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This book shows readers how to:
Understand business model thinking and diagram their current personal business model
Understand the value of their skills in the marketplace and define their purpose
Articulate a vision for change
Create a new personal business model harmonized with that vision, and most important, test and implement the new model

Plans That Work arms entrepreneurs and small business owners with an easy-to-follow template for writing persuasive business plans, along with proven models that can be used to analyze potential business opportunities from initial idea to viable venture. This value-packed book will show both entrepreneurs and current business owners how to:

Determine what to include in each plan, why, and for whom
Recognize and avoid common pitfalls in the process
Use the renowned "Timmons Model" to analyze potential business opportunities

Great ideas don't simply sell themselves. They have lo be backed up by numbers -- initial investment cost estimates, marketing numbers, production costs, projected revenues, etc. Without this information, nobody in their fight mind will give the go-ahead -- or fork over any funding.

Entrepreneurs--and entrepreneurial companies--live or die by the quality of their plans and proposals. Whether it's to get funding for a new product line or business from a client, writing hard-hitting prose that answers essential questions and makes specific requests is an indispensable skill. Entrepreneur, ad man, and writing teacher Dennis Chambers shows how entrepreneurs can persuade people, through skillful writing, to pony up capital or contracts. This ability--which can be learned--is rare in today's media-saturated world. But it counts more than ever if an entrepreneur wants to make it over the magical five-year hump and on into lasting business success. Numerous examples and exercises ensure that entrepreneurs understand how the writing game is played--and that they play it well. Unfortunately, most don't play this game well. Most business writers mistakenly believe their task is to inform. They write to fill an information gap or to update the reader on a particular project. Or they write about what's important to them. What these writers do not take into account is that the speed of today's work world has reached overdrive. The typical reader simply doesn't have time to ponder dense, poorly organized information and intuit the appropriate action. And readers don't give a hoot about what's important to the writer--they want to know what's in it for themselves. Business writers need to use all the tools at their command to persuade, inspire action, and in general move a project forward. This book is about how to be persuasive in two key skills in business: writing proposals and writing business plans. Step by step, Dennis Chambers illustrates the techniques of effective business writing, with numerous examples throughout. Whether the objective is to secure financing from an investor, lay out a marketing strategy, or secure a large contract, getting results requires crafting an effective structure for the proposal, and using words that sell. Chambers is an able guide in saving entrepreneurs time and undue effort while reaching the goal of long-term business success. Besides expert advice and insights, the book includes: *Examples and practical guidance, all geared toward the entrepreneur/small business owner. *Exercises, templates, cases, glossary, and model letters and plans.

With How to Write a Business Plan, you'll learn how to: figure out if your business idea will make money estimate operating expenses prepare cash flow create profit and loss forecasts determine assets, liabilities and net worth find potential sources of financing think first before borrowing from friends and relatives present your plan to lenders and investors. How to Write a Business Plan provides a CD-ROM with spreadsheets that help you determine and forecast cash flow, financial statements, sales revenue, and profit and loss. It also provides three sample business plans you can modify for your own use.

The U.S. Economic Census contains data essential to understanding the U.S. economy and determining its current health. It can also help users recognize trends in different industries, target marketing and sales, and understand key economic indicators. This handbook explains "the Census concepts, methods, terminology, and data sources" and also explains how to locate needed census data

This book isn’t about cover letters or resumes. Instead, you will learn the best practices of Silicon Valley start-ups, and how to apply these entrepreneurial strategies to your career. Whether you work for a giant multinational corporation, a small local business, or launching your own venture, you need to know how to:
* Adapt your career plans as you change, the people around you change, and industries change.
* Develop a competitive advantage to win the best jobs and opportunities.
* Strengthen your professional network by building powerful alliances and maintaining a diverse mix of relationships. * Find the unique breakout opportunities that massively accelerate career growth.
* Take proactive risks to become more resilient to industry tsunamis.
* Tap your network for information and intelligence that help you make smarter decisions

Co-created by 470 "Business Model Canvas" practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition. Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to "the business model generation!"

