What to do for Wednesday, Dec. 5

For today you will amend your business plans as necessary and add some financials. Here you will find  a simple template for developing a budget. You have done lots of research and perhaps have even come up with some costs. I know it's been a while since we discussed numbers, but let's just see how it goes. You will see that you can fill in your own categories, and your own numbers, and that the program will  do the math for you. Sweet! If you are unsure of what categories to put in, you might get some ideas from the Points East example. Do your best to come up with numbers that are reasonable, rational and well founded. Don't just manipulate numbers to get the result that you think looks best. The idea is just to get some experience playing around with numbers and to develop a sense of just how viable your project might be. Print out the results, add them to your final business plan, and submit to  my office by noon on Wednesday, Dec. 4.

What to do for next week, Nov. 25

We now have two classes left. That doesn't seem possible. Or maybe it does to you. As we discussed in class, your job over the next two weeks is to research, write and assemble a killer business plan that no investor will be able to resist. I have given you the Points East plan we developed when we were shopping for new investors. In class, we went over the text portions of that plan. Ours certainly is not the only way to do a business review, but it is a tried and true formula and it did the job of presenting the face of the company as we wanted potential investors to see it. There are all sorts of other examples online and a number of templates you can explore to come up with your own business plan formula. The goal here is to impress, obviously, by clearly presenting your vision and explaining why investors ought to believe in it.

I know some of you won't think you have that much to say, because we had already been in business for two years at the time I wrote this document, while you are just getting started. Actually, our first go at it in 1997 wasn't much different, except that this time we had two years of financials to back it up. So do your research, talk to people about your project, get feedback, look deep into the future, think about what kind of a person you are and why you are the right person to lead this mission. Pretend your life, your happiness, etc. depend on the success of this venture. Let your passion bleed through. Create four pages that cover the text portion of your business plan. Write well. Feel free to illustrate with photographs and graphics, comments along the side, text breakouts, etc. Create something that you are proud to share. Print it out on some nice pape, put it in a binder, and bring it to class. For the final week, we will work on the financial pages.

What to do for next week, Nov. 18

After today (Tuesday, Nov. 12) we have three more classes. For now we're going to drop the journalism entrepreneurs so we can get to work on business plans. Each week will be dedicated to developing a section of our business plans. Then we will pull them all together in a completed business plan that could be used to begin shopping your business to investors. This will be submitted on the last day of class. Development of each section of the document will be cumulative, i.e., nothing will be final until compiled into the final document. I will give a grade and evaluation of each element of the project as they come in.

Among the things we will work on are:

• Market research
• Analysis of any competition
• Content development, including mission statement and “about” page
• Audience outreach
• Revenue and cost preparation

For next week, I would like you to study some of the sample business plans and primers found on the Web. Here are a few:

From Entrepreneur: http://i.oc.gs/herid
From the Small Business Administration
From Forbes
From our friend Guy Kawasaki

There are many more. Have fun exploring. Take what seems to work for your project. Avoid junk sites like ask.com or yahoo.

I will also attempt to dig up the for-now-elusive Points East business plan that we used to shop our magazine around when we were looking for a second round of investors. Search for other business plans online and explore those as well. We didn’t have time to talk this week about market research and analysis of competition because we had a guest, but for Monday I’d like you to try to develop some ideas and publish them as postings on your blog. One blog will be about market research and the other Analysis of competition.

Part I: Market research.

To some degree, some of you have already done this. Before you can launch a business, you need to know what you are dealing with. At Points East, we needed to know how many people owned boats in New England, which we gleaned from state and federal databases; we needed to know where these boaters were concentrated; we needed to know their demographics — ages, incomes, professions, etc. This was a little harder to quantify. Figures from the most recent census could help. We needed to know how long they kept their boats in the water (only a fool boats in winter New England); we needed to know how much money they spend on boating activities each year. The idea here is to collect all the information that you will need to answer questions from potential advertisers and/or investors.

Your work for next week: Think hard about the kind of market research you need to do and how you will do it. Identify as many of these elements (at least 10) as you can and list them on your blogs. Pick five from the list and do some actual research. Report on the results of this research on your blogs.

