Check out this link!

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-create-elevator-pitch-2017-5?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BISelect&pt=385758&ct=Sailthru_BI_Newsletters&mt=8&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20%28Wednesday%20Friday%29%202017-05-03&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select%20-%20Engaged%2C%20Active%2C%20Passive%2C%20Disengaged 

Cut and paste
Cheers 
​Karen

Amistake at the startup stage can cost you a lot of money when it comes time to raise funds or sell your business. Take it from Jamie Firsten, a partner at the business law group at Toronto’s Cassels Brock, who works with early-stage companies and venture capital firms in the growing Canadian technology sector.
Firms like Cassels Brock are now offering “startup packages” that allow companies to get legal advice and work at a fraction of the regular rate. (Fees ramp up once the company raises outside capital.) “We’re making a lot of bets,” says Firsten, who heads the firm’s technology group.
Here are four legal matters you should pay attention to in the early days.
1. SHAREHOLDER AGREEMENTSPartnerships between co-founders are often sealed with little more than a handshake. Firsten recommends using a formal shareholders’ agreement, which sets out protocols for departures from the company and disputes within it. Otherwise, problems between partners can quickly spiral into expensive and disruptive legal action.
Firsten uses the example of three friends who started a software company, and divvied up the equity evenly. “They build an interesting product, start selling, and [the company] gains value,” he recounts. “At that point, they realize two of the partners don’t get along with each other, [and] one of them wants to leave.” The simple ownership document the trio had agreed to didn’t include a resolution mechanism, so each turned to a lawyer. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent. “In the meantime, they’re not making progress on their business, [so] its losing value.”
During this period, a private equity firm approached the company about a buyout. Due diligence revealed the internal tug-of-war, decreasing the valuation the buyer placed on the business. The costs of straightening out all the legal issues were also taken out of the purchase price.
Firsten became involved about nine months in, when one of the partners approached him to act as counsel for the company. But the trio proved unable to resolve their personal differences. “We ended up getting a shotgun buyout—one of the individuals took out the other two, which cost them a bunch of money to do,” Firsten recalls. “That individual held on for another six months and then sold it to the private equity firm, and we cleaned up the corporate structure in the meantime.”
2. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTSThe most valuable thing in most tech companies is the intellectual property (IP). But startups don’t always give it the legal care and attention it deserves. “Early stage companies mess this up all the time,” says Firsten.
Startups that come out of incubators or academic institutions are particularly susceptible to such issues. Founders often get input or ideas from other people within that ecosystem, but neglect to get them to sign IP waivers. The shortcoming may not come to light until an investor or buyer is conducting due diligence, at which point the company must retrace its steps to get the correct documentation in place. “If you have to go back to the individual [say] three years later, that’s going to seem weird,” Firsten notes. “Maybe they’ll realize that they should ask you for something at that point.”
In instances where earlier inattention have opened a company up to possible IP disputes, investors and acquirers will often allocate the risk of such claims to the founders. That means if someone comes knocking for a payoff, you may have to tack that out of your own pocket.
Firsten recounts a recent case in which he acted on behalf of a large VC firm. The startup in question had failed to obtain all the necessary waivers, and it cost an extra $50,000 in diligence to trace back all the deals and handshake agreements it had made. “They went back to as many individuals as they could and tied up what we perceived to be the material loose ends, but at the end of the day, there was still some major risk to the deal,” he recalls. “And the VC said, ‘I’m going to cram down your valuation a little bit because of this, and in our deal documents I’m going to allocate the risk of this to you.’” (No IP claims have been made in that case, as far as Firsten is aware).
3. OPTIONSThe flourishing of Canada’s technology ecosystem is creating ever-more competition for top talent. Even the best-funded startups can’t compete with international giants on salary alone, so most compensation packages at early-stage firms are heavy on future-oriented incentives, typically stakes in the company.
Too many founders “just give equity up,” says Firsten. A better move is to offer stock options, with vesting schedules across a period of time—36 months, say—that incentivize the recipient to stay at the company, and structures that pay out based on meeting deliverables and timelines.
Mess this up, and you risk handing over a big piece of your company to the wrong person. “In one situation, instead of giving options, they gave just straight equity, and the guy left six months later,” Firsten recounts. “Now he’s sitting on the cap table”—the document that shows who owns what—“with 30%.” When the company tried to raise money from a VC firm, the errant shareholder became a point of contention. “The VC’s saying, ‘What’s going on here? This guy didn’t deliver on anything,’” Firsten says. “It shows that the founders couldn’t make good business decisions.” The deal ultimately fell apart on that basis.
4. POLICIES AND PROCEDURESIn the freewheeling early days, rules and protocols are the last things on the minds of founders. That works just fine until the startup tries to raise outside capital, or becomes the target of an acquisition offer. “I prepare due diligence request lists for acquisitions $50 million and up, and [they say], ‘Tell me every single little thing you’ve done in your business since the day you started it. Here’s a 12-page questionnaire.’”
Carefully documenting your processes and policies from the very beginning makes it much easier to pass such an inquisition. Which protocols need to be committed to paper will depend on the nature of your business. Take cyber security. “For some businesses, those documentations or policies are not as material at the outset, because in that industry, the person investing is not going to care as much,” Firsten notes. But they may be necessary in other sectors. “If you’re building a software platform and you have a bunch of employees, you need a cyber security policy in place.”
MORE LEGAL MATTERS:

