Business Planning I – Business Plan for Success
Business Planning II – Marketing Your Product, Service and Company
Business Planning III – Financial Management – Projections and Statements
Business Planning IV – Financing the Business and Feasibility Decision

Where: Chester County Library, 450 Exton Square Parkway, Exton, PA, 19341
When: June 4, 11, 18 and 25 (each Thursday), from 6-8:30 p.m.
Cost: $60
Click here for more information about each workshop in the series and to register.

This workshop is offered to those individuals who are on unemployment. Contact Berks County CareerLink (BCC) at (610) 988-1300 to determine eligibility. If BCC determines you are eligible please call Tracy Ream at (484) 646-4005 or email her at ream@kutztown.edu for more information and orientation.

This seven-week program is designed to help future and existing entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. This dynamic workshop series runs for three hours each week and offers business ideas, business development topics and one-on-one mentoring support.

Click here for all the details

They say it’s a good time to start a business during a economic downturn. If you’ve been laid off, you have plenty of time to start planning and executing, the startup costs may be lower than in better times, and your niche can fill a void left by larger companies that are cutting back riskier ventures or spending their capital trying to enter new markets.

Since I’ve started four businesses and am in the process of starting 2 more, you can call me a serial entrepreneur. I have always found Entrepreneur magazine very informative and useful. You can find really cheap subscriptions on eBay or Google ”cheap magazine”. I see them ranging from $3.49 for 3 years or $11 for 1 year. Either way, I use it as a business expense and write it off my when I do my taxes. I also recently found the Young Entrepreneur blog has some great tips and offer a free monthly contest to review your website for SEO quality. There’s also SCORE, which is a nonprofit organization that offer volunteer mentors, whom are currently working or retired business owners, executives, and corporate leaders. They have local chapters in the US and are partnered with the U.S. Small Business Administration.

This isn’t the first mastermind group I’ve belonged to. The last one wasn’t successful because we couldn’t decide on which project to tackle. Two of us left that group, but the remaining members decided to invest in real estate. This was at the beginning of the real estate bubble burst. Ouch! I haven’t kept in touch with them, so I don’t know how badly they got burned.

The members of the new group are all Wall Streeters, but include traders, an IT guy, and a technical analyst, so I think we’ll have an easier time agreeing in which area to invest ourselves. We will all invest time, sweat, and money in our goal to reach financial security, or as the traders put it, “F*@# You!” money.

I’ll try to post regularly on our progress. The first homework we had was from the “senior” member of our group. He told us to read the book The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. He says he has increased his income significantly after reading and following the advice in this book. It was written in 1910 and is a precursor to all the motivational books that are a dime a dozen today. Wallace believed becoming rich is a science, like mathematics, that can be reproduced and learned. He believed it has nothing to do with your environment, otherwise everyone in a particular city would be rich and in another city, would be all poor. It is not done by purely saving, as there are many savers that are still poor.

Since it is a public domain book, it is non-copyrighted and free to share. It’s a quick read at 66 pages. Here is the pdf version and audio book version.

The main points of the book are:

• Do things in a certain way
• Like causes must produce like effects. If someone else in your area is doing the same thing you are doing and they are rich while you aren’t – you’re not doing it in the same way
• You will do best in doing something you like to do
• There’s more than enough for all to be rich, the supply will never run out
• Don’t dwell on poverty. The only way to combat poverty is to become more rich and have an increasing number of practitioners of this book
• Altruism is the same as selfishness
• There is a force which permeates the Universe, which he calls “formless substance”
• We can form things in our thought and by impressing our thought on the force, we can cause the things we think to be created
• Create don’t compete
• We can become one with the force by feeling sincere gratitude for what the force can bring
• We must have a clear mental image of what we want, what to do, or what to become and spend every free moment visualizing this image
• Do everything that can be done each day, and in a successful manner
• Give unto others a use value in excess of cash value, so that each transaction will create more (I guess this is akin to the teach a man to fish proverb)

• Have passion for your business
• Maximize the benefits of a corporate structure
• Have multiple options for access to capital
• Build a solid team
• Ways to increase income
• Have a purpose other than money
• Leverage time, intellect, money, and experience
• Know your numbers
• Have systems in place that can be easily taken over
• Have a clear exit strategy
• Network! Network! Network!

I used The Company Corporation to incorporate my eBay business. It was quick and painless. They have several packages to fit your needs, whether you want an Inc. or LLC. They remind me every month and every quarter of requirements that I need to fulfill to keep my Inc. status. I also get these freebies every once in a while.

P.S. – Only until 2PM today, free breakfast at Denny’s today. Get your Grand Slam on!