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In the recent economic slowdown it can sometimes feel like a crowbar is required to pry money from investors to help you grow your aspiring business. But during times when capital is tight, it's time to get creative. Companies that focus on systematically meeting their short-term goals typically discover that they also achieve long-term business success, with or without the benefit of outside investment.

So how do you quickly mobilize your current resources, capital and team to realize your goals and targets? Prepare a plan of attack - more commonly referred to as a business plan. But cast aside any worries you have about preparing a thick tome with fancy verbiage and financial projections. The business plan to achieve your short-term objectives is not graded by weight or page length, but instead by the quality and clarity of the strategies you commit to paper.

In this case, we recommend you prepare a business plan that fits onto the back of a regular sized envelope.

You may have returned to the previous sentence for a moment and asked, "An envelope? How can I prepare a business plan on the back of an envelope?" It's a great question and there's a very simple answer: If your objective is to achieve an important internal goal, rather than impress an audience of bankers, investors or strategic partners, then an informal "envelope plan" can be a perfect solution. It enables you to quickly organize, document and communicate your business strategies to management and staff. And in some cases, a brief document is more effective than thirty-plus pages of brilliantly bound business plan literature - particularly when the priority is to rally your team around a common cause for an upcoming month or quarter.

A quick warning before we look at the steps to prepare an "envelope plan" for your business. If in fact, your goal is to secure financial backing from investors or lenders, then you will naturally need to develop a more robust business plan with well-supported financial statements. A more comprehensive plan, track record and qualified team are expected if you intend to gain the attention of serious financing sources for your business.

But assuming your plan is for short-term internal purposes, you can prepare an "envelope plan" in five easy steps:

Step 1: Clarify the Goal

Begin by preparing a very precise, quantifiable statement of no more than one or two sentences to clarify the goal your company will achieve. For example: "ABC Cleaning Company will increase revenue from repeat customers from 8% of total yearly sales to 20% of total yearly sales by the end of calendar year 2009." Your goal should be clear, measurable and tied to a specific time period or deadline.

Step 2: Outline Your Strategies

The next step is to develop a bulleted list of the primary strategies you will implement to meet your stated business goal. In this case, "What can ABC do to increase repeat business?" Examples might include:

• Offer a 5% discount to repeat customers
• Improve the quality of product/service offerings
• Introduce additional training and quality standard programs for entire staff
• Implement customer service follow-up process to increase satisfaction and referrals
• Commit to be on time-every time
• Develop and maintain database of customers and send weekly and monthly correspondence
• Use social media strategies to more fully engage customers

Step 3: Identify Your Tactics

The third step is to write one or two bullets with the specific actions to be taken to make each strategy outlined above a reality. For example:

• 5% Discount - Advise Sales Manager of new pricing initiative
• Better Training - Investigate web-based training courses
• Customer Database - Locate appropriate contact management program

Step 4: Perform a Cost/Benefit Analysis

The fourth step is absolutely critical. Prepare a two-sentence assessment of the financial costs and rewards of executing your envelope plan. For example... "The cost of executing this plan, including the pricing discount and the cost of the other initiatives, is $37,000. The financial reward for executing this plan, assuming that the level of new customers remains unchanged and the business from repeat customers increases to 20%, an increase in annual sales of $875,000 is expected". Not a bad return on your money actually!

Step 5: Get Buy-In

Your final step is to share your "envelope plan" with other members of your team to gain input and buy-in into the advantages of implementing your strategies. The envelope plan appears simple, but it's concise, geared toward action and infuses financial costs and returns into your overall businesses goals.

An "envelope plan" is not the solution for capital transaction needs, but it is a quick, organized and informal method to instantly focus your team on achieving short-term business goals. And after all, isn't reaching your business goals what real business planning is all about?

Scott Pollov is a Business Plan Coach, Consultant and Writer with BizPlanIt. BizPlanIt is a consulting firm (http://www.bizplanit.com) that since 1997 has assisted entrepreneurs and business owners in developing clear, concise and compelling business plans, financial projections and investors presentations that help them achieve their financing and growth goals. BizPlanIt's Virtual Business Plan ([http://www.bizplanit.com/resources/virtual-business-plan.html]) is a unique and free resource that mirrors the major sections of a business plan and provides insight into the fundamentals of writing an effective plan for your company.

