by Keith Larson

The final step for many is obtaining financing.  An effective business plan requires an understanding of the following.

Competitive Advantage: Why would someone buy from you instead of a competitor? Build your plan around your competitive advantage.

Target Market: Define your customers by location, age group, income level, etc.

Marketing: How will you reach your Target Market - TV/Radio/Newspaper advertising, e-mail, internet, mailers?

by Lynn Effinger

Whether you own your own business or work for someone else you will stare opportunity in the face more than once. Will you be bold enough to step through that window of opportunity or too timid to act?

Let me demonstrate what I mean. When I was 26 years old I was an assistant purchasing agent at S&S Construction Company in Beverly Hills. S&S was, and is, one of the most successful new home development companies in Southern California. I wanted to move up in the company to be a bigger part of our success and, obviously, to make more money. I had been with the company for just under a year when I read an article in Builder Magazine that talked about how other builders were building what was referred to as moderate or affordable housing. Our company was well known for the quality homes we built, but they tended to all be in the upper price ranges in the areas they were built. I wondered why we didn’t build homes that a young family like mine could afford. So I copied the article and wrote a memo to Nathan Shapell, our President and CEO, asking that question. A few days later he called me into his office and asked me what made me think S&S should be in the affordable housing business? I answered that a great company like ours should offer homes in many price ranges and young families should be able to buy an S&S home. Mr. Shapell then told me that he wanted me to take the next two weeks to conduct a marketing survey to determine if we should enter the affordable housing market and where we should start.

by Ted Saul

 Cloud computing, cloud services, everything cloud, dominates the technical and business journals these days. There are articles and books from how to retool your skills to the steps to migrate your datacenter. Don’t be mistaken, cloud isn’t just for the enterprise business so I’ve put together a few basics to help you get started in speaking intelligently about cloud computing.

 First there are three basic types of clouds. The private cloud is where the computing environment, including the hardware and software, is dedicated to your business. And while the equipment is typically located on your site it may also be operated elsewhere by a third party vendor. Within the second type, a public cloud, you don’t own the equipment but rather it is shared with other customers of the service provider. You also don’t own the headache of keeping the system updated and stable. The provider will have a service catalog to help fit your business including the ability to charge on a pay per use basis for most cost effectiveness. Finally there is the hybrid model. As the name implies, it is a mix of both with the security advantage of a private cloud along with cost savings of one that is public.