Build a business

Entrepreneur and adventurer, John Simnett, is offering a new service to senior business executives that helps them keep their company together whilst they go on an adventure of a lifetime.

Many CEOs are so trapped into their business, or just loving it, that they never experience real adventure outside their working lives. Taking several weeks out of their business to walk the Arctic wastelands, or to cycle the mountains of Europe, is an impossibility for most. An experienced businessman, John offers an executive life-line in both keeping the business together, and planning the Great Trip.

Working closely with the client business, getting to understand key areas, John provides a low-cost professional service that enhances peoples’ lives and improves their business.

The services, including costs, are outlined in his website.

Today, many people are eager to experience something well beyond the routine of daily work, that an annual holiday just does not provide. For someone who is running a business, they have a responsibility to their employees as well as their future livelihoods. Just think how a business would regard its responsibility to the environment, after their CEO returns from several weeks trekking through mountains and clean air.

For more information, visit simnett.com.

The Clay Nelson Life Balance Business Planning Workbook — Getting What You Say You Want is designed to help business owners get past the misconceptions and procrastinations that often get in the way of writing a business plan and move forward in creating a powerful document that will provide focus when the direction ahead may not seem so clear.

A written business plan:

• Helps you discover what you know and don’t know about your competition–and your own company’s strengths and weaknesses within your market.

• Guides company management as they make decisions that shape short-term and long-term business strategies.

• Defines the responsibilities of each team member in the company, and provides the basis for accountability in handling those responsibilities for the benefit of the company.

• Provides at-a-glance assessments of a company’s financial position, cash flow and overhead costs.

• Creates benchmarks for measuring progress towards goals and objectives, and shows you when you’ve gotten there.

The Business Planning Workbook also includes a discussion on what founder Clay Nelson cites as a common excuse for not having and using a written business plan: it’s no fun!

For more information, go to claynelsonlifebalance.com.

One of his former students is selling genetically altered goldfish that glow in the dark. Another is developing a diaper with built-in baby wipes. For John Butler, a professor of entrepreneurship and management at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business, such occurrences are part and parcel with living in a town bursting with start-ups.

Few places are as closely associated with entrepreneurial capitalism as Austin, Texas, and Silicon Valley. But the truth is that new businesses are set up everywhere–especially in tough times. Whether it’s by choice or by necessity, starting a business offers multiple advantages, including providing a way to create wealth and opportunity when both seem in short supply; a chance to be the boss; and a reason to try something far beyond the bounds of cubicle culture.

They will not be alone: The country boasted 3.8 million companies with fewer than 10 workers in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And though starting a business is a common practice, many highly competent professionals manage to fumble the basics. Veterans of big companies, for example, often fail to spend enough time laying the foundations necessary for their new ventures to grow, Engel says.

First, it’s important to keep in mind that even the best idea in the world doesn’t make a great company; a sound business plan does. You’ll want to develop a strategy that will identify what your product or service is, how you will market it to potential customers, and what it will take to keep the lights on and some money in your pocket.

It’s in this stage that you’ll need to decide what kind of legal entity your business will be. There are six main types: sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, corporations, S-corporations and tax-exempt corporations. (You can change the form of your business later if you chose; for example, most businesses do not start out as corporate entities but turn into them after reaching a certain level of size and success.)

For more information, visit forbes.com.