Business Plan written by Professionals for aspiring entreprenuers

There is a big doubt on the minds of aspiring entrepreneur, on the practice of recruiting a professional/consulting firm on writing their Business Plans. Most of the aspiring entrepreneur remains in a very excited stage, on the early days of business . This makes them think less of the requirements of the audience, of the business plan. In addition, they are more aligned to their emotional satisfaction and sometimes completely lost in their ego trip.

Obviously , these was hard for them, for sometime, when a person from the opposite side comes and starts dissecting their idea . Suddenly they feel lost of the entire excitement with realizing , the ground realities that a investor looks for .

However ,to me it looks like a stage where the business has start maturing from a seed stage to a sapling stage . The growth of the business brings more objectivity and these is something, an aspiring entrepreneur has to realize, early and not guard his idea in feverish emotional excitement.

I realize the Business Planning Event season has come, as the organization all around India are coming to me for with request for different role play on their business plan event starting from becoming a Judge to Mentor Business Plans .

I have already got the invitation to Judge the Business Plan Event of Indian Institute of Management , kolkata , known as i2i2009. I have been associated with i2i for some and other role, since its inception . But these time , Indian Institute of Management , Indore and National Entrepreneurship Network has invited me to mentor some of the Business Plan which has been selected in the Preliminary round of there Business Plan Competetion Sanjeevini.

Looking for a exciting time ahead with a bunch of aspiring entrepreneur . I had always a great interaction with them and there energy level remains very high ,in these seed stages of business.

Working with a Small Business Mentor - Do's Don'ts

There's more to an effective mentoring relationship than organized meetings. After mentoring a lot of entrepreneurs, I feel a lot of time , small business entrepreneur could not take the best from the mentor .

Mentor-Mentee relationship is a very ancient form of relationship, and has a tradition of knowledge sharing both in business and life . Following are do's and don't to get the best out of your mentor


Mentors are human being. They also fail . They don't let their fall to become a failure. That's why its important to take an interest in the person as a human being. I have an mentor who makes millions of dollars a year doing mentoring. After I ask my question I always ask him about what’s going on in his life, or share a joke or tell him something funny that’s happened to me.

Value the opinion of the mentor , even if you don't apply at later stage. If a value a opinion will learn from what you listen. Otherwise you will only listen and learn nothing.

Don’t try to wste a lot of your mentor's time at first. Connect in a way that’s quick and easy.

Be clear about what you’re doing and what you need. There is so much “dusty thinking” in the world. . Work on developing a clear elevator speech and mission statement. Think about one or two specific questions you need answered and think about your words and how to ask those questions clearly.

Listen, listen, listen

Thank the person for their time. Tell them what you’re going to do and then when you take action, be sure to let them know what you’re doing. Always, always, always tell them when you take an action step.

Reciprocate once in awhile. If you see a great article that you think he would enjoy – send it to him with a quick note. .

With mutual respect, demonstrated through action as well as attitude, your mentoring relationship can be mutually rewarding.

Building reccession resistant small business : Part - III

Innovation is denoted as a fundamental trait on entrepreneurs. However, it is also seen as a byproduct of practicing creative disciplines, in some or other forms .The ability to govern ourselves and channelise our energies in creative direction will lead to building up innovative ideas in due course of time. The small business has to focus more on governing internal factors then on governing external situation in bringing changes, which could positively resist recession. The team and the entrepreneur plays a big role on differentiation the small business by practicing innovation, in every range of activities. With the growth of Science and Technology humanity is more aligned to govern the nature , then to govern themselves . This creates an essential misbalance in the harmony of inside and outside realities . We pretend to be more comfortable with outside realities then inner realities . Small business could not afford this kind of mistake . Though present financial situations shows that even big business and financial institution could not afford to do so. More safe side strategy for the small business, would be where entrepreneur changes himself first, to provoke change in the people around him . Later he could also transmit this changes to his supplier and customer . There is no better way to have sustainable change other than one, which starts from an individual and moves slowly, and gently towards the collective. Moving from self governance to corporate governance is the path which would prevent any form of personal and organizational recession to happen . This is more inexpensive and better way to handle recession in comparison to creating debt cycles and worsening financial situations.

Building Reccession Resistant Small Business - Part II

The practical equivalent of abundant thinking is creativity . A person whose pattern of thinking is always engrossed with scarcity, has hard time to use his creative abilities . It is very important for small business owner, to have creative capital , who might be already scarced with financial capital . Infact , innovation and finding out new and efficient ways to deal with the pressure of recession, opens new business avenues for small business owners .

The process of innovation is referred as very disruptive . So the structural approach might not be so good to bring out the best form of innovation from people . Any recession, be it personal, organizational or family, has a very unstructured approach, which forces people to think differently. That is how some small business are able to take advantage, of the condition of recession, with smart application of intelligence and talent .

We can see this happened earlier . When Y2k surfaced, some of the people forecasted about the end of the road of software industry and going back to manual processes . It never happened that way , which we can see now. On the contrary some smart Indian companies really reaped benefit of the Y2k problem and turned themsellves to a global software major .

