Dragon1 Entrepreneurship Improvement Plan

For any Entrepreneur

This guide is useful for any entrepreneur, but it is created especially for inexperienced and starting entrepreneurs. If you are stuck in your business model or see no way out of your problem it will also be useful to read. It helps you to become a better entrepreneur. You will have more control over your success and will see new options.

Entrepreneurship Improvement Plan as PDF

Entrepreneurship is 1) seeing/discovering business opportunities, 2) turning business opportunities into solutions, and 3) creating value for customers (ie. solving a business problem for your client better than your competitor).

To be able to do this, you must know a lot about the market (that is the personas of your target audience) that you want to enter with your product, service, or solution. You need to build a strong brand with a strong logo. And please, do not be afraid to make mistakes as entrepreneurs, but learn from them as much as possible.

“Be meaningful and more successful with your company by building a brand instead of only a business” – Mark Paauwe

Your business needs to change constantly because of a constantly changing world and you want your prospects and clients to follow you. People stay much better and longer with companies that have strong brands. And if your strong brand provides solutions that resonate with its target audience you are heading for success.

Solutions

Today more and more companies provide solutions to clients or customers. A solution is a combination of products and services bundled with packages to address a business problem of clients or customers.

For instance: Mobility solutions help clients with their mobility problems. Providing taxi rides as a service together with an app where a client can order a taxi can be seen as a mobility solution.

Today we have many new energy solutions (like wind turbines and solar panels) and agribusiness solutions (like aquaponics and insect farming) because of new production and IT technologies.

Solutions make it easier to collaborate with business partners and combine products and services from 2 or more companies.

Branding

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. Starbucks, for instance, owns the color green. If you see that color, you already taste a caffe latte.

It is important to position yourself in the minds of your customers or clients. You can do that by finding a niche: creating a new category within a market(segment) OR trying to become better or the best in a market(segment).

The big brands in the world are often the result of hard work, good thinking, making decisions, and focusing on what to do and what to leave.

Example Business Model of HelloFresh

Read more on https://www.businessmodelsinc.com/business-model-hellofresh

www.hellofresh.com
€1.80 billion (2019), Number of employees: 4,276 (2018), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HelloFresh
Here you can read what went wrong with the brand positioning of HelloFresh: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298102 and how they solved it.
Here are lessons in branding: https://bughuntersam.com/lessons-in-branding-hellofresh/
Also very interesting: https://postfunnel.com/5-key-lessons-from-starbucks-recent-rebranding/
And this one: https://coschedule.com/blog/starbucks-marketing-strategy/
Important lesson: Building a brand is never done. Work on it each day.

Questions

The questions below help to make you think hard about your enterprise or business and make decisions. The questions are focused on what you know, what have you done and what are you willing to do to make money with your business or enterprise.

If you do not understand a question, just check the internet for more explanation.

Answer these questions truthfully and you increase the chance of making more money and getting an investment.

