Getting down to Business

Hey gang,


Chris French here from Modern Midwest Entertainment. Well, winter is turning to spring and my fancy is turning to thoughts of. . .business! As you know by know, I am almost finished with a Master's Degree in Entertainment Business from Full Sail University Online. As I get closer and closer to this goal, I have been working on creating a business plan or two (or ten) for some businesses that I'm in the process of starting. As I've been working on this, I started thinking. . .what DO investors look for when they look for a business?


I decided to do some investigating. I put the phrase "what do angel investors look for in a business plan" in the ol' Google box, and I came up with about a million or more different links. The first one I followed was called SA Angel Investors Blog (http://angelinvestorsa.blogspot.com/) by Ben Botes. I did some research on Mr. Botes. His background (pulled from his LinkedIn profile) is as follows:

"I am a management consultant, executive coach and one of the UK's new leading thinkers on personal and team transformation and change. My specialisms are leadership development, individual and organisational learning, business innovation, culture change, and team dynamics. I hold Master degrees in Psychology and Business Administration as well as qualifications in coaching and mentoring." (LinkedIn, 2012)

Mr. Botes is from the United Kingdom, and currently has a book for sale on Amazon.com called Release your Inner Entrepreneur.

Another person I found when looking up what investors look for was Susan Ward. Susan is the co-founder of Cypress Technologies in British Columbia. This firm specializes in Information Technology Consulting. Susan has also been a writer on the subject of small business since the 1990s. She holds advanced degrees in business from the University of British Columbia and has taught Business  Education and English for a number of years. I found Susan on About.com in a section called Small Business: Canada (About.com, 2012).

In looking at the key elements that investors want, a BUSINESS PLAN has been identified across the board. Investors want to know that they are getting a return on their money, so they want to invest in a business that has a good, sound business plan. Another key element that an angel investor expects the business to have is a sound management team (Ward, 2012). An angel investor is, most likely, not going to waste their time on a group of people who don't know what they're doing. They want to see that the business they are going to give their money to has the skills to bring the business to the "next level."(Ward, 2012). According to both Ward (2012) and Botes (2009), Angel investors want to have a business where they can be actively involved. As Botes stated, most entrepreneurs do not realize how involved an angel investor will be with their business. They want to know that their money is working for the entrepreneur, but also for themselves, as they will have a stake in the company (Botes, 2009). 

These are only a few of the key things that two investing "experts" have stated are necessary to secure funding for a business from an angel investor. I am going to be doing more research into this over the course of the next little while (not sure how long of a time I may need to do this, but I'm going to devote time to it), and I will let you know just how I'm coming along with securing monies for the projects I have on my plate currently.

Have a great Easter holiday next Sunday gang!

SEE YA!

References

Botes, B. (2009). Angel Finance: An Entrepreneur's Guide.

     Retrieved from: http://angelinvestorsa.blogspot.com/2009/09/angel-finance-entrepreneurs-guide.html

Botes, B. (2012). Ben Botes LinkedIn Profile.

     Retrieved from: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=687858

Ward, S. (2012). Attracting Angel Investors: 7 Tips for Persuading Angel Investors to Invest your Business.

     Retrieved from: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/financing/a/angelinvestor.htm

About.com. (2012). Biography of Susan Ward.

     Retrieved from: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/bio/Susan-Ward-6453.htm

Digital Marketing, Traditional Marketing. . .I'm working on learning Greek!

Hey gang,

Chris French here from Modern Midwest Entertainment.

You know, for the last few weeks, I've been taking a class on digital marketing. I have been working diligently to learn SEO, Key Performance Indicators, conversion rates and such, and I must say, it sometimes makes me feel like a dunderhead. I am, by no means, an unintelligent person. This is just something that is RADICALLY new to me. It's an amazing thing to learn things that I had only a slight inkling about just a few months ago.

Traditional marketing, via print, radio, television and the like, isn't the easiest thing to do. You have to have money to create the ads (except in my case, I can do radio ads for my businesses for free, as I have a VO studio and production capability in my house), in a lot of cases, you have to know the exact bullet points you want before you get an ad out there, and then, especially in television, your ad could be played back to back with your direct competitor's ad! On an interesting side note, radio stations are directed by the FCC NOT to play two ads back to back showcasing the same service or goods. Interesting, hm?

 Digital marketing, on the other hand, IS easy and inexpensive to do, IF you know the ins and outs of it. One of the big things to digital marketing is to know the keywords and anchors to use in order to get your website or blog to the first page in the search results on the major search engines. This is where SEO comes in. I'm still learning about SEO, and I'm still a bit confused about it, but I know that, eventually, I'll get it. Another thing about digital marketing that is making a big splash for marketers is social media! As you may or may not have noticed, I have added Twitter, RSS and E-mail subscription buttons on my blog here. That means you can follow me on Twitter, subscribe to my blog via E-mail, or just put it into your favorite RSS reader so you can read me at any time! Pretty cool huh?! I thought so too! Of course, you can find out more about me in the About me section of this blog, but why not click on the LinkedIn link on the side here? I don't have a Facebook widget yet, but then again, I don't have a Facebook page for MMWE or Chris French VoiceWorks either. I only have my personal Facebook page, which is for friends, family and people I've met through professional wrestling.

Well, gang, there you have it. A brief take by me about the world of marketing, both traditional and digital. I hope that you've at least learned something from this blog, and I can't wait to learn more about this myself!

SEE YA!

SE-OH GEEZ!

Hey gang,

Chris French here from Modern Midwest Entertainment. Over the course of the last six years or so, I've been tinkering around on the Internet, trying to learn one thing in particular, SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a major key in what drives traffic to a website. I have been working on figuring this out. As you all know, I've been working on the Master's Degree in Entertainment Business thru Full Sail University for nearly the last year. Right now, I have started a class in Digital Marketing. I'm raising my arms to the heavens and saying "HALLELUJAH"!

The process of Search Engine Optimization is not a quick one. As I said before, I've been trying to figure it out for the last six years. I know it's mostly a matter of learning it, but, if you're like me, you don't have all the time in the world to read up on every little thing there is to know about SEO. Trying to juggle life along with work, family and everything else I do, it's been hard to learn SEO, keywords and the like. Over the course of the next few weeks, however, I am hoping that I will FINALLY have a working knowledge of what I can do to build up traffic and bring more people to this blog.

I am truly excited about this. I have recently added Google Analytics to this site, so I can have a better idea of traffic that comes to the site. Now I need to figure out some good keywords that I can use to bring folks in. I was thinking about the words of the title, Modern Midwest Entertainment. Those would be the most obvious choices, but I know there are a lot of other words that would work just as well to bring people into this blog. Those of you that are already readers of this blog, if you have the time, are free to make suggestions as well! Let me know. Well gang, I have to get back to the salt mines, and figure this stuff out!! I hope you all have as much luck figuring SEO out as I'm going to!

SEE YA!