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You do need a business plan, but you don't need to spend four months writing out a meticulous 40-page business plan that covers every conceivable process, marketing strategy, and funding option.
Instead, spend a week or two writing out what services your business will offer, who you'll offer those services to, and how you'll find customers. Including information about processes and sales metrics can be helpful, but don't let the process of writing a business plan stop you from getting started.
I heard a phrase early in my career that really stuck with me: "Done is better than perfect." Keep that in mind as you write your business plan.
Marketing is key to business success, but it's not an all-or-nothing game. You don't need to be on every social media platform, invest in search engine optimization , build an affiliate program, and land spots on your local radio station. In fact, trying to be on all the marketing channels at once is an excellent way to burn out and waste resources.
Think about where your customers are and focus your efforts there. For example, if you own a power-washing business, customers are likely on Facebook and NextDoor looking for referrals, not LinkedIn. In some cases, word of mouth might be a better strategy than paying for marketing. Focus on one or two marketing channels that make sense for your business and your customer base.
While low pricing might initially attract customers, it often results in razor-thin profit margins and is unsustainable. It might also cause customers to assume your offering is of lower quality than your competitors.
To attract customers, focus on providing quality products or services and excellent customer service. Explain the value your business offers and how it will improve their lives or make their jobs easier. If pricing really feels like a stumbling block, consider offering a short-term price reduction, like a discounted first service or a free consultation.
There are a lot of myths about owning a small business . While some of them are true, like the freedom that comes with being your own boss, some myths will limit your success. By adopting a more flexible and strategic approach to taking on debt, marketing, writing a business plan, and setting prices, you'll build a stronger, more resilient business.
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Danielle is a small business and finance industry writer based in Ohio. She writes about tech, finance, and small businesses for The Ascent and other industry publications.
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New York's much-discussed new trash cans have been shown off nearly two years after the city spent $1.6 million to contract with consulting giant McKinsey in 2022.
On Monday, NYC Mayor Eric Adams revealed the wheeled bin alongside NYC Department of Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch , who symbolically put a black bag from his official residence, Gracie Mansion, into the container.
Video of the launch, which saw Adams wheeling a bin onto the street while Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" played, quickly went viral, drawing memes and ridicule from citizens of cities that have had similar bins for decades.
Time to Get (EVEN MORE) Stuff Clean! Join us right now in Manhattan as we kick off the next phase in our trash revolution: https://t.co/AEDRQNXmUT — NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) July 8, 2024
Under the new rules, which come into force on November 12, 2024, all properties with one to nine residential units will be required by law to use one of the latch-lidded waste collectors, now available to purchase online from $46.
The newly introduced requirement seeks to minimize the number of sidewalk rats . It isn't known exactly how many rats are in NYC, but a 2014 study suggested there were around two million, and a pest control firm in 2023 estimated there were close to three million rats in NYC.
Adams said the program was part of his administration's "Trash Revolution," which aims to clean up the city's streets. Officials estimate New Yorkers produce around 14 billion pounds of trash each year. But with the new rule directed at removing about 70% of this, curbside garbage piles are hoped to become a problem of the past.
Plans for the new bins follow the city's work with consulting giant McKinsey & Company, which was drafted in to help the city assess how to contain its waste. A Sanitation Department official told New York Streetsblog at the time that the project was worth around $4 million, but a spokesperson for the department told Business Insider $1.6 million was paid out to McKinsey for the contract.
According to an October 2022 New York Times article, McKinsey was scheduled to spend 20 weeks working with the Sanitation Department to determine what sort of bins would suit different streetscapes, what they should look like, and which vendors to use. The department told Business Insider that work on the contract concluded in April 2023.
The goal was to design a program capable of combating New York's decadeslong garbage problem, looking at waste collection methods used in urban areas around the world and focusing on containerization — or, in simple terms, putting trash bags in bins rather than on the street.
A New York City Sanitation Department spokesperson told Business Insider, "DSNY's limited work with McKinsey a couple of years ago is not directly related to this week's wheelie bin announcement."
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"McKinsey did not determine or recommend policy — they did math around the fact that the City was interested in waste containerization, a strategy the Adams Administration is now aggressively pursuing," the spokesperson added. The bin design was the result of work conducted by city employees, another DSNY spokesperson told BI.
The solution decided upon is similar to systems already used in cities like Barcelona, where fleets of colored, uniform bins are often found on residential blocks.
The bin project is far from the firm's first consultation in New York. The Office of the New York State Comptroller shows that McKinsey has worked on at least 10 other projects with the state.
McKinsey declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider.
Correction: July 11, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated McKinsey's role in working with the New York City Sanitation Department. The department said that it hired McKinsey to help inform its efforts at waste management but that the decision to pursue the wheeled bins unveiled Monday was the city's and not a McKinsey recommendation. The story was also updated with a statement from a New York City Sanitation Department spokesperson and with new information from the department that the contract with McKinsey, originally said to be as high as $4 million, was ultimately worth $1.6 million.