We can understand that innovation is the key on handling recession . We had to think differently about our businesses and life and then we can bring something so new and different that every Small Business Owners (SBO) could come out from the recesion with flying colours.

Building Reccession Resistant Small Business - Part I

Last couple of months , the mainstream media is continuously bombarding with words like recession, foreclosures , credit crunch ,rising food prices, share market fall , financial crisis . It is successful to build a mental state of 'fear' on recession globally . The media have even walked ahead and started comparing with the patterns of great depression in 1930 . They may be right and they can be wrong also . But , what is remarkable is the kind of negative sentiment of scarcity it has created in last few months . All these years we have been hearing that the natural resources are scarce . Now we have reached in collective mental state , where even the monetary resources around the world is scarce. It proves the fact that when we start thinking scarcity , we add more to block of scarcity . One of my friend , was telling me that in last 2 weeks he is not trying to look at newspaper and TV , and pulling himself hard to concentrate on the project where he could make a difference. I think ,it is the most wise thing to do , to prevent the economic reccession to take the shape of personal reccesion.

I think recession is a testing time of mental approaches. Often when a recession comes in a macro economic level , it gets converted into organizational and individual level very fast . I was a part of dotcom industry when it was hit by recession in 2001 . Suddenly, every customer of our organization , was scared about us, who were buying different line of web consultancy support . Though the kind of a recession which we are having at that point of time, was a correction of the inflated valuation which was associated with dot com industry . It has nothing to do with incorporating Internet as a part of Corporate strategy to reach out different lines of customer base , which we are offering to the market at that point of time . Yet , we are badly hit .

I know from my personal experience, that it was hard to call an motivated team member, and tell him about the pay cuts which is going to happen from next month . It created such a negative energy all around the team. I continued observing how the recession in the organisational level , is getting circulated in personal level . There were no longer training camps and extended group discussion where we felt a common bonding , about how the organisation and the project we are doing, was important to us .

Often ,organisation in the time of reccesion ,takes a very hard approach towards thier tangibles . It is the most smart thing to do . But when the tangibles like money get scarce , it had to meet up by intangibles , like time and good advise that the organisational motivation stays intact . It is this which makes a difference between a sustainable business and unsustainable one .

There is also a need of changing our mental approaches from scarcity to abundance . Recession is a testing time for of our collective mental attitude towards scarcity . If we collectively think , something is scarce, it has multiplier effect, and then we see everything around is scarce . Our collective mind has a enormous power, to turn a thought which is bombared by mainstream media into a collective thinking pattern . So , the modern media and global connectivity has a huge negative multiplier effect , which will definitly add on to the reality of the global reccession .

That's to build reccession resistance the individuals and institution has to nurture the thoughts of prosperity and abundance and realise that universe is abundant . Infact ,to take a more practicle example we have to look at the our body and the different organism which functions in the body. Could they be valued in reference to money ? As says mastercard ad ... ' which I liked very much ' there is certain things which money can't buy' - it can't buy a starry night , it can't buy true love , it can't buy your exact body.

We have to understand that reccession is a mental approach . Unfortunately ,our economic theories are based on this mental approach . The fundamentals of economic understanding is based on scarcity . We have to raise questions about the validity of these fundamentals ,otherwise the world can never get out from the trap of economic reccesion , though the nature is always abundant . There is requirement of new theories which is based on the ideas of abundant thinking .

( To be continued ..)

SME learning experience

Starting a small business is always a exciting experience . There are also lot of problems. However , I would like to refer them as learning opportunity . To start with there is lack of clarity with the business .I think , that is not the right time to incorporate the business . As there are lot of things, gets changed.

So, it is more important to wait for sometime to let the ideas to settle down. There is also requirement of intensive market research inorder to make the idea more clear and to get a clear set of target customer. Besides, it is a common tendency to spend a lot of money in the office and decoration . However, it is not a wise idea to spend a lot of money in office and decoration , unless the business requires a retail outfit to start with.

The rules of starting and small business is in fact applying the " Keep it simple " principle.

SME Training and Capacity Development

One of the way corporate could achieve its sustainable development goals is by SME trainning and capacity development on the larger community where it is having its organisation . This infact has a direct effect on the economy of that particular location and create better acceptance from the local community . It is one of the best way to handle the unrest, which is reportedly growing in different place of India and World, while creating different Heavy Industries on a location.

Lonmin is following this path in South Africa(Mooinooi area) to create a better relation with the larger community .Lonmin is a primary producer of Platinum Group Metals (PGMs). It creates value by the discovery, acquisition, development and marketing of minerals and metals.It has offices in Johensburg and a mine in Mooinooi area. It is funding a business incubation centre which will further facilitate the process of SME training and capacity development in the localities.

This is a fantastic model which other business can follow to avoid, land and other conflict from the localities , in case of building operation related to 'Heavy Industries'.