March 28, 2008 by mrbizplan.

I spent the morning searching for a domain for a upcoming venture of mine.  This is probably the five hundredth time I have searched for a domain for one reason or another and my favorite tool for searching is the “whois” look-up on www.domaintools.com.  I have come to the conclusion that domain squatters are some of the lowest of the low. 

These people snap up thousands of the best domains and then use them for nothing other than to try to make a quick buck.  Now…obviously I am not against capitalism.  I own several businesses myself, so hear me out.

Starting a business is hard and getting exposure for your business is even harder.  Finding the perfect domain for your business can be a godsend and finding out someone else owns that domain, who is not even using that domain and has no intention to other than to charge you an exorbitant fee to acquire it, is a nightmare.  So the wary entrepreneur goes and looks for another similar domain and winds up with something full of dashes, dreadfully long, and/or full of uncommonly used words. 

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March 24, 2008 by mrbizplan.

I read an article the other day in the FM Business Journal about “Type A” business personalities.  The jest of the article was that, despite being worshipped by the business community, people who have a ”go getter” personality usually take on too many tasks and ultimate succeed at none. 

My first reaction was “That’s Not True!” but I decided to let the thought digest for a few days and see how I reacted after some time. 

You see, I have been accused of taking on too many tasks (mostly by my wife) in my daily life.  I went to my 10 year reunion last fall and when asked what I had been up to lately I responded with; “Not much…work and kids, you know…”  But, the truth was the answer would have been too long and there were too many things to explain. 

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March 21, 2008 by mrbizplan.

I have been a business consultant since 2002 and I work with about 200 clients a year. 

Over that time I have helped entrepreneurs complete countless financial projections for their start-up companies.  Over that same period of time I have developed a gut feeling for sales projections and typical expenses due to repeated exposure to different industries financial data. 

Restaurants are a particularly popular business to start because of the low barriers to entry (inexpensive, low skill, quick customer attraction, etc.) and I have worked with my fair share of wanna-be restaurant magnates. 

So when the opportunity came to start my own Delivery / Carry Our Pizza restaurant with a friend of mine I thought I had a pretty good handle on the business plan and financial projections.  Now that we have been open five months I can say that I had the opening three months right but the last two months have been about 30% off the mark. 

Looking back at the business plan I can see a few things that I didn’t expect:

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