Part II: Analysis of competition

In some ways, any time we ask someone to do something we are competing with someone for that person’s time. Sometimes it is obvious. In the case of Points East, we needed to study every other boating publication that might tempt our potential readers; we needed to know how much of the the reader pie and the advertiser pie they were eating, so we’d know how much might be left over for us; we needed to know how much they were charging for subscriptions and for advertising; we needed to poke for vulnerabilities so that we would know how much business we could attract away from them; we needed circulation numbers and methods; we needed to know about content — did they concentrate on any particular boaters or types of boats? 

Every business is different. Yours will have its unique characteristics that will shape all the above questions. You may have more questions. You may have fewer. But again the object is to anticipate as many of the questions your investors and/or advertisers will have as you can and prepare answers for them. You will need these answers for both your business plans and for your pitches.

Your work for next week: Research and identify your competition — everyone and everything that could get between you and your customers. Gather any statistics you can find. Be resourceful. Use your reporting skills. Why are they competition and in what way do they threaten your business? What are you up against? What are you going to do about it? In your blog, write about your competition. 

In each of these cases, you could be creating sections of your business plans, so the more work you do now the easier it will be later to polish them and merge them with the plan. 

This should all be done by class time Monday.

What to do for next week, Nov. 12

Note: This assignment was covered in an email to the class, so if you saw that you don't need to read this.

First, I must humbly and publicly apologize for the numerous late assignments this semester. It's not by plan, but I no it's frustrating. No good excuses.

Second, don't forget that next week's class is on Tuesday at the regular time, due to the Monday holiday.

Third, after we discussed our missing guest on Monday it occurred to me that perhaps because next week's class is actually on a Tuesday, our guest could find time to join us and...bingo! John Christie will be joining us at about 4:30 to talk about a piece of the entrepreneur puzzle we haven't explored yet -- the non-profit. Check out his bio elsewhere in this blog. John, a UNH Journalism grad, has seen it all -- the word side, the business side, and now the side of the entrepreneur. 

In preparation for his visit, please visit the web site of The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, also known as Pine Tree Watchdog. Take some time to explore the site, particularly the about us page. Read the mission and mission statements and think about what you might write for vision and mission statements for your own site. As one of your blog postings, give each of them a try.  As you explore the site, please also take a look at the kinds of stories that Pine Tree Watchdog is doing. How do those reflect the mission statement? What is the niche these guys are trying to fill? Also, read John's long piece on Gov. Paul LePage. This is a huge effort by John to paint the definitive profile of a controversial governor. It's the lead story on the home page and goes on for several pages. Think about some questions you'd like to ask John.

Fourth, and finally, one thing I'd like have you do in the remaining weeks is profile a journalism entrepreneurs. I have several that I can connect you with, but beforehand I just want to check whether you have your own journalism entrepreneurs you would like to profile. Please drop me an email at andrewmarsters@me.com (my UNH email is out of commission) and let me know.

Our guest next week, Nov. 12

John Christie is the publisher and also the senior reporter for the Center. Christie is a media executive whose 40-year career includes work in four states as a writer, editor, general manager and publisher for newspapers owned by Tribune Co., Dow Jones and Co. and the Seattle Times Co. In June, 2009, he retired after nine years as the president and publisher of Central Maine Newspapers, which publishes two daily papers, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel.

He has won numerous awards as a reporter and editor, including twice for best public service reporting in New England from the AP, and he was the primary editor at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of two Pulitzer Prize finalists. In 2008, a series he edited, “For I was Hungry,” about hunger in Maine, won a number of regional and national awards, including best editorial series from the national Society of Professional Journalists.

Christie was one of the first journalists to serve as a full-time training editor for a newspaper, a position that included coaching writers and editors on their craft and creating and running a news writing program for high school and college minority students.

He is also the editor of four books, including a bestselling book on Hurricane Andrew, which devastated South Florida in 1992. He has spoken on newspaper management and writing in the United States, Europe and South America.