Executive Summary –   You have about 5 minutes to capture your investors attention in the executive summary,  so this section must be COMPELLING.  Generally, the purpose of the business plan is to obtain financing, but the plan is also used as the business blueprint when self financing.  The executive summary is usually written last  and  covers  what  the investor NEEDS TO KNOW about THIS INVESTMENT to make a decision about giving you money.

Product/Service Idea.  Describe clearly  the product or service.   What pain does it relieve for the purchaser? What makes it UNIQUE and BETTER than either  similar, or substitutable, products/services? Continue reading »

I’ve never trademarked anything before. But the internet has lots of material about trademarking in Canada and the United States, so I figured I’d work my way through it.

The Canadian government source of information for trademarking is the Canadian Intellectual Property Office; the American government source of information for trademarking is the United States Patent and Trademark Office . Continue reading »

When  facilitating entrepreneurship, one of the earliest concepts I introduce is “ the elevator speech.”

The elevator speech, according to Wikipedia, is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. Continue reading »

Phewww, those last three posts were a lot to get through.

It’s September 2009, we are again heading out of town, to begin work on our business plan. This time we are motoring to Zephyr Cove, Lake Tahoe, Nevada
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The following questions are based on the work of Dr. Brent Mainprize and he has kindly agreed to allow us to refer to it. Our answers are for our idea are preceded by a dot.  How about you take your own idea and walk it through?

3) What level of customers receptiveness to the new product do you expect?
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The following questions are based on the work of Dr. Brent Mainprize and he has kindly agreed to allow us to refer to it. Our answers are for our idea are preceded by a dot.  How about you take your own idea and walk it through?
Continue reading »

The following questions are based on the work of Dr. Brent Mainprize and he has kindly agreed to allow us to refer to it.There are 17 questions in three posts. Our answers are for our idea are preceded by a dot.  How about you take your own idea and walk through it together?
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When Bill and I need to make decisions, we get out of town. So in July 2009, Bill and two friends ferried our 26 foot Nonsuch, Happy, for 22 hours  averaging 5.5 knots to Campbell River, B.C. (To experience travel at that speed, a great boating book is Beth Hill Six Knot Summers or the ethereal, The Curve of Time by M. “Cappy” Blanchett.)
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Bill and I weren’t  going to start  this journey without completing the route we were on.  In Sept. 1997, we  had purchased property purposely to create the first winery on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.  We didn’t know if the winery would be well received;  fortunately for us, the winery was more successful than we anticipated. Continue reading »

When  my  husband Bill  upgraded from his  Blackberry 7280 ®to his Blackberry Curve 8310® in 2007, he noticed that both his texting speed and accuracy were significantly  reduced.  His thumbs kept hitting several keys simultaneously on the now smaller  keyboard.  It especially irritated him that he had to go back to correct his errors.  Being the  Mr. Fix-It  kind of guy he is, he starting thinking about  how to redevelop his accuracy. Continue reading »