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The bank’s ai advisor and client insights tool has delivered more than six million insights to financial advisors so far this year.
Bank of America is directing $4 billion toward new technologies this year, including enhancements of its artificial intelligence tools for both clients and advisors, chief executive Brian Moynihan said Tuesday.
“AI has moved from cost savings ideas to enhancing the quality of our customer interactions,” Moynihan said in a call with analysts. He pointed to the bank’s AI advisor and client insights tool, which it says has delivered more than six million insights this year so far to financial advisors.
Major banks are going all-in on AI , from hiring talent to introducing AI-powered tools and assistants , and adopting hundreds of new use cases across their many businesses — with more still in development.
Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank with $3.26 trillion in assets, says it spends $12 billion annually on technology as a whole, directing a quarter of that to a swath of new technology initiatives in 2024. The bank’s virtual assistant, Erica, reached 2 billion interactions in April, with bank clients engaging with it approximately two million times per day.
The bank ranks 15th in the Evident AI Index, which assesses the AI-preparedness of the biggest banks around the world. That puts it behind competitors including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup.
Bank of America topped Wall Street estimates in the second quarter, sending its stock up on optimistic guidance for the rest of the year.
Given its outsize consumer banking business, Bank of America is the most sensitive of all its peers to net interest income (NII) . Its NII was $13.7 billion, a 3% decrease from $13.83 billion in the second quarter of 2023, it reported before markets opened Tuesday. But Alastair Borthwick, the bank’s chief finance officer, reassured investors during Tuesday’s earnings call that the second quarter was an NII “trough.”
The bank raised its guidance on the metric, which is the key way banks make money, to $14.5 billion for the year, as it expects NII levels to rise for the remainder of the year.
Read more: Wells Fargo, Citi, and JPMorgan reported earnings. Here’s what you need to know
Bank of America stock climbed 3.5% on Tuesday morning.
The firm saw $25.4 billion in revenue, up slightly from $25.2 billion during the same quarter last year, the company said Tuesday. That also beat analysts’ revenue estimates of $25.22 billion, according to data compiled by FactSet.
Net income, however, slipped almost 7% to $6.9 billion from $7.4 billion a year earlier. Despite the fall, profits surpassed Wall Street’s projected $6.41 billion.
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Chinese officials acknowledged on Friday the sweeping list of economic goals re-emphasised at the end of a key Communist Party meeting this week contained "many complex contradictions," pointing to a bumpy road ahead for policy implementation.
We conduct research and support activities that address long-standing challenges in translational research so that new treatments and other health solutions reach people faster.
Read our latest research news or follow coverage of our translational science activities through national and local media.
July 16, 2024 - NCATS News
A gene editing approach restored hearing in adult mice with a type of inherited hearing loss. This approach may eventually lead to potential treatments for people with the same condition.
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Explore our research labs, projects and collaborations that are advancing translational science. Our largest program is the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program .
Enhance your knowledge of translational science through programs, activities and resources offered by NCATS and our partner institutions .
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The proposed funding, part of the CHIPS Act, is intended to stoke chip packaging, a process that helps drive progress in semiconductors but that takes place mostly in Asia.
By Don Clark
Reporting from San Francisco
The Biden administration said on Tuesday that it would direct up to $1.6 billion in funding toward developing new technology for packaging computer chips, a major thrust in U.S. efforts to stay ahead of China in creating components needed for applications like artificial intelligence.
The proposed funding, part of the money authorized under the 2022 legislation called the CHIPS Act , will help companies innovate in areas such as creating faster ways to transfer data between chips in a package and managing the heat they generate, said Laurie Locascio, an under secretary in the Commerce Department who is also the director of its National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Her announcement, at an annual industry conference in San Francisco, serves as a starting gun for companies to start applying for grants to fund research and development projects, with awards expected to total up to $150 million each.
“Our research and development efforts in advanced packaging will heavily focus on high-demand applications like high-performance computing and low-power electronics, both needed to enable leadership in A.I.,” Ms. Locascio said.
The CHIPS Act received bipartisan approval to invest $52 billion to stoke domestic chip production, with most of the money directed toward the factories that turn silicon wafers into chips . The U.S. share of that activity has dwindled to around 10 percent, much of it lost to companies in Asia. U.S. reliance on factories run by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or T.S.M.C., in particular, have worried policymakers because of China’s territorial claims on Taiwan.
The dependence on foreign companies is even more stark in chip packaging. That process attaches finished chips — useless without ways to communicate with other pieces of hardware — onto a flat component called a substrate, which has electrical connectors. The combination is typically wrapped in plastic.
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Think age, job, salary, location, and gender. 3. Competitive market research: This shows you what marketing channels, referral partners, and keywords are sending traffic to businesses similar to yours When you combine this data with what you learned in sections 1 + 2, you are ready to build your personas. 4.
