Jeremy Brandt

Ken Blanchard – The One Minute Entrepreneur

I recently had the opportunity to meet Ken Blanchard and his wife Margie Blanchard, son Scott Blanchard and Scott's wife Madeleine Homan.

What a talented family! They were speaking to a group of entrepreneurs about Ken’s upcoming book – “The One Minute Entrepreneur” that is similar to “The One Minute Manager” in format but focused on helping entrepreneurs think through the skills needed to create a successful company.

 I was able to review a manuscript and I believe it will be a great resource for those thinking of starting a company. It covers a lot of the basic skills and “common sense” things that unfortunately aren’t as “common” as they should be. The forward is by Michael Gerber, who has an amazing track record of helping small businesses to create processes and systems to succeed.

If you ever have the opportunity to hear any of the Blanchards, especially Ken, speak, I highly recommend you do whatever you can to attend. They are all highly sought after speakers who do an excellent job of engaging their audience while providing a lot of in-depth data and analysis.

And when "The One Minute Entrepreneur" comes out, be sure and pickup up a copy!

When NOT to go public

It seems that nearly every business owner out there has dreams of taking their company public.  This is especially true in the technology industry where you can be losing money but generate a windfall of cash by offering shares to the public.

An article earlier this month by Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy.com outlines why, after doing all the filing needed and receiving SEC approval, he decided to withdraw his registration with the SEC to become a public company.

One of the primary reasons cited in his post are the stringent accounting methods that the SEC would require them to use if they wanted to be public. 

With the ridiculous Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements, many companies (and their the CEOs who are now ultimately responsible for financial errors) are deciding to either not go public, or to go public in a foreign market to avoid the overbearing requirements of the US market.

SOX was a typical over-reaction to the Enron/Tyco/etc scandals of the past few years.  Just like preventing you from bringing hair gel on an airplane probably doesn't make you any safer, but makes you feel safer because "at least they did something", many of the SOX requirements don't do anything to stop fraud, while making it much harder to do business as a public company.

Do we really want US companies to feel like that have to go to foreign markets if they want public investment?  Business is what drives our economy.  Let's figure out how to make it easier for business owners to operate, not hamstring their efforts to grow (and create jobs, and buy buildings, and pay taxes).

Bob Parsons of Godaddy - 10 Rules

This is a great posting by Bob Parsons, the founder and CEO of GoDaddy, and former founder of Parsons Technology (sold to Intuit for $64 Million).

One of the interesting things from his business history is that with both of the companies he founded he was the sole investor.  He never raised money and created two companies with revenues in excess of $100M.

Of the 16 rules Parsons has come up with, here are a few that are my favorite:

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone. I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security." My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers."

7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

8. Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: "A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

You can view Parsons' entire post at Bob Parsons - My 16 Rules.

Edgeio Real Estate Listings

Edgeio launched last week - a service that crawls real estate web sites and blogs to aggregate listings.

It was founded by RealNames founder Keith Teare and TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington.  The site uses RSS and XML to collect content from various web sites based on tags and then displays them online.

The process is fairly simple.  You tag your listings with keywords and Edgeio will index them along with other keywords.

The concept is interesting, although the future for "content aggregators" like this is in question.  The market is only so large for companies who rely entirely on content from other people, although this is essentially what Google, Yahoo and the search engine companies do.

Tags:Listing edgeio

Business Plan Outline

It has been a while since I wrote a business plan from scratch.  Some friends and I have started a company that we believe has a huge amount of potential over the next 6 - 12 months to be a major player in the Internet Marketing arena.

Here is the basic outline of our business plan:

I.    Executive Summary
II.    Business overview
    a.    Description of Business
    b.    Company Goals
    c.    Market Overview
    d.    Management Team
    e.    Competitive landscape
    f.    Strengths/Weaknesses
    g.    Key Differentiators
III.    Products
    a.    Products offered
    b.    Pricing structures
    c.    Future products
IV.    Marketing Plan
    a.    Market overview
    b.    Target customer
    c.    SWOT Analysis
    d.    Marketing strategy
V.    Financials
    a.    Sources of financing
    b.    Income Statements
        i.    12 month projections (monthly)
        ii.    3 year projections (quarterly)
        iii.    5 year projections (yearly)
    c.    Cash Flow
        i.    12 month projections (monthly)
        ii.    3 year projections (quarterly)
        iii.    5 year projections (yearly)
VI.    Technology
    a.    Software development
    b.    Infrastructure
    c.    Patentable technology

Do you have a plan?

"Where there is no vision, the people perish" - Proverbs 29:18

Real estate investing, just like everything else in life requires a plan.  You can not float through it without a set path and expect to be successful.

This is more then just "I want to make a million dollars buying houses".  This is a methodical step-by-step plan that starts with a vision (perhaps the statement above) and is boiled down to the detailed elements of your daily tasks.

Your plan should answer the WHAT, HOW, WHEN, and WHY of everything you do.

Investing is NOT complex.  Most people fail because they meander along aimlessly for a period of time with short bursts of activity.

If you have a well thought out plan, with clear defined goals, and you execute that plan in a consistent manner with perseverance I guarantee that you will be successful.  Use this simple formula and "all your your wildest dreams come true".  (This is worth 100 times more then any money you'll give to a late night "guru" - and it's free!)

Business or Hobby?

Is your real estate venture (or mortgage company, or insurance company, or church ,or ...) a business or a hobby? 

Do you have a business plan?
Do you have defined goals?
Do you have a plan on how to reach those goals?
Is what you do every day based on the goals?
Do you know how to find any document you need within a few minutes?
Do you spend more time working ON your business or IN your business?
Do you do what only YOU can do, and delegate the rest?
Are you proactive?
Do you have a process for everything you do?

If not, you are probably running your business more like a hobby then a true business. 

If you have a business, or are thinking of starting a business I highly recommend you read and follow The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber. The principles in this book will help you run your business (no matter what size) more efficiently - which will make your more profitable and give you the ability to grow faster and more smoothly.

I have applied many of the principles in this book, and it has made a significant difference in how we operate and what we do.