I used to be a ‘fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants’ kind of girl. But when things started slipping through the cracks, I realized I needed better planning skills.
A recent article in the Associated Press reminded me how essential it is to plan for your business. And although this article focused on the financial aspects of planning, I think it’s important to take a wide view, and plan for everything.
So each year around this time, I write out my plan for the year, then break it done into specific goals and objectives. I also re-evaluate all my business relationships.
Once the plan is completed, …read more

Tackling big markets is great. Nobody wants to start a company in a market worth $5. Creating new markets is great too, but most startups are built in existing markets – and often they tout the enormity of those markets as a great reason to get into them.
“The mobile industry will be worth $50 billion in 5 years!”
“Advertising online is going to be worth $100 trillion by 2010!”
You can get this sort of data all over the place. Analysts put out reports all the time expounding the growing size of various markets.
The result is that many startups take this approach:
“If …read more

We all know 7 is a lucky number right? This time is no different with the biggest Carnival of Entrepreneurs yet!
I hope you’ll enjoy the plethora of posts. There’s more here than any one person could read (except me, cause I read all the posts!) but find a category, post title or summary that grabs your attention and read on. Help these bloggers out by checking out their stuff, commenting on their blogs and linking to them.
And please support to the Carnival of Entrepreneurs by spreading the good word! Link to this post, tell your friends, share the wealth. …read more

Welcome to the 6th Edition of the Carnival of Entrepreneurs!
We’ve got a huge list of content to go through, with some great posts on topics ranging from motivation, inspiration, learning, making money online and failure. There’s a few themes running through the posts, which I find particularly interesting. It shows that people are thinking along the same lines at the beginning of 2007.
Please help us promote the Carnival of Entrepreneurs! Link back to this post. Visit the sites and comment on then. Submit your own entrepreneurial content! The more participation, linking and sharing, the stronger the Carnival becomes.
Carnival Highlights

Laura Young …read more