Tools & Techniques

The tools and techniques available for your use are set out below. You are free to take and use what you need.

The brief descriptions of each will give general guidance on what each contains. The list will be added to both as I create new tools or find ones elsewhere that I think will help you. Just send an email to be notified about new ones.

Click the link and you will go to the full texts and print them if you wish.

Entrepreneurship

  • Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin. A bootstrapper is determined to build a business that pays for itself every day.
  • Bootstrap Finance—a guide to financing your business without going to the bank, raising a loan or finding an equity investor.
  • Milestones Tool—a well run startup is going to need to keep a very close check on progress; life is so busy that you may miss one or more vital targets and here's a way to help avoid doing so.

Graphic Thinking

  • Affinity Diagram—a deceptively simple tool to make sense many ideas.
  • Customer Profiling Grid—a neat way to define your customer profiles, for better marketing.
  • Fishbone Diagram—also called a cause-and-effect diagram to identify causes.
  • Goal Tracking Tool—a do-it-yourself way to keep your goals on track to achievement.
  • Marketing Strategy Grid—integrates marketing goals, policies, & action sequences.
  • Meaning Match Table—a way to test the meaning of your own business and its products.
  • Milestones Tool—for setting accountabilities among executives and/or key subcontractors.
  • Mind Mapping—XMind, a way to organize your thinking, especially when you don't know where to start.
  • Positioning Graph—also called a radar chart, to compare options/products with many variables.
  • Promotion Media Grid—an organized way to approach promotion decision making.
  • Staffing Grid—for startups to make rational decisions about hiring and timing.
  • SWOT Grid—a massively revealing tool to asses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats.

Information Technology

Marketing & Sales

  • Customer Profiling Grid—check that you have got a handle on who and where your customers are and how they can best be reached.
  • Marketing Strategy Grid—flair is great, but for most of us a disciplined approach to figuring out our marketing strategy and plan is needed.
  • Promotion Media Grid—work out the best promotional mix for each marketing goal.

Organizing & Managing

  • Cause and Effect Diagrams—also called fishbone diagrams because they look like one; an excellent way of identifying problems.
  • Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)—this agreement is used by WorkSavvy LLC before starting on client assignments, and you may copy it, though you may wish to have it approved by your own attorney before you use it.
  • Startup Staffing Grid—all too frequently entrepreneurs take on staff without too much planning and live to regret the consequences. This grid helps to prevent that.
  • PMAs (Plan—Milestones—Accountabilities)—this tool is about making things happen; all too frequently entrepreneurs can drop their own balls in their excitement.
  • Organizational Tasks and Actions Checklist—it is very easy to forget essential tasks and actions when you are in the first flush of having set up in business: here is a handy checklist.

Problem-solving & Decision-making

  • Affinity Diagram—is a wonderful tool for picking apart a problem when you have no idea where to start to tackle it.
  • Brainstorming—a group or team creativity tool that can be applied to both problem-solving and new product or service generation.
  • Goal Setting—about using a neat bit of software to help you set goals graphically, both business and personal or use a simpler one.
  • Mind Mapping—here is a place to start with mind mapping for note taking auto-brainstorming or just trying to understand what you are doing.

Planning & Finance

  • Bootstrap Finance—a guide to financing your business without going to the bank, raising a loan or finding an equity investor.
  • Business Model Planner—a helpful tool for working out the business model of your startup.
  • Business Plan Outline—here is a structure for you to use or modify when writing your business plan; it will simplify your task.
  • Cash Flow Forecasting—about knowing ahead of time what cash there will be in the business and available for use, with a sample format to copy.
  • SWOT Analysis—this is an under-rated tool to emphasize the positive and prepare for the worst.
  • Simple Goal Tracking Tool—here is a very simple table-based one page way to keep yourself and your business on track.
  • Alternative Sources of Finance Comparison—it is easy to think that the only place to go for business finance is the bank; not so and here you can see the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.

 

Iris Lines, LLC