Organization

Where would the appropriate place to locate your business be? Many factors have to be taken into consideration.

E.g.:

• Close to home
• At home
• Access to fast internet broadband
• Close to shopping centre or public transport
• Access to well-educated staff
• Access to unskilled workers
• Close to airport, highways or harbour
• Low crime
• Close to market
• Other

Business policies are a set of rules you have decided upon in order to make your company run smoothly.

A customer or business partner asks you for discount or length of guarantee and if you have to answer 'Well I don't know, I have to think about it' then it will not make you look professional.

Make your business policy
Make up your mind and formulate policies for at least the following issues:

• Pricing
• Discount
• Terms of payment
• Guarantee
• Customer service
• Environmental issues

Business policies are a set of rules you have decided upon in order to make your company run smoothly.

A customer or business partner asks you for discount or length of guarantee and if you have to answer 'Well I don't know, I have to think about it' then it will not make you look professional.

Make your business policy
Make up your mind and formulate policies for at least the following issues:

• Pricing
• Discount
• Terms of payment
• Guarantee
• Customer service
• Environmental issues

Marketing

A way to tell the world you have great products or services to sell is to use advertisements and signposts.

Advertisement
There are many places where you can put in an advertisement. It is normally rather expensive for a new business to use advertisements because the response is usually poor. One advertisement doesn´t make a response. You have to put in several advertisements before the reader starts noticing it.

An advertisement can´t stand alone so you have to combine it with other marketing activities.

An advertisement can be put in a national newspaper, the town´s newspaper or the suburb paper. A telephone book or the town´s official web site might be a place. Also trade paper, trade magazine and other focused papers are an option.

Photocopied advertisements to be placed in shops, light posts, cafes and office buildings is a cheap way to tell about your company.

Signposting
I you have a restaurant, a shop, a car or other public show possibilities, these have to be used to its optimum. They will be free of charge and hopefully attract the customer.

You could also hire a man to carry a sandwich sign showing the way to your restaurant or to a web site. 

Market Description

Before you start any sales and marketing activities you should establish a solid knowledge of the market by making a market description.

If you don't have a feeling of whom your customers are it becomes difficult to choose the right way to approach them.

Who are the customers
There are a lot of questions that could be asked in order to establish a picture of your customer.

• How many customers can there potentially be?
• Do they live in the neighbourhood or in the urban area, in the province, in the country, in Asia or all over the world?
• Are they men, women, old people or children?
• What do they do in the spare time?
• What is the limit they are willing to pay for the product?

You should know as much as possible about your potential customers. If you know the name and address of the customers then you have come very far in your marked research.

Know your competitors in the market
In the market you also find competitors. You have to find out what you are up against. On what level is the quality of the competitor’s product? What is the price? How big is their turnover? How is their marketing and web site? How is their product development? Where are their weak points?

Iceberg
If you look at an iceberg, 90% of it will be under water with just 10% visible to the human eye. This you can compare with the description of the market and the marketing material. You need to spend a lot of time researching the market and thinking about the best way to approach the customers.

After weeks of researching you might end up making a five page web site and 300 business cards. 90% was spent on research, and 10% on appearance.

Mission Statement

(Step 1: Business Concept)
A mission statement captures your new business`s purpose, customer orientation and philosophy.

Often will an entrepreneur’s mission statement be:

• "I have an idea and I want to create a business, support my family and earn a lot of money".

If you have bigger plans for your business and want to communicate this to a wider public it might be a good idea to develop a mission statement.
When starting a business there is a tendency of basing it on specific knowledge or on a specific product.

Making a mission statement
If you like cooking you may want to open a stand and serve hot chicken soup at fair prices, and if you are educated within IT and software you may want to establish a company specialising in relational databases. 

By basing your business on one specific product or service you make your new business vulnerable. If its foundation crumbles away, the market will lose interest in your business. You will have nothing else to offer the market.

Look behind the product
What you need to do is look behind the apparent features of the product. That is: how long and wide the product is, the colour of it, the durability, how many rotations per minute and so on. Try instead to determine which human, business or society related challenges the product meets.

More than a product
If you like cooking and sell “chicken soup” your mission statement could be

• “To serve tasty and healthy takeaway food for the public at fair prices"

By choosing this statement you will be able to continue your business even if the public should stop liking chicken soup. You will also open your mind to new ideas and new commercial ventures by widening your business statement. 

Are you able to write down your mission statement? If not, wait and come back to this item later. When working with the business plan the right mission statement might just pop up.
 

Mission statement template/ Mini Business Plan - example

This business statement template will help you formulate the 7 key questions you should ask yourself in order to pursue your plans of being a business owner. You could also call the statement a small business plan.

Get inspired from the examples and write your own statement.

