If you are considering starting your own business, please join Bob and me on Saturday, January 18, 2020 for our next workshop, called “The ProjectionSmart Proof Plan.”  We are once again holding this workshop through the Minneapolis office of SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives). Statistics show that the best way to help your new business succeed is to plan! Businesses that have a plan succeed far more often than those that start without a solid business and financial plan. We’ll show you the si... [continue reading]

Over the last eight years I have presented over 550 times a free seminar at Workforce Centers called “How to Start a Successful Small Business.” In these seminars I always ask what the participants think the failure rate is for businesses in their first 12 months of operation. Usually the answers range from a high of 90% to a low of 20%.  So what is the real answer? First off, if you Google “failure rates of new businesses” there are over 67 million responses. When looking at the first ten pages you f... [continue reading]

In 2018 CB Insights published the top 20 reasons why startups fail. They said there is rarely just one reason for startup failure, but they found the 20 most common reasons that startups don't make it. At ProjectionSmart we reviewed that list to determine how many of these reasons are addressed when the entrepreneur uses the Startup financial model and the Proof Plan. What we found was that the top nine most common reasons why startups fail are all addressed in the the Startup financial model and the ... [continue reading]

Whenever I speak at a workforce center on starting a small business, I always ask the question, “How many of you have written a business plan before?” I always get one or two people who have attempted the process, and they always say the same things. They usually point out that the process is extremely complicated, they may not understand the words being used, they do not like having to write so much, and they absolutely do not know how to do the financials spreadsheets required for most business plans. ... [continue reading]

As an experienced entrepreneur (or BizOwner) and college entrepreneurship instructor, I have answered questions from over a thousand students looking for advice on how to start a business. A few months ago, a student in one of my classes raised his hand and asked, “Okay, Bob, you’ve given us lots of great advice and feedback, but if you could boil it down, what is the single best piece of advice you can offer about starting a business?” I remember saying something about keeping focused on customers, b... [continue reading]


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Five stars

"ProjectionSmart is truly an invaluable tool for both start-ups and established businesses looking to get financials in order. I am in the process of getting a start-up put together, thus creating a valid projection of revenue and expenditures will help get funding and create a solid plan to succeed. Super easy to use and intuitive! "
~ Marissa, Entrepreneur

Five stars

"I've started a few businesses, and for the last three I ran my ideas through ProjectionSmart to help me make a go/no-go decision. Without that initial review of what the future might look like, I wouldn't have known which ones were a good use of my time and which ones were a bad use of time. ProjectionSmart guided me to the right decisions. It's easy to use and a fantastic product."
~ John, serial entrepreneur

Five stars

"ProjectionSmart makes it easy to create your business plan and find out if you have any shortcomings or need to reevaluate your plan."
~ Parker, startup entrepreneur

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