• The Unforeseen Consequences of an Employee Lawsuit »

Happy to share this article from students @ The Brenham Community Center in Texas who are using some of my work to complete a project! Cheers Karen

http://www.commercialcapitaltraining.com/business-resources/business-ideas/womens-business-resources/ 

​go to link

​Follow their expert advice to ensure that your first year in business is as successful as possible.

1. Business planning

If you thought the business planning process ended with the launch of your business, think again.

Fortunately, we don’t recommend a lengthy, formal business plan—especially after you launch your business—but rather a Lean Plan.

Lean Planning is an iterative, flexible business planning methodology that you can use to direct your business long after opening day. Having a Lean Plan will help you keep your finger on the pulse of your business’s health over the next year (and beyond), as it enables you to see if you are meeting your set milestones.

Refine your One-Page Pitch
Create or refine your sales and marketing plan
Set tangible goals for your first year:
Choose one to three things that, if accomplished, equate to success in your first year
Track these goals with actionable benchmarks and share them with your team
Hold a monthly plan review meeting
Turn your attention to scaling your business:
How can you acquire more customers?
How can you bring costs down?
What will enable you to maintain or improve your quality?
Rinse and repeat (this is a process that should continue throughout the life of your business)
See Also: Introducing Lean Planning: How to Plan Less and Grow Faster
2. Financial management

Perhaps one of the most important things to keep a close eye on during your first year in business is the state of your finances. This includes everything from keeping a detailed forecast, to making sure you have up-to-date records and accounting information.

Create a financial forecast
Create a sales forecast
Create a cash flow forecast
Determine when you will break even
Make sure you have a clear understanding of the cash flow process, and why it matters
Establish a credit line if you’re going to need one
Review your finances on a regular basis—at least once a month
Evaluate the overall state of your finances
See how you did compared to your forecast
Determine why inevitable variances from your forecast occurred
Revise your forecast if necessary
Start establishing a cash reserve to account for emergencies or unplanned setbacks
Get—and use—an accounting system (here at Palo Alto Software, we recommend QuickBooks Online)
See Also: How to Make Sense of Your Small Business Financial Statements
3. Networking and customers

Your first year in business is the time where you really begin to embed yourself as a fixture in your industry and your local community. It’s also a time to turn your attention to your existing customers, and learn from their feedback.

Build your professional network to generate partnerships and co-branding opportunities
Find a mentor, an advisor, or a consultant
Our Academic and Government Channel Sales Director Josh Fegles recommends the SBDC
Talk to your customers and integrate their feedback into your plans and strategy:
Are they happy with your product or service?
What do they love about it?
What don’t they love about it?
Invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system
Update your sales materials based on what you have learned from your time in business thus far
Use customer feedback to iterate and refine your product or service
Test the improved or altered version of your product with your customers again, continuing to refine it
See Also: Want to Grow Your Business? Here Are 8 Creative Ways to Get More Customers
4. Management and personnel

If you still have key positions to fill within your business, it’s time to turn your attention to filling those gaps. Your first year in business will set a precedent, so make sure you are creating the company culture you want for your business.

Additionally, your first year in business will be a process of refining your offering, based on the learnings you’ll gain from regularly reviewing key metrics, and from the feedback you’ll receive from your customers and employees.

Hire for key positions, or evaluate whether or not you need to consider hiring
Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses
Determine what kind of employees you need to fill the gaps
Make a plan for acquiring people to fill these key roles
Write a great job description 
Hire necessary employees
Ask the right interview questions 
Incorporate employee performance reviews into your process
Create a training manual and onboarding plan for employees
Document your systems and processes so that training new employees is easier and so you can scale faster
Learn how to delegate; if you do everything and make every decision, you can’t grow
See Also: The Pixar-Inspired Guide to Managing a Creative Company
5. Marketing

You may have begun the process of marketing your product or service before you started your business, but chances are your first year in business is when you’ll give it more focused attention.