1. My line of business:
E.g.:

1. IT-company with JavaScript as the core business area
2. Design and sale of children`s clothes
3. Travel agency specialising in costumers of 60+

2. I want to sell these products:
E. g.:

1. Applications that connect a company`s web-sites with the company`s administrative system
2. Dresses for play, pleasure and party for girls from 2 to 6 years old
3. A travel agency that organise guided tours to historical sites in Asia for senior citizens

3. My costumers are:
E.g.:

1. Production companies within the state boundaries with more than 150 employees and a need for receiving costumer information from the web site
2. The three biggest retail chains in children`s clothes in the country and selected independent children clothes retailers
3. The well off senior citizen in the country that have the time and money to spend on a exclusive and cultural vacation

4. I will find and get in contact with my costumers this way:
E.g.:

1. We will from the national database of registered companies buy addresses of companies in our target group. Afterwards we send a mail/letter to the company and phone them two days later.
2. I have personal contact to two of the three national children`s clothes chains and I have already a list of the top 200 independent children`s clothes retailers
3. We contact the senior citizens through advertisement in senior citizens magazines and by creating a comprehensive web site describing the historical sites and the tours in a professional way.

5. I am different from my competitors in these ways: 
E.g.:

1. Our service is price effective because we have developed five standard components which fit 80 % of the costumers` needs
2. My good contacts among the retailers of children`s clothes give me an advantage
3. My strong historical and web site expertise and my wife`s 10 years in the travel business make us unique for this line of business

6. The three biggest resources I give my business:
E.g.:

1. ITC education, five years in a similar company and a strong professional network
2. Network among retailers, love to design clothes and access to dressmaker`s workroom
3. Visited many historical sites, inside business knowledge and web site professional

Completing Missions in Gen I Revolution (25 points)

Straightforward task here:
Complete and 'pass' three missions, get 25 points. It's not enough to just complete it, you need to also pass it. If, however, passing becomes an issue, then 10,000 points acquired will also suffice for the completion of this task. My recommendation is for you and a partner to sit next to each other and figure the missions together on separate computers, both completing the missions individually but working together to solve them. Remember, lots of points available in Gen I Revolution if you want them.
To complete:
1) Log on to Gen I Revolution
2) Complete AND pass 3 missions (at least), or break the 10,000 point threshold.
3) Your scores/results are automatically sent to me, so you don't need to do anything further!

Gen I Revolution Contest (225 points)

Here's a unique opportunity for not only points, but something that could go on you resume as an aspiring adult. The makers of Gen I Revolution (The Council for Economic Education) are accepting submissions to create a sixteenth 'mission' on their impressive website. The submission will include a written application and a 60-second video, and must be completed by April 18th. This is no small task, and it has prizes for the winners! (gift cards and cash to the classroom)
Interested? 225 points would go a long way, and y'all can team up as groups of 4! Everybody can submit, although I do ask that the entries be slightly different from each other if that happens. Furthermore, if the entry is considered in some fashion (or actually wins!) then a bonus of 110 points will be added.
An overview of the contest can be seen here.
Please be sure to read all of the page describing the contest, and then read the written submission example and watch the sample video. I'll be involved in every team's submission, helping with details and planning. This task will go a long way towards receiving an 'A' this semester, and with some solid teamwork, it should go fairly smoothly. There should be no need to work outside of the classroom on this one. We have a lot of classes between now and April 18th.

Free on Craigslist! (20 points)

This classroom needs a couch! But will you sit on it? Second semester Discrete is all about financial decisions you'll be faced with in your early 20s. In the course, we discovered furnishing an apartment can be awfully expensive. How about free on Craigslist? Well, it depends. Are you willing to have furniture from a curbside give-away? Here's the task, and it's first-come-first-serve only! You need to find a local free couch on Craigslist, go get it, and put it in this classroom for us to utilize as seating. Then the question is asked: Are you willing to sit on that couch in here? Because if "No" is the answer, then you definitely wouldn't want the same for your own apartment in the future. If, however, you are willing to stretch out on it, then free couches it is!!

This task requires manpower and an appropriate vehicle. Please discuss with me if you're capable and interested BEFORE you embark on the couch search!!!

Insurance Quiz (25 points)

This one's pretty simple: Go to this link and take the insurance quiz on it. It is meant for you to consider the things that may affect your auto insurance premiums, and know what renter's insurance is. I'd like you to go through the quiz answering each question, and then post in the comments on this blog post how many you got correct. the site doesn't tally for you, so you'll have to keep a mental count as you go (or write it down), keeping in mind that your acquiescence is all that's necessary for the 25 points.

To complete:

1. Go to the given link

2. Complete the quiz keeping tally of how many you got correct.

3. In the comment section of this post, post how many you got correct on the quiz.

Billion Dollar Challenge (75 points)

Lots of billion dollars floating around right now. Warren Buffet offering a billion for a perfect NCAA bracket, U.S. government dropping billions like they're pennies, and H&R Block claiming U.S. taxpayers are leaving a cumulative billion on the table from not filing taxes professionally. Maybe a silly claim (and obviously a business promotion), but for fun they are offering for the best depiction of what one could do with a billion dollars several thousand dollars in cash for the classroom. Friday March 14th is the deadline, so let's give it a shot! Your explanation of what a billion dollars could do/get needs to imaginative, articulated with clarity, and mathematically correct. In other words, your example will be verified that it actually does equal one billion dollars (rounded of course), so be as precise as possible.
The entry you create needs to be digital, so use technology as best you can (iPad or laptop or off to a computer lab with ya) and email me the result. I'll then enter it.

*edit*
You can still do this for 50 points, even though the submission deadline has passed. All the rules above still apply, and I'd like to include that the project should be school-appropriate. thank you.