Irais Estrada | Innovation & Entrepreneurship | BUS404 | June 1, 2017

• Business Skills

“Business success depends on the creation and application of profitable strategies.” Pg. 19

“Entrepreneurs who do not pay themselves regularly tend to overstate their return on investment; they have not taken their compensation as a cost of the business. Recognize that you can only pay yourself (or anyone else) when you have sufficient cash to do so.” Pg. 418

“Becoming a successful entrepreneur is all about making connections, those “Aha!” moments when you realize what your business opportunity is or when you figure out how to do something better than the competition.” Pg. 24

“The best business opportunities usually combine both internal and external factors. Ideally, a business that you are passionate about fills a sustainable need in the marketplace.” Pg. 19

• Responsibility

“Delegate responsibility and authority and trust your team; hire the best people for the job and support them in their success. There is little that is more wasteful and counterproductive than a manager who does not delegate or who nominally delegates and then undermines the team’s work.” Pg. 419

“A leader is someone who gets things done through influence, by guiding or inspiring others to voluntarily participate in a cause or project. Leadership comes from self-esteem applied to knowledge, skills, and abilities. If you believe in yourself and know what you are doing, you can accomplish things confidently and inspire others. Develop a positive attitude, and you can become a leader. Great leaders are optimists; they have trained themselves to think positively. Running a successful business requires leadership.” Pg. 418

• Financial Literacy

“The financial section of the business plan will be the numeric representation of all that you wrote previously. This section should demonstrate organizational viability in financial terms. Commercial lenders in particular will often go directly from the executive summary to the financials before reading anything else. If the numbers make sense, they may look at the rest of the plan. If not, your plan may well land in the trash basket. Your financial estimates should be as realistic as you can make them.” Pg. 51

“The cash flow statement shows cash receipts less cash disbursements over a period of time. Creating your cash flow projections for three years will bring financial potential and risks into clear focus both for you and your stakeholders.” Pg. 51 

 “An income statement (or profit and loss statement—P&L ) summarizes income and expense activity over a specified period, such as a month, quarter, or year, and shows net profit or net loss. Generally, start-up enterprises suffer losses for several months, or even a few years, depending on the type of business. You can show initial losses in your statements, but they must be comparable to industry norms, and you must have cash to cover any shortfalls.” Pg. 51

Pg. xvii

• Goal Setting

“A mentor is a trusted advisor with whom a person forms a developmental partnership through which information, insight, skills, and knowledge are shared to promote personal and/or professional growth. Finding a committed business mentor with industry-specific knowledge and experience, broad general business experience, or both, is a worthwhile endeavor. A successful entrepreneur in your field, perhaps outside of your geographic area, may prove invaluable if he or she will mentor you.” Pg. 11

“A strategy is a plan for how a business intends to go about its own performance and outdo that of its competition. Michael Porter created a “strategy framework” that delineates cost leadership and differentiation as low-cost and product-uniqueness strategies.” Pg. 19

“Contemporary economists and business experts have defined entrepreneurship even more specifically. Drucker pointed out that, for a business to be considered entrepreneurial, it should exploit changes in the world. This is in alignment with Schumpeter’s definition of entrepreneurship but explicitly takes it a step further—to take advantage of circumstances.” Pg. 16

• Teamwork

“Affiliative. This “people come first” method is effective when the business is in the team-building stage. It can fail when employees are lost and need direction.” Pg. 418

“When you hire people, treat them fairly and with respect. Respect for individuals, diversity, and a balance of work and family will create a culture that affirms the value of employees. Employees who are valued are likely to want to go the extra mile for their employers. In addition to creating a strong, positive culture, many companies make their employees owners by giving them shares of corporate stock, thereby entitling them to a portion of the company profits, or offer them various incentives for positive performance.” Pg. 429

Work Cited

Mariotti, Steve. Entrepreneurship: Starting and Operating A Small Business, 4th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions, 2016. [The Art Institutes].