Seminar 3

Just a reminder that seminar 3 is this Thursday. I am working on mentors for those who wish to be paired with them.

Hopefully everyone has started researching market information as we talked about last Thursday. Another thing to think about and research is competition. We will talk more in depth about this during seminar three, but just to get you started...

There is direct competition and indirect competition. For example, if you were to open a movie theater. Direct competitors are other movie theaters. However, there are other ways people may wish to spend there evening rather than watching movies. They could go to the driving range, go carts, horse races, the list goes on. Those may not be the same business as yours, but they are an equally effective way to entertain one's self for an evening. So... you may be the only one with your product or service, but you will always have competitors.

This is important for raising capital. If you say there are no competitors in your field, you may want to rephrase that to there are no direct competitors in your field. If you simply say there are no competitors it tells the people you are making your pitch to that maybe you didn't do your homework well enough.

This is only one topic we will cover next seminar. I hope to see you there.

Marketing

Many people think that marketing is synonymous with advertising. The truth is advertising is only a small part; a single step in a never ending process.

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as:
"the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives."

This is obviously a very important part of planning your business. Therefore, in our seminars there are two weeks allocated for marketing, the 4 P's (product, price, place, promotion), target markets, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, 0pportunities, threats) analysis, market potential, product life cycle, etc. All these things are crucial to knowing the environment your business is currently in and planning for "what if" scenario's.

In our seminar last night one of our speakers mentioned statcan.ca. This is a fantastic website to do some research on your market, its potential, and your place in it. There is another government website that I would like to direct your attention to; Industry Canada. It is a website with fantastic resources that goes more in depth about what we were talking about last night and what we will talk about next week.

Specifically, http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/stco-levc.nsf/en/h_qw00016e.html talks about marketing if your still a little hazy. On the right hand side there is a link that takes you to an interactive worksheet that helps you to assess your strength in the market. One thing the government does is make pretty decent websites for the people needing more business information.

There is tons, literally tons, of information on marketing and examples of anything you may want about business plans, online. This wealth of information does come at a cost. Sometimes it is not a reputable site. Just be aware of this fact. Usually government websites are pretty reliable, so they are a great starting place.

Good luck marketing and I hope to see you next week.

Great Resources

At our seminar last Thursday Craig reminded everyone that research is a key component of the business plan. In my mind, if you do not do research on your business, market opportunity, or target market, you are unprepared. If you are struggling with research the Chinook Entrepreneur Challenge (CEC) website has some great resources at http://www.chinookchallenge.com/Resources.html. There is everything there from sample plans to assistance in financial planning to government research pages (stats can). I have not had the opportunity to browse all 70 websites, but I will direct you to some that encompass what we talked about this week.

I would like to draw your attention to the Business Development Bank of Canada (www.bdc.ca). If you browse it you will find:
You can customize the site to your industry sector
Step by step how to guide to start your small business
Sample Plans
Financial templates (very in depth)
but also....
A self Entrepreneur assessment.

All these things will give you a great understanding of what you are up for.

Also, for research purposes, the government has some excellent statistics. On the CEC Resources site there are over a dozen sites that would help. I hope this gets you started in the right direction. See you at the next seminar on Thursday, June 14.