Develop a marketing strategy
Create or refine your marketing plan
Automate your marketing programs
Check out our favorite marketing tools for recommendations
Consider testing the waters with email automation—it’s a great place to start
Are there any hurdles you’ve encountered during your first year in business that you’d like us to address? Share this article on Twitter or Facebook and let us know—we’d love to help you out.

 View our Business Management Guide today!
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​Finger Bowls and Other Foreign Objects: Karen Behune Plunkett
Let’s Not Leave
the Past Behind
RAFIH STYLE business
Okay: Let me begin by explaining my wacky title to you. About 25
years ago, in between creating and operating three businesses
and juggling babies, I decided along with a writer colleague of
mine (the illustrious Karen Hall) that writing a book would make
perfect sense. The intent was that our soon-to-be number-one bestseller
would include not only some of my favourite recipes and business tips, but
also a handful of Karen’s humorous tales of adventures and crazy, longforgotten
tidbits and trifles. Clearly, my aforementioned responsibilities
only permitted us to hold a small series of planning and outline meetings;
the rest, as they say, is history.
However, the book’s title – which is also the title of this piece – stuck with
me through several additional business openings and new career paths.
It popped into my head during a planning meeting for a potential new
business when I realized how relevant it still is. From a communications
and technology front, things are evolving at an unprecedented speed.
I remember sitting at my desk at the
brewery in 1999. I had engaged a
coach to teach me how to use (dial-up)
email. I got the hang of it, but it took three coaching sessions. Folks, that
was under two decades ago! Today, it is likely that you can email, text, and
tag faster than you can phone someone. Think about it: How often does
your phone even ring anymore?
While there appears to be no speed limit to the expansion of new
technological vehicles for communication, it’s important to remember
that nothing really changes from a business perspective. The good will
survive, and the weak will not. While the numbers may be more robust,
primarily due to a faster pace of entry for most, the end-user audience
is fairly quick to identify the businesses and technologies that best solve
their problems. Typically, these are problems that nobody knew existed.
Think of Uber, which has been totally disruptive to an historic industry.
Successful technologies along those lines will not only change the way
we think and work. They will also, in the end and for the most part, make
the world better.
This brings me back to my title. If you’re anything like me, I am certain
that you receive an abundance of new “solution vehicles” daily, or even
hourly, via the internet or other networks. I often wonder: If we had the
ability to eliminate the majority of these missives, or sift through them
more efficiently, how much more productive would our time be? While the
embrace of social media is unlikely to loosen, we should remember that
this new paradigm is still in the start-up frenzy stage. It has not yet evolved
to a productive maturity consumption level. This means, for business and
industry if not so much for the leisure audience, that our ability to efficiently
edit and/or participate is still in the fairly early stages.
o

https://www.shopify.com/tools 

Great exciting Canadian company supports PinPointsd.com working to build your business. Thanks for the reach out & liking PinPointsd resources Shopify!

I have many times been asked to speak in front of groups about entrepreneurship.
More specifically, I’ve lectured widely on my varied experiences – the good,
bad, and the ugly! During these talks, I often take the time to recall the event
that led me to an important realization: being an entrepreneur can quite often
leave you in the land of the lonely.
Some years ago, I was presenting to and negotiating with a very successful senior venture capital team in Toronto. I was looking for
significant monies to fund an aggressive growth pattern for my expanding operation – with confidence, I might add – when the lead
gentleman looked at me intently, a slight smile forming on his face. “Nobody knows how lonely your job is,” he stated.
Well, I smugly thought, he doesn’t know me very well. After all, I have an amazing marriage, partner, and family, and I’m fortunate to have
an abundance of great friends. As I was reflecting on all that, though, the hammer hit out of the blue.

