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Please note: this post has been superseded by:The Ten-Forces Model – Industry Structural Analysis Introduction A business does not exist in a vacuum, its existence and activities affect its respective industry environment, and its industry environment influences and constrains what is possible for a business. It is prudent, therefore, to estimate the probability that your Business Model will make a profit before you create a new business or introduce a solution. This estimation can be...

“The purpose of marketing is to acquire and retain loyal customers, that is advocates, at a profit.” Paraphrased from The 4A’s of Marketing: Creating Value for Customer, Company and Society (2011), Jagdish N. Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia. Marketers talk about the Marketing Mix. The Marketing Mix includes all the variables (and resources) a business combines to satisfy its target customer segment and includes tactics and programs that support Solution, pricing, distribution, and marketing...

It is common practice, bordering on default practice to suggest to aspiring entrepreneurs that they create a Business Plan (BP) as one of their first activities. Although common practice, since every entrepreneur and their ideas, opportunities, customer segments, and markets etc. are different, the near-universal practice can’t really qualify as good practice. Furthermore, this default practice is based on the implicit assumption that BPs are appropriate and useful to startups. Is this the...

Around 800 businesses (enterprises) employing 1 or more people started per month during the period Feb 2017 to Feb 2018. The number is probably greater than that if you count businesses that are invisible to Statistics NZ (SNZ) because they didn't pay tax and or didn't register a formal entity such as a company. Staying with what can be measured by SNZ, that is 800 businesses per month or 9,600 per year, and going by the rates of business failures also reported by SNZ of around 20% in their...

On 1 July 2019, I launched my book Starting a Business - With Facts, Not Faith, and what a great learning exercise that was. Did you know that "everything published in New Zealand regardless of whether it has an International Standard Number" must by law be submitted to the NZ National Library? This must be done via Legal Deposit for the purposes of preserving our heritage. Ignoring the effort I put into writing the book, it seems a little presumptuous of its supposed value, but never mind, I...

Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith Hi, Glyn with a ‘y’ from Don’t Think, Check!® Limited again. This is the fifth and last episode in a series called Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith. In this episode, I discuss Business Models in more depth and I summarise what we covered in the series. Business Models I previously defined a Business Model as a Value-Exchanging Machine, or crudely as a Money-Making Machine For You (or me). There are a number of good definitions of what a...

Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith Hi, Glyn with a ‘y’ from Don’t Think, Check!® Limited again. This is the fourth episode in a series called Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith. In this episode, I introduce the Seven Factors For Success, which if you consider seriously, will go a long way to help you with your success. And by success I mean, that you either successfully start and scale up a business or that you learn something and stop before you lose all your money. Seven...

Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith Hi, Glyn with a ‘y’ from Don’t Think, Check!® Limited again. This is the third episode in a series called Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith. In this short episode, I touch on the topic of why businesses fail. Let’s be honest for a moment. There are far more ways to fail than there are to succeed, and I’m only going to cover some of the biggies. You are encouraged to follow the links, especially the one for CBInsights. The figures for...

Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith Hi, Glyn with a ‘y’ from Don’t Think, Check!® Limited again. This is the second episode in a series called Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith. In this episode, I present the facts of business. The Facts of Business As with the facts of life, there are facts of business. What I’m about to tell you won’t make me popular, and it runs counter to the follow your passion mantra that is popular and common-place in books and on the internet. But I...

Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith Hi, I’m Glyn from Don’t Think, Check!® Limited, that’s Glyn with a ’y’. This is the first episode in a series called Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith. In this episode: I start by introducing myself,My Business Model,My eBook Starting A Business - With Facts, Not Faith,And I will introduce some of the topics covered in the eBook. For those who are interested, you will find my eBook on the DontThinkCheck.co.nz website on the Shop page. There...