VI Course Preparing to Plan
Business incubator buildings are designed to be specially nurturing places for new businesses to start and grow. The well-run ones give off the feeling of a “business family” for each tenant.
We have designed the Virtual Incubator coaching program to provide you with the same sense of nurturing and “family” support…from the comfort of your home!
As you work through the planning process to launch your new business you are supported in a number of ways.
How We Support You
1. You use this online planning course as your “compass” to guide you forward, decision by decision. You can go in and out of the course guided by our week-by-week planning schedule…access the course from anywhere you have access to the Web.
2. Through regular telecoaching calls your Virtual Incubator coach guides your forward progress, provides pertinent advice and coordinates the work of two other members of the Virtual Incubator family…see below.
3. Our administrative team completes a series of organizational tasks for your new business, such as registering your web domain name and setting up your e-mail marketing account.
4. Our team of expert graphic and website designers craft your company’s logo and design and print coordinated business cards, as well as designing, testing and launching your company’s website. Our expert copywriting team compose compelling selling copy for your website’s homepage.
How To Use
The Planning Course
navigate through the course
There are two features in the planning course to help you steer your way through the eleven planning weeks:
1. The navigation menu.
The Planning Course is organized into 11 Planning Weeks.
During each Planning Week you are introduced to one or more decisions or organizational tasks. Within a decision point or organizational task you see step-by-step instructions on how to complete a specific business planning decision, such as setting your business goals, or an organizational task, such as setting up your web hosting account.
On the right side of each webpage presented in the planning course you will see a vertical column of Planning Weeks, starting with “Preparing to Plan” and concluding with “Planning Week 11”. Note: On some smartphones, the navigation listing appears at the bottom of the content shown below.
You move from one Planning Week to the next by clicking on the title of the Planning Week in the navigation menu on the right side of each page in the course.
2. Bottom page navigation symbols.
At the bottom of each Planning Week, planning decision or organizational task you will see two navigation buttons:
– Mark as Completed. This converts the black vertical arrow to the left of the topic title in the right side bar of each page to a green horizontal arrow icon. This permit you to quickly see what decisions you have completed when re-entering the course.
– Next Lesson. Clicking on this button automatically moves you to the next planning topic in the order shown on the right sidebar of the web page.
Note: As you click “Completed” on each planning lesson or topic your progress will be shown at the top of the main course check in page.
work through the planning process
We have organized the Planning Course into a series of weekly planning sessions.
Now, we know that in some instances it will take you longer than a 7-day time period to complete some of the planning decisions or organizational tasks.
But, if you invest a reasonable amount of time each week you will quickly see real progress in your business planning.
Each week you will combine the following techniques in order to complete a series of planning decisions and tasks:
1. Read the step-by-step instructions presented in the Planning Course How to Do It steps.
2. Utilize planning documents you have copied from the Planning Course to your computer.
3. Receive advise, tips and explanation of new management techniques through your regular coaching sessions with your Virtual Incubator coach.
To complete the work for a number of organizational tasks, we connect you to our support team or one of our expert service providers.
How to
Download Your Planning Toolkit
You will use a series of planning documents to help guide your work to launch your business.
Each of the planning documents is explained below.
The Week-by-Week Planning Chart is available in digital pdf format.
The Marketing Plan Summary is written in word processing format using MS Word. This permits you to easily add and delete from the document.
Follow the links shown below to bring the document up on your computer screen and then to save the file to your computer.
Note: We recommend that you create a folder on your computer Desktop screen and entitle it “VI Tools”. When you download the two planning documents described below save them into this folder so that you can quickly find them as needed.
Adobe Acrobat Reader
You need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer in order to open the Week-By-Week planning documents.
Toolkit: Week-by-Week Planning Schedule
We know that you want to have your new business officially open for business as quickly as you can.
But, you also want to make sure that all the key planning decisions are properly made and organizational tasks completed.
To guide you to achieve both results, we have carefully examined each and every decision and task and asked ourselves two questions for each:
1. Is this decision and/or task absolutely necessary to be done prior to launching the business?
2. And if so, what is the most streamlined, but effective process for making the decision or completing the task?
After our in-depth review, we determined that organizing the new business planning process into an eleven-week planning timeframe made a lot of sense.
Click here to download Week By Week Schedule.
PRINT OUT THE WEEK BY WEEK PLANNING SCHEDULE AND HAVE AT HAND
Toolkit: Marketing Plan Summary
The most critical planning steps in the Virtual Incubator Planning Program are the narrative-building worksheets you will find in Planning Week 1-2 – Create your marketing plan.
Through the use of these planning worksheets you will describe the following aspects of your company’s strategy:
1. Your business goals.
2. The problem you business will solve.
3. Your competitive advantage.
4. Your desired customer.
5. Your call to action.
6. Your selling message.
You need a planning document that can keep up with your edits and additions.
We have created the Marketing Plan Summary document and written it in MS Word in order to permit you flexibility to go in and out of the marketing planning process as you need.
Click here to download your Marketing Plan Summary
How to Work With
Our Support Team
You will complete many of the planning decisions through use of your current knowledge and resources or by conceptualizing a piece of business strategy.
But, other decisions will be completed more quickly and professionally through the services of our Virtual Incubator Support Team.
In some of the planning steps, the Support Team will complete one or more tasks on your behalf.
The icon shown above indicates that the Support Team is completing one or more organizational tasks to support your work on the particular planning step.
To initiate some of this work, we will ask you to provide some information. For other tasks work by the Support Team flows naturally from the work you are being asked to complete in the planning step.
How to Work
With Your Coach
When you become a Virtual Incubator coaching client you immediately gain your very own personal business startup expert.
You and your Virtual Incubator coach will join in regular telecoaching sessions to discuss your planning decisions for the week in question; answer any planning questions particular to your form of business; teach you new management skills; and coordinate all work done on your behalf by our startup support staff.
Shortly after you formally enroll in the Virtual Incubator coaching program, your coach will set up an introductory phone call with you to introduce himself, review the flow of planning work, particularly focusing on use of the online Planning Course, and to schedule the day and time for your first coaching phone calls.