The presentation adrenaline that had been flowing through
my body only moments before packed up and headed down
the 401 (which could cause anyone to become weepy), and
my eyes welled up. I realized then that I simply yearned
to share the responsibility. It became clear as day that
very few people understand the degree of loneliness that
entrepreneurs quite often experience. As the boss, team
leader, debt holder, and inspiration, “the buck stops here,”
as the saying goes. It’s on you.
Typically, in the early stages of business, it is the entrepreneur
who needs to have all the answers. While this part of the
process can be very exciting, it can also be exhausting and
terrifying. Driven by passion, you are more likely to rely on
instinct and drive to create solutions than you are to draw
from any book of experience. Because you are operating
without the safety net of a boss giving you direction, it can
be very overwhelming.
The sooner you realize that you are not the first to endure
this experience, the better. It’s important to lift your head
out of the fire for long enough to discover that there are
support structures and tools available to you. Engage with
them, and you will find the trip much less solitary. If you look
around, you’ll see there are many mentor programs and
networks in our area; it is not a weakness to utilize available
resources. Quite the opposite: it shows you have the wisdom
to build upon your opportunities with experienced advice
and helpful tools.
The challenges and opportunities of the business phases
that follow can be multifaceted. Hopefully your business has
matured enough by then to be in a position to recruit the
specific talent necessary to accommodate healthy growth.
Moreover, hopefully you have been wisely “confident”
enough to hire employees in those roles who are better
than you! The most successful entrepreneurs look hard and
deep at their own skill levels and strengths to identify their
weakness and put in place a plan to fill those gaps. Basically,
they set their egos aside. I wish I had learned that in my first
businesses; early-career entrepreneurs often believe they
must deliver everything themselves.
Having stated the above, even if you have a talented
team of advisors to contribute to your company’s decision
making, you’re still the one who signs the cheques at the
end of the day. You alone are the one shouldering the true
weight of strategic planning and bank account balancing.
This element of responsibility, specifically, can be lonely for
an entrepreneur. If you own it, you can find ways to achieve
work-life balance in a healthy and productive manner.
When I speak to groups of entrepreneurs, or those
considering joining this world, I make sure that they
recognize the reality of their career path. I see that they still
have a need for camaraderie.
Would the lonely lifestyle ever stop me from being an
entrepreneur? Never. That said, I now know that my
entrepreneurial experience leaves me with tools share. If
you’re like me, I encourage you to bring your experience
to help mentor and foster new entrepreneurs. After all, you
speak their language – just a little more proficiently!
Karen is a Director of Windsor Essex Capital Angel Network (WECAN), a
very valuable asset for regional entrepreneurs. For more information, see
www.weangelchapter.com 

How to Raise Money for Your Startupby Nichelle McCall
How to Raise Money for Your Startup: Create Milestones and MoneyTwo of the most important things an entrepreneur needs in her business are goals and revenue. If your company isn’t making money (or raising money) then you are not a business. But knowing the right milestones and goals to pursue that positions your company for growth and investment can be confusing. When I first started my company and made projections of how much money I wanted to make in the first year, I started with basic goals like sell to 100 schools and make $250,000. However, I had yet to identify the specific actions I needed to take, the resources needed for those activities, and how much money was necessary to accomplish all of this. Once I started to understand how to create Revenue-Generating Milestones™ and tying them to action items and dollar signs, I was in a much better place to position my company to be attractive to investors. To help you move further along, here are five tips and a FREE workbook that will help you create Revenue-Generating Milestones™ and money.
Identify specific activities
Come up with a list of activities you need to do that will put your company closer to generating revenue. Identify what people, marketing, and sales activities you need to do to help you reach that goal. As you are coming up with your list of Revenue-Generating Milestones™, all activities should be broken down into categories, such as:

• Product/Service Development
• People
• Sales & Marketing

Create a list of resources needed for each activity
Each activity requires resources in order to accomplish the goal. For example, your Facebook campaign may need a graphic designer and a social media specialist to test content and design for optimal results. You also need to have a budget for advertising to run the campaign.
Create Realistic Revenue Goals
Determine what revenue goals you can reach every month based on the resources you will have. If you can’t bring on a marketing or sales person for another 9 months, then your sales and revenue will be slower until that person comes on board. Really take your time to figure out how many products you can sell and when.
Figure Out Associated Expenses
Now figure out how much it’s going to cost you to acquire these customers and sales. What sales and marketing campaigns need to be launched? What software, service, or person is needed to handle customer service?
Seek a Mentor
I highly suggest having a mentor/coach who is an experienced entrepreneur. Aligning yourself with someone who has successfully raised money or generated revenue for their company will better position you to identify the proper milestones to track. A mentor can also help you to dig deeper to pinpoint specific activities needed to meet your goals or consider alternative opportunities that you had not considered.
This Milestones and Money exercise can help you raise money in two ways: 1) generate revenue (the best form of fundraising) and 2) be more attractive to investors. When you have a clear, laid out strategy of how you are going to attract customers and make revenue, your company will be more successful and investors will feel more confident in the entrepreneur. Put these tips into action by developing your own Milestones and Money for your company.

