Thomas L. Greenbaum
New York City, NY
Table of Contents
1.Should You Be an Entrepreneur
2.The Key Ingredient to Entrepreneurial Success – The Idea
6.Researching Your Business and Market
7.The Wheel of Small Business Marketing
12.Legal Structure of Your Business
13.Legal Requirements When Starting a Business
19.Developing a Trifold Brochure
21.Promotion for Small Business
22.Key Insights into More Effective Advertising
25.Brief Advertising & Promotion Legal Advice
26.Managing Day-to-Day Financial Operations
30.Summary – The Keys to Success in a Small Business
INTRODUCTION
Who would not like to be his or her own boss? To be able to run your own business and be in complete control of your destiny is the fantasy for a large percentage of people. They could be recent graduates of high school, college or grad school, or they are employees of a company who are tired of following the direction of their boss and would like to go out on their own. For so many people this is their lifelong wish, as it is viewed by many as a promise of freedom, income and complete control of your destiny.
The purpose of this book is to explore the options of entrepreneurship, with the objective of providing readers with guidance as to whether this is an appropriate route for them, and if so, what do they need to accomplish to maximize their chance of success. The book covers a wide variety of topics from the initial conceptualizing of the business idea to the development of the business plan, the planning for marketing the idea and the key considerations relative to pricing, marketing and sales. It is not intended to have all the answers, as almost every chapter of this book has already been developed as a full book by someone else.
The purpose is to expose the new entrepreneur to the topics they will need to address when starting a business, and to provide some sense of priority for the attention that is placed on each during the start-up phase of the business. It also intended to provide tools and information to help any small business operate more effectively.
The content of the book is based on both my experience in business at Procter & Gamble and Church & Dwight working in the product management field, and almost 40 years working in my own company as a marketing sales and promotional consultant for large and small companies. That experience has been greatly enhanced by the work over the past nine years as a business counselor for SCORE (which was previously known as the Service Corps of Retired Executives) where I have provided counsel to over 900 different clients in a wide variety of fundamental areas. The problems and opportunities faced by my SCORE clients over the years have been the motivation for me to write this book.
I hope all the readers of this book will benefit from its content, and that they will let me know how it has helped them. Further, any readers that have suggestions for improvements in any of the chapters should feel free to contact me with their thoughts. I view this book to be a continuing work in progress.
The 2018 Revision to the Original Book
In the six years since the original book was written there have been some major changes in the overall business environment, the most significant of which has been the dramatic rise of social media as a major tool of the marketing mix. In addition, over the past 6 years I have had experience with approximately 600 additional clients and have learned more about ways to help them. The goal of this revision is to enhance the material from the original book and to add as much information as I could to expose readers to new thinking and new technologies that will increase the chance of their success.
I hope I have achieved this goal.
CHAPTER ONE
Should You Be an Entrepreneur?
The American Dream is to own your own business and make enough money, so you can provide