Business and Investment Center

In urban settings, the most intimate way to bring your story to life is a walking tour. Make sure the people in your group are aware of what is expected of them physically. Your advertising should indicate the approximate length of the tour in time and distance, the existence of significant hills, and other details such as uneven pavement. Can someone negotiate the entire trip in a wheelchair? Another way to conduct a tour is to use a small van or a tour bus. Be aware that this adds a great deal of expense and complexity to your operation; you’ll need to buy or lease a vehicle, obtain a commercial license, and sign up for commercial liability insurance. You’ll also need a place to park the vehicle before, during, and after the tour. (One way to reduce the complexity is to work with an existing bus or limousine company that can provide equipment and driver.) Don’t embellish stories to make them more dramatic, and make sure you have your facts straight; you don’t want to be tripped up by a client who knows the story better than you do.

If you will be using a van or bus on the tour, consult an insurance agent to make sure you are properly covered for liability. The vehicle will most likely require commercial plates, and you may need a special driver’s license and insurance policy to transport people in a commercial operation. In some localities, tour guides must apply for a license.

The business plan serves to tell a complete story of where you are going, how you are going to make the journey, and what business behavior you will practice on the way. The plan becomes a road map, blueprint, and template for employees to follow in accomplishing the goals. The goals of the business plans’ existence are:

• The road map provides a path with markers of incremental progress along the way. Because the plan is well defined, employees can measure their success.
• The blueprint feature of the business plan provides employees an overall design for the company’s actions. It shows how the parts and pieces fit together, defines the relationships, and explains the master schema of the future.
• The template provides models for business units and teams to build their own local action plans. If the company has a plan, then a work team must have a plan.

In other side, the business plans should meet certain criteria. They need to be user-friendly; therefore it is a simplified, workable document for a complex topic. The document needs to encourage rather than discourage its use. It needs to reflect the same goals and objectives that people pursue each day in their work. A plan fails when its goals are different from the work requirement. Another use of a business plan is to provide guidance when you don’t know what to do. This becomes the direction and benchmark for your actions. So, in the future, you do not only in the business track, but also can solve the problems occur.