Any search of the Top 12 Reasons Why Businesses Fail will come up with almost the exact same list quoting Dun & Bradstreet from 1998.

You may find this is not a question that you want to really answer. Maybe you are uncomfortable with the question.

When was the last time you looked at your business plan?

Or maybe we should start with ... when was the last time you updated your business plan? Or even the mundane, do you have a business plan?

Recently I was speaking with the owner of a Animal Clinic and she was telling me about the process required to get the bank loan for all the expensive x-ray and surgical equipment needed to start the clinic. As she was talking about what she did when writing the business plan for the bank she giggled and said.

"I just made it up! And they believed me!"

When you are starting a new line of business whether it be online or offline new resources will likely be required. Resources can be a skill set of knowledge, a physical object, cash, access to expertise, office space, technology, technological services, accountants, mentors and coaches.

You may have noticed by now that I love to talk about numbers - finance to be specific. My training is in Economics, Accounting and Technology and I've hands-on and built designed billing systems for entire banks, predictive models for large national retailers, and built financial models for sustainable organizations so many times I cannot count them.

The numbers are fun because the numbers are just another language for how to describe a business.