week along with convincing data on significant sales increases it generated by actual users. It works with Shopify, the shopping cart platform used by half...

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Involvement vs. Commitment in Small Business

It's an old joke. Question: In the classic bacon and egg breakfast, what's the role of the chicken, and what's the role of the pig? Answer: the chicken is involved. The pig is committed.

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Thin Slicing Business Nightmare

Today's stupid business moment is an example of what Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin slicing" or snap judgment in his book Blink: it's powerful when it works and dangerous when it doesn't.

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Survey: What Are CEOs Thinking?

To me, this is good news: McKinsey's latest CEO survey shows that enterprise CEOs worry about global warming and environmental issues.

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3 MBA Tricks to Shorten Boring Meetings

On the bad days, in off moments, it seems like my two years in business school were mostly about learning the definitions of a few key buzz words to use in meetings.

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Online Course

The Economist Group is hosting my new online course on lean business planning.

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10 Tips on How to Protect a Software Idea

How to protect a software idea? I recently answered a related Quora question on this one. I took parts of this post from a previous post on how to protect an idea while building a business, but this one focuses more on software, specifically. That’s where I’ve spent most of my career, and still my...

The post 10 Tips on How to Protect a Software Idea appeared first on Planning, Startups, Stories.

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Infographic: Branding for Small Business and Startups

My thanks to customlabels.net for this useful infographic on brand identity for small business. Earlier in my career I consulted for Apple Computer. I watched how zealously they guarded all the details of the big brand identity. It’s refreshing to see in this infographic some useful tips for minding branding for small business and startups.

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Concept Meets Code: 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs Dealing with Developers

I've seen it too many times: starry-eyed would-be Internet entrepreneur meets real developer, dream in hand. This is culture clash. More often than not, it ends up with wasted time, wasted money and dashed dreams. Concept meets computer code.

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Guy Kawasaki's Alltop: RSS Zen

The Alltop.com launch has come out in pieces, without a lot of fanfare or expense, hoping on that simple power and easy uncluttered view to make it work.

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Big Brother vs. Social Media vs. Basil Fawlty

I don't want the government or an employer listening into my conversations, putting me on hidden video, or even knowing what library books I read. But privacy has absolutely nothing to do with publishing.

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5 Ways to Break Up a Bad Work Day

It's one of those days. Maybe you have technical problems, or a project that isn't going well, or you couldn't sleep last night. These are things that help break up a bad day.

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CEOs Change the Deeper Meaning of the Ultimate Bottom Line

As I read this morning about the Business Roundtable changing this fundamental principle, I was really glad to see it. It’s about time. Several hundred influential CEOs got together and agreed to revise priorities. The next quarter’s profits — which maximizes short-term share price — are no longer the supreme goal and top priority. Here’s...

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Business Plan Events and Why They Matter

(Note: I posted this earlier this week on the SBA Industry Word blog. It’s reposted here for your convenience.) What do you think of when you hear the phrase “business plan?” Does that bring to mind a formal document that starts with a summary and includes modules describing your business’s products, market, strategy, team, and...

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iPhone Pricing, Stock prices, and Market Myopia

The juxtaposition of the price announcements and the stock price drop are fascinating because good business strategy, once again, gets dinged by the market.

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Castro, Charisma, Cuba: A Personal Memory

Fidel would have risen to power almost anywhere. His ideals weren't working, and Cuba wasn't working, but Fidel Castro was.

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Who Should Decide What News is Important?

Back in the old days, editors decided what was news, not advertisers and not readers. There was this concept called "news values."

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A Startling Reminder of Gender Bias

On the Internet, the world of George Eliot and George Sand, women novelists with men's pen names, is still around.

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Avoid Meaningless Words

From Seth Godin’s post Meaningless, published today… There are words that now have no meaning at all… ‘Well’ and ‘so’ have been doing this work for a long time, but add to that the more syllabic words like ironically, literally, and hopefully. And don’t forget all the adjectives, beginning with ‘very’ and ‘really’ that (ironically) make something...

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eBook Disruption Picks Up Momentum With Major Authors

Why would an established author jump a prestigious publisher ship and self-publish ebooks instead? It's not what you probably think.

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Pseudonymity Slouches Toward Anti-Social Media

Ultimately, as with John Mackey, other people influencing stock prices, and the companies plugging their own products and knocking competitors in review sites and blogs, there's no good answer to the problem of social media distorted by commercial goals.

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What? Women Working? Choice? Time Warp!

Talk about shock and awe! I thought the arguments about choice had to do with abortion, but no, apparently there's deep division about women working.

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Ebooks, Copyright, Piracy

What, if anything, do we do about those big bad companies that sue Internet Robin Hoods and cute college students for giving somebody else's stuff away?

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Moonshot, Columbus, Now Woodstock a Myth Too? Oh No!

I'm all grown up now, I get marketing, my company depends on it like the rest of small business, but jeez, marketing at Woodstock? That's Woodstock's legacy?

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