1. How important do you think it is to be able to master the English language to be a successful entrepreneur?
2. Are you good enough at reading, writing, and speaking English? How do you practice your English?
3. How important is it according to you to constantly get feedback from prospects, clients, or customers on your product, service, and solution and use that to improve them?
4. How important is it according to you to have a website and what is your website URL?
5. What is your main brand color? How does it help you build your brand?
6. What does your logo look like? What does it tell or say? How does it help you build your brand?
7. What have you done yourself to learn and understand how to get a domain name and a 1-page website?
8. How do you do permanent education? What do you study, what books do you read and what training and certification do you do in new technologies so you can make your products and solutions smarter for your clients?
9. Do you have a business coach? (that is a good business friend who makes more than 1 million USD per month with his or her business. Do not stop looking if you do not have a business coach yet.
10. If someone gives you advice, how important is it that they can back up their advice with their track record?
11. What is your main product or service?
12. What is your (type of) solution? (the combination of products and services that helps to improve an aspect of the business of your prospects/customers/clients? Is it a mobility solution? A sales solution? An energy solution? An HR solution? What is it?
13. What is your target audience?
14. What is the persona of your target audience?
15. How do you make sure your target audience knows about your product, service, or solution?
16. What percentage of your target audience is educated about your product, service, or solution?
17. What is your business model (write down in one sentence)?
18. What value do you create for your customers or clients? Ergo, what is the main reason that clients or customers will buy your solution and not the one of a competitor? what is your pitch? (write down in one sentence)?
19. Where does your knowledge about the business of your prospects, clients, or customers come from?
20. How do you constantly improve and update that knowledge? Are you doing that?
21. What are the current or prognosed monthly costs of your business?
22. What is the current or prognosed monthly revenue of your business?
23. What is the current or prognosed monthly profit (revenue-cost)) of your business?
24. Who are your competitors?
25. What solutions (a combination of products and services) do they provide to your prospects/clients/customers?
26. What do your prospects/clients/customers spend monthly or annually on these solutions?
27. What have you done until now to make sure some prospects in your market know about your solution? How did you educate them?
28. What is needed to make 1 million USD per month with your solution?
29. With which business partners could you create a collaboration so you can make use of the relations they have with their customers and clients?
30. How can you make money on the import and export of your solutions, products, and or services? Often entrepreneurs overlook the opportunities that import, export, and re-export have.
31. How can you broaden your markets? Suppose your product, service, or solution is fit for a branch or sector, how to extend that to other businesses?
32. Are you busy daily with lead generation? Never stop doing that!
33. Do you have a list of 100 prospects?
34. When did you engage them or when are you going to do that?
35. When did you show them a sample of your solution or give them a demo of your product or service?
36. What was their feedback on your solution, product, or service?
37. What did you learn the most from engaging clients or customers with a sample or demo of your solution and getting feedback from them?
38. What did you do with that feedback? Have you improved your product with it?
39. What is your product roadmap? What improvements will you on your product, service, or solution?
40. What are your 10 dream prospects/clients/customers?
41. If we asked them tomorrow, what would they know and say about you, your company, and your solution?
42. What motivated you to start your business or to develop your product or service?
43. How can you scale your business?
44. Have you done a SWOT analysis?
45. Do you have an overview of your core business processes and for every core business process a process flow diagram? How important do you think it is to have documented your business processes?
46. Do you have a fixed moment in the day (an hour) for doing business development? Your personal business development hour?
47. Do you have a business development plan where you outline with activities HOW you are going to realize your plan?

The questions above all lead to being able to create a smart pitch deck with 10 slides.

Pitch Deck topics (and answers to questions)

Pitch Deck Slide	Question to answer on this slide:
1. TITLE	What are your contact details?
2. OPPORTUNITY	What is the business opportunity that you see? Who has what business problem and how problematic is it?
3. VALUE PROPOSITION	How do you solve the business problem and why is it better than the competition?
4. SOLUTION, PRODUCT OR SERVICE	Which concepts, technologies, products, and/or services are the magic behind your solution? Create a diagram.
5. STRATEGY MAP	What is your identity (are you a snack bar or a restaurant providing food?), vision (view of the future), and mission (task fulfillment).
6. BUSINESS MODEL	How do you produce or provide your product, service, or solution? What is your revenue stream? Create a business model canvas diagram.
7. GO-TO-MARKET PLAN	How are you going to everyone know you exist? How are you going to educate the market? What does your chain of delivery or logistics look like?
8. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS	Who are your competitors, why do they have success, and how and when are going to beat them?
9. MANAGEMENT TEAM AND PARTNERSHIPS	Who is part of your dream team? Name founders, board of directors, employees, board of advisors, investors, and partners. And emphasize their knowledge, expertise, and network.
10. FINANCIAL PROJECTIONS AND KEY METRICS	What will your liquidity, cash flow, and revenue be for the coming 12 to 36 months? How do you measure it's a success? What key metrics do you use?
11. CURRENT STATUS, ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO DATE, TIMELINE AND SPENDING OF BUDGETS, USE OF FUNDS	What have you done and accomplished until now? Suppose you have a budget or get an investment, how will you spend it?

As an entrepreneur, it is always smart to create a PowerPoint Presentation as a Pitch Deck and a 1-minute video with your value proposition. It keeps you sharp, whether or not you want to get funding from an investor. Do this at least annually to make sure you keep innovating.

For questions or advice on becoming a better entrepreneur, suggestions for business opportunities, or improving your business model, mail to mark.paauwe@dragon1.com or info@discover-suriname.com

Value Propositions

To be more successful as a company it is essential to know your actual value proposition and live up to it (and document it).

A value proposition is a simple statement that summarizes why a customer would choose your product or service. It communicates the clearest benefit that customers receive by giving you their business.

Every value proposition should speak to a customer’s challenge and make the case for your company as the problem-solver.

A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged. It is also a belief from the customer about how value will be delivered, experienced, and acquired. A value proposition can apply to an entire organization, or parts thereof, or customer accounts, or products or services.

A truly great value proposition introduces you to prospective buyers and helps you make a strong first impression. Your value proposition should describe: how your product or service solves/improves problems, what benefits customers can expect, and why customers should buy from you over your competitors.

To get started, go to the demos to create a Business Model Canvas, a Strategy Map, and a Process Flowchart.