During a conversation with a small business owner, they made the statement of “you do not need to write a business plan – that’s old school.  You just need the financials to show investors.”  Well, this thinking just does not make sense and you still need to plan something out and “write” a plan in some sort of format.  Of course, the first thing I did was start to research if a written business plan was still around and as a business owner if you really need to create one.  How much could the world’s expectations for business plans change from the time I spent advising high schools students for the SkillsUSA national business plan competition?  Guess what?  The business plan did not change much and it is...

After many years of being an employee in the world of business, I jumped into the world of entrepreneurship.  I work with small business owners to help them organize their chaos while supporting the back office of their business.  I focus on calendars, content and connections. Today, I want to focus a little on the whole idea of strategic planning and using a calendar to assist you to organize some of your chaos to close out the year strong. You may think that the 4th quarter of the year is all about sales for a business, especially to get sales into the black for the year, but not necessarily.  I strongly embrace that October is International Strategic Planning Month and Financial Planning Month. All the more...