Owner-managers know intuitively that cash is very important: that’s why they often sign all cheques and see all deposits. If you watch the cash, you get a fairly accurate view of what is really going on in the business. Yet, poor cash-flow management is often a major stumbling block for small and medium-sized businesses.
If your goal is to manage your cash more effectively, you need to anticipate when, where and how your cash needs will occur, and to involve your employees in the process. Here are a few strategies that can help you power up your cash-management processes to enhance operations.
Study variances in budget vs. actuals: One important tool for effective planning and monitoring of cash is comparing your actual operating results (sales, cost of sales, expenses and net income) to budget, then analyzing and identifying the reasons for any differences. Review monthly reports carefully, and be sure to follow up on your analysis of any variances so the reasons can be understood and appropriate corrective measures taken. The discipline of writing down reasons for variances is excellent training for your staff, and it will be useful information when you meet with your managers — or your investors or bankers.
Implement an authorization process: The central place that cash occupies in any business means that controls over cash provide additional benefits across all your business operations. For example, ensuring that invoices are properly authorized and approved is one control over cash disbursements. But that control also ensures that expenses and purchases are authorized and approved, so the benefit of applying it is pervasive throughout the business.
Businesses of any size should have written policies for ensuring that cash is disbursed only when authorized. Review your policies and procedures periodically and, when necessary, revise them to correct any identified weaknesses or inconsistencies. Establish a process for diagnosing how prepared your company is to prevent fraud, and follow up promptly on identified deficiencies in controls.
Improve collection processes: One of the keys to controlling accounts-receivable balances is having very clear payment terms and following up with aggressive action if they are missed. Frequent phone calls, emails or visits can achieve two objectives: offering unexpected customer service (“Is everything all right with the order?”) and communicating a collections subtext (“Our accounts-receivable department tells me that your payment is still outstanding — is there a problem?”) It may help to offer some customers a discount for prompt payment—but a better solution might be to get compliance with the original (and already agreed upon) payment terms.
You also need to demonstrate to customers and your staff that late payments are not acceptable. Overdue accounts should be highlighted in management reports (along with proposed actions), and accounts-receivable statistics (such as days sales outstanding) can be reported and tracked as well.
Manage accounts payable: Your accounts-payable strategy will depend upon your relationships with suppliers, your relative negotiating power, whether there is a need to conserve or maximize cash and conventions in your industry. It is normal to aim to pay suppliers in accordance with their payment terms or slightly later. On the other hand, if your business has a cash surplus, given the low interest rates that are currently earned on excess cash, there may be merit in paying promptly to maintain a good reputation.
Businesses that are able to pay early can take advantage of their position to negotiate discounts. Even a 1% discount for paying in five days instead of 30 represents a rate of return well above what you could otherwise earn on idle funds.


Review expenses regularly: Your budget is the best starting point for monitoring and controlling expenses throughout the year. The budget should include both a detailed list of planned expenditures and the entire plan for achieving your company’s objectives in the year. It constitutes an important element of the control system, provided that the budget-setting process is adequate and that you monitor actual expenditures compared to your budget, analyzing the differences.
Review your company’s expenses periodically in areas such as shipping and freight, mail and courier, insurance, rent and utilities, and consider where processes can be improved and costs reduced.
Work with your banker: Plan to meet with your banking team at least once a year. Face-to-face meetings will help maintain a strong working relationship and provide a good opportunity for you and your staff to get together with bank staff with whom you usually communicate only by email or telephone throughout the year.
This meeting should also be a forum for considering whether you have the right services in view of changes that have happened in your business as well as new bank services available. As the banks change their offerings frequently, it is important to routinely review which services you access and to assess whether new products may provide better or cheaper functionality.
Optimize your inventory cycle: Carrying inventory costs money, so try to optimize the cycle. An important element of optimizing your inventory cycle involves identifying where inventory levels may be reduced without impairing your firm’s customer service or production efficiency. For example, if you find that the slow-moving items are sold to unprofitable customers, the next step is to perform a more complete analysis to consider eliminating not just those inventory items but also the unprofitable customers.
Keep in mind that lower inventory levels and faster inventory turnover can produce ancillary benefits such as reductions in waste, obsolescence, theft and insurance costs. However, manage your inventory cycle with the other demands of your business in mind. For instance, if carrying a wide range of inventory has strategic value, then you’ll need to find other ways to make the process more cost-effective.
Take a team approach: Above all, effective cash management requires a team approach: your leadership, combined with input and follow-through from your managers and staff, as well as specialized guidance from your banker, chartered accountant or other business advisory specialists. The bottom line: better cash management means a better business.
Adapted from the Cash Management Toolkit for Small & Medium Businesses, by Jeffrey D. Sherman, MBA, CA. Published by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.

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