Experts in Business Plan Development

For this blog post, I chose to review two experts in the field of Business Plan Development. The two experts I have chosen to discuss are Jodi Goldstein and Marc Prosser. Both of these individuals have accomplished an enormous amount of work in the world of entrepreneurship and have a wide range of experience to offer.

Jodi Goldstein is a well known figure in business starts ups. With an MBA from Harvard University she has over 15 years of experience in consulting, marketing, and business development. She has been involved in multiple startups working in a vast range of industries including consumer products, web services, ecommerce and social networking. She currently works as the Director of Harvard Innovation Lab and authors informative business blogs on Entrepreneur.com. A critical component Jodi points out when developing a business plan is to have a unique insight in the industry you’re about to go into. Jodi explains further, “You’ll also need a passion for the product or service, intense motivation, tenacity, perseverance and vision to turn your business idea into a reality (Goldstien, 2016).”

Marc Prosser is a Publisher at Fit Small Business in New York City. He has a background in growing successful startups and taking them all the way to IPO. His specialties are in Online Advertising, SEM, PPC advertising, Direct Response Marketing, CRM, Branding, and Public Relations. When attracting investors to your startup Marc’s advice is to ensure your company is using industry benchmarks for accurate financial projections. By doing this, it reflects more creditability on your company and therefore will attract more investors to the likeliness of its viability (Thomas, 2015). In order to retrieve the data for your industry, Marc suggests using LivePlan or the U.S. Census Bureau.

Upon the creation of my own business plan, I consider all of these suggestion useful in the development of my company. As Jodi mention earlier, having a unique insight in your industry can give you a great advantage over your competition. Being able to think outside the box and come up with new innovations or products that your competition can’t offer can greatly increase your odds of success. Lastly, using industry data to support the viability of my business plan is a no brainer. A business is not a business if you can’t prove that it can make a profit. That being said, I certainly will be utilizing as many resources as possible to ensure the viability and profitability of my company.

Reference:

Goldstein, J. (2016, June 8). Tips for Starting a Company Without Any Business Skills. Retrieved July 3, 2016 from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277128

Goldstein, J. (n.d.). LinkedIn Profile. Retrieved July 3, 2016 from https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodi-goldstein-3529373

Prosser, M. (n.d.) LinkedIn Profile. Retrieved July 3, 2016 from https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcprosser

Thomas, J. (2015, June 3). 25 Top Business Plan Tips From The Pros. Retrieved July 3, 2016 from http://fitsmallbusiness.com/business-plan-tips/