Financial Planning: Personal Financial Advice or “Product Flogging”?

They make used car salesmen look good …Personal Financial Advice or Product Flogging

The financial planning industry (and a number of accountants dubiously playing on the edge) has come under intense fire recently.

The downturn in investment markets has exposed a number of products that have not turned out to be in clients’ best interests. These include high yield mortgage funds, absolute returns funds, agribusiness and protected equity products and excessive margin lending.

Criticism of planners and offending accountants that promoted these products is well justified. In many instances, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that their sale was driven or too heavily influenced by what was best for the promoter.

But, judging from public responses to a number of recent newspaper articles adverse to financial planners many people also blame their financial adviser for recent poor investment performance and/or failing to get them out of share markets prior to the downturn.

This reaction suggests a failure of advisers to explain or admit that they cannot predict the future. Or, maybe, some claimed they could! And their clients irrationally chose to believe them!

What do professional financial planners do?

But if personal financial advice is not about picking winning investments and successfully timing entry to and exit from share markets, what is it about? What do professional financial planners offer that they can reliably deliver to enhance their clients’ lives?

Indirectly, our clients provide the answer. When they first appoint us, we ask them to nominate their “top 5†financial planning objectives. To assist their deliberations, we provide a list of typical objectives to choose from or add to.

The eight most frequently chosen objectives, with their accompanying description, are listed below:

1.    To be financially well organised
To create a Financial Plan that will give you a clear grasp of your present financial situation and help you make the most effective use of your resources to achieve your goals and objectives.

2.    General Lifestyle
To define you and your family’s version of a desirable lifestyle and achieve it as soon as possible.

3.    Financial independence
To achieve Financial Independence no later than age      …………….

4.    Lifestyle Protection
To ensure that adequate provision is made for the financial consequences for the family of the death or disablement of you or your partner.

5.    Income Tax Planning / Current Cashflow Management
To minimise your income tax liability, produce an analysis of your personal expenditure planning assumptions and to ensure that your cash inflows are sufficient to cover your desired cash outflows.

6.    Investment Planning / Future Cashflow Management
To estimate future cash flow on realistic assumptions and to develop an investment strategy that will enable you to invest your capital and surplus income in accordance with risk/reward, flexibility and accessibility standards with which you are comfortable.

7.    Estate Planning
To reduce the tax liability likely to arise on the death of yourself and your partner and to ensure that your estate is distributed to your beneficiaries as intended.

8.    Wealth Management
To decide how to effectively use cash flow that will result in an accumulation of wealth that is considerably beyond any perceived lifetime financial requirements of your family.

Clients usually find it difficult to rank these objectives. They realise that most or all are important to them. And at the beginning of the relationship, they often are not achieving their most important objectives (and, sometimes, unknowingly).

The distinctive role of the professional planner is to help clients identify and close the gaps between where they are now, relative to their stated financial planning objectives, and where they would like to be. This service can be reliably delivered in a manner that is both expected and valued by clients.

The “profession†of financial planning

Too much of what comes under the umbrella of “financial planning†or “wealth management†is product, rather than advice, driven. And it’s this reality that gives the industry a bad name and justifies the view that it is some way off being considered a true profession.

But the need for comprehensive, well considered personal financial advice remains and grows. The level of knowledge, wisdom and trust required to competently deliver that advice warrants the status of a profession. The fact that the role also offers the opportunity to positively influence and transform people’s lives will, one day, make it one of the most intrinsically rewarding.

But until the nexus between advice and product sales is clearly broken, by legislation if necessary, the “professional†financial planners will have to live with the taint created by the “product floggersâ€

About the Author

Wealth Foundations is an independently owned personal financial advisory firm that offers wealth management and strategic financial planning services. For more information, visit Wealth Advisers.

What is the objective of this toddler craft lesson plan?

http://i31.tinypic.com/2ngu1ow.jpg

This is teaching them many things
1. colors
2. shapes
3. counting ( if they count the circles)
4. how to glue
5. hand eye coordination
6. self confidence (that they can actually make something)
7. following directions
8. listening skills (if its read to them, and then they do it)
9. it stregthens their attention span

New UK plan to curb illegal immigration at source country
Britain has announced a joint Foreign Office and Home Office plan to boost interaction and cooperation with India and other countries that are sources of illegal immigration.

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