Customer Development is a four-step framework for helping startups discover and validate their customers, product, and go-to-market strategy, developed by Steve Blank and an integral part of Eric Ries' Lean Startup methodology. Focused on the Customer Discovery step, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development is an easy to follow guide for finding early adopters, building a Minimum Viable Product, finding Product-Market fit, and establishing a sales and marketing roadmap.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

Entrepreneurs who dream of building the next Amazon, Facebook, or Google have the opportunity to take advantage of one of the most powerful economic engines the world has ever known: venture capital. To do that, you need to woo, impress, and persuade venture capitalists to back your endeavor. That task alone is a challenge. But finding and choosing the right investor can be harder still. Even if you manage to get backing, you want your VC to be a partner, not some dictator who will undermine your vision and take control of your life's work.
Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. By his early thirties, he had helped build two successful start-ups-one went public, the other was acquired. Now he uses his experience and unique perspective on "the other side" as a venture capitalist helping entrepreneurs bring their dreams to fruition.

If you're planning to start your own business, you'd best start with the facts. This reliable, information-packed resource shows you how to identify good business opportunities, create a business plan, do financial projections, find financing, and manage taxes. Other topics include marketing, selling, legal issues, intellectual property, franchising, starting a social enterprise, and selling your business.
•Completely updated with new examples, new topics, and full coverage of topical issues in entrepreneurship
•Includes customizable, downloadable forms for launching your own business
•Comes with Portable MBA Online, a new web site that gives readers access to forms, study guides, videos, presentations, and other resources

Written by Dermot Berkery, an internationally known venture capitalist with Delta Partners, this complete toolbook thoroughly details how venture capitalists arrange the financing for a company; what they look for in a business plan; how they value a business; and how they structure the terms of an agreement. Within its pages, you'll find everything you need to successfully raise new business capital with the most attractive terms possible.
Using informative case studies, detailed charts, and term sheet exercises, Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur discusses the basic principles of the venture capital method, strategies for raising capital, methods of valuing the early-stage venture, and proven techniques for negotiating the deal. The author leads you step-by-step through:
Developing a Financing Map
Getting to the First Stepping Stone
Understanding the Unique Cash Flow and Risk Dynamics of Early Stage Ventures
Determining the Amount of Capital to Raise and What to Spend It on
Learning How Venture Capital Firms Think
Creating a Winning Business Plan
Funding Early-Stage Companies
Agreeing on a Term Sheet with a Venture Capitalist
Setting Terms for Splitting the Rewards
Allocating Control between Founders/Management and Investors
Aligning the Interests of Founders/Management and Investors
This invaluable guide also includes term sheet exercises that test your understanding of various financing situations facing companies. In addition, the book features three extensive case studies: the first covering a fictional start-up company used throughout the book, the second offering a stepping stone map, and the third presenting a term sheet used in practice by venture capitalists.

More than 100,000 entrepreneurs rely on this book for detailed, step-by-step instructions on building successful, scalable, profitable startups. The National Science Foundation pays hundreds of startup teams each year to follow the process outlined in the book, and it's taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and more than 100 other leading universities worldwide. Why?

The Startup Owner's Manual guides you, step-by-step, as you put the Customer Development process to work. This method was created by renowned Silicon Valley startup expert Steve Blank, acknowledged catalyst of the "Lean Startup" movement, and tested and refined by him for more than a decade.

This 608-page how-to guide includes over 100 charts, graphs, and diagrams, plus 77 valuable checklists that guide you as you drive your company toward profitability. It will help you:
· Avoid the 9 deadly sins that destroy startups' chances for success
· Use the Customer Development method to bring your business idea to life
· Incorporate the Business Model Canvas as the organizing principle for startup hypotheses
· Identify your customers and determine how to "get, keep and grow" customers profitably
· Compute how you'll drive your startup to repeatable, scalable profits.

Clifton L. Taulbert, a recognized thought leader on the power of community, is renowned for his ability to glean timeless lessons from the place of his birth, the Mississippi Delta. His first book, Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, has been embraced globally as has his book, Eight Habits of the Heart. Gary G. Schoeniger is an emerging thought leader in the field of entrepreneurship education. He is the cofounder and CEO of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (ELI), an organization dedicated to providing interactive real-world entrepreneurship education programs for individuals and organizations worldwide. Their clients include the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. Their mission is to create inspired learning programs that deliver real-world impact

Actual business plans compiled by, and aimed at, entrepreneurs seeking funding for small businesses. Presents sample plans taken from businesses in the manufacturing, retail and service industries which serve as examples of how to approach, structure and compose business plans