The results of that research and analysis will shape aspects of the rest of your business plan. Assessments of your market and competition inform critical decisions in areas such as product design ...
A good business plan guides you through each stage of starting and managing your business. You'll use your business plan as a roadmap for how to structure, run, and grow your new business. It's a way to think through the key elements of your business. Business plans can help you get funding or bring on new business partners.
Why a Business Plan Needs Market Research. A potent document, one that properly lays out the 7 components of a business plan, from the executive summary, to the market analysis, to the strategy, financial plan and all other in-betweens, most use market research to develop it. ...
Step 1. Conduct a comprehensive situation analysis. One of the first steps in constructing your marketing plan is to create a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, which is used to identify your competition, to know how they operate and then to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Strengths.
Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed. Summary. When asked about an opponent's plan for their impending fight, former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson ...
3. Talk to your potential customers. Once you have identified your target market, or at least made a good guess at who your target market is, you need to take the most important step in this entire market research process. You need to get up from your desk, leave behind your computer, and go outside.
Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It's also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. After completing your plan, you can ...
1. Companies of relative size. 2. Companies serving the same geographic area, which could be global if you are planning to be a web-based business. 3. Companies with a similar ownership structure ...
Step 2: Do your market research homework. The next step in writing a business plan is to conduct market research. This involves gathering information about your target market (or customer persona), your competition, and the industry as a whole. You can use a variety of research methods such as surveys, focus groups, and online research to ...
Determine how you can best reach potential customers. Evaluate your competition. Your marketing plan must set you apart from your competition, and you can't stand out unless you know your ...
Describe Your Services or Products. The business plan should have a section that explains the services or products that you're offering. This is the part where you can also describe how they fit ...
Business Plan: A business plan is a written document that describes in detail how a business, usually a new one, is going to achieve its goals. A business plan lays out a written plan from a ...
Tips on Writing a Business Plan. 1. Be clear and concise: Keep your language simple and straightforward. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms. A clear and concise business plan is easier for investors and stakeholders to understand and demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively. 2.
Here is a guide to help you get started on your business plan: 1. Executive Summary. What It Is: This section summarizes your business plan as a whole and outlines your company profile and goals.
1. Create Your Executive Summary. The executive summary is a snapshot of your business or a high-level overview of your business purposes and plans. Although the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, most people write it last. The length of the executive summary is not more than two pages.
Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed. Entrepreneurs and founders Research. Francis J. Greene; Christian Hopp; It's particularly important if you plan to ...
First, you need to gather your resources and collect data to get the numbers right. Let's go over how you can do market research for a variety of topics included in your Market Analysis section. They are: Demographics - If you have been managing a website, you already know a bit about the demographics your niche attracts.
The business plan examples in this article follow this template: Executive summary. An introductory overview of your business. Company description. A more in-depth and detailed description of your business and why it exists. Market analysis. Research-based information about the industry and your target market.
Market research blends consumer behavior and economic trends to confirm and improve your business idea. It's crucial to understand your consumer base from the outset. Market research lets you reduce risks even while your business is still just a gleam in your eye. Gather demographic information to better understand opportunities and ...
Publication Date: 2013. Provides step-by step advice, five business plan examples, and blank forms and worksheets. Business Planning Guide by David H. Bangs. Publication Date: 2002. Provides three complete sample business plans and offers expert guidance. Write Your Business Plan by The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. Publication Date: 2015.
The business plan should clearly and concisely define the mission, val-ues, strategy, measurable objectives, and key results the owner expects. It is important to set aside enough time to formulate the plan. Experts recommend starting the planning pro-cess at least 6 months before initiating a new business.
Some of the information that may be included in the appendices section includes office/building plans, detailed market research, products/services offering information, marketing brochures, and credit histories of the promoters. Business Plan Template. Here is a basic template that any business can use when developing its business plan:
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses make up 46.4% of the private business market. This means despite the number of businesses that fail, millions of small ...
New York's viral new trash bins were unveiled following a $1.6 million contract with McKinsey. Mayor Eric Adams revealed the new bins as part of his "Trash Revolution," launched Monday. New York ...
US News is a recognized leader in college, grad school, hospital, mutual fund, and car rankings. Track elected officials, research health conditions, and find news you can use in politics ...
Bank of America plans to spend $4 billion on AI and other new tech this year The bank's AI advisor and client insights tool has delivered more than six million insights to financial advisors so ...
Mercedes-Benz will wait to see if EV demand picks up before adding more battery cell capacity, with lower projected EV sales meaning it will no longer need the capacity initially planned for 2030 ...
NCATS, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), speeds the translation of scientific discoveries into new treatments for public health. Explore research projects, impact, funding opportunities and resources.
The Biden administration said on Tuesday that it would direct up to $1.6 billion in funding toward developing new technology for packaging computer chips, a major thrust in U.S. efforts to stay ...