Recent Articles Published by Noah Parsons
A Complete Guide to Forecasting Sales in a SaaS Business
If your business is building a subscription service, creating a reliable sales forecast is a critical step to understanding how your business will grow. Read more »
No Competition? Not Possible!
So, your new business doesn't have any competition? Think again. All businesses have competition—but it might not be what you'd expect. Here's why every business has competition, and why that's actually a good thing. Read more »
The 7 Key Components of a Perfect Elevator Pitch [With Video]
A solid elevator pitch is an essential tool for achieving your goals—and it needs to cover these 7 things. If you're pitching investors or building a pitch deck, here's how to make sure you've covered the essentials. Read more »
Cash Flow 101: What Is Cash Flow?
Not paying attention to your cash flow? Even profitable companies can fail if they don't have a clear understanding of the cash flowing into and out of their businesses. Here are the cash flow basics, and what to watch out for. Read more »
Practical Market Research Resources for Entrepreneurs
Are you starting a business? One of the first things you'll need to do is market research. Here are a few top market research resources to get you going. Read more »
How a Buyer (or User) Persona Can Improve Your Business
A buyer or user persona is a fictional character that represents a business’s customers or potential customers, based on what you know about their demographics, behaviors, and what motivates them. Here's why you need a buyer or user persona, and how to create one. Read more »
The Top 10 Tools for Tracking Your Web Metrics
There are a number of great tools for tracking web metrics (both free and paid) that can help you get a better understanding of what your users are doing on your site—and even how your competitors are faring in their own online efforts. Here are the top 10 tools to check out. Read more »
Do You Need a Business Plan? Scientific Research Says Yes
Do you really need a business plan? What does the scientific research say about business planning—does it actually lead to success? The answer to both questions is yes—and here's how it works. Read more »
How to Do Market Research
Market research sounds like a complex process—but it’s actually very simple, and incredibly important for your business. We'll show you how to do it. Read more »
How to Run a Productive Monthly Business Plan Review Meeting
Business planning isn’t just a one-time or annual event. Instead, it’s an ongoing process, where you review your processes and adjust course as needed, while ensuring that you’re staying on track toward your larger goals. Here's how to do this easily with a monthly plan review meeting. Read more »
7 Reasons to Create a One-Page Pitch Before You Plan
Writing a business plan? Do this first. Here's why you should create a one-page pitch to develop your business strategy before you write a detailed business plan. Read more »
Industry Research Versus Market Research: What’s the Difference?
Writing a business plan? You'll need to analyze your market and industry. But, what's the difference between industry analysis and market analysis? Read more »
How to Build a Website for a New Product (and How We Did It)
No matter what kind of business you are starting, you need a website. Here's how we built the website for our new product, Outpost—we'll walk you through the process. Read more »
An Inside Look at the Best Way to Build a Sales Forecast
Sales forecasting is a great way to kick off your business planning, and it gives you a solid starting point for the rest of your financial forecast. Here's how to forecast your sales, and how we did it for our new project, Outpost. Read more »
How We Designed Our New Logo (Plus, a Creative Brief Template)
You don't need to have a graphic designer on your team to create a logo for your new business. Here's how we designed the logo for our new product, Outpost. Read more »
Struggling to Name Your Product? Here’s How We Did It
It's hard to force creativity—so we created a process. Here's how we named our new product, Outpost, and the method we used to choose the right name. Read more »
How We’re Building and Launching a New Product, Step-by-Step
Ever wondered what actually goes into launching a new product? We’ve decided to give you a peek behind the curtain and share with you how we’re doing things. Read more »
What Is a Business Model? Business Models Explained
Finding a problem that needs solving is often the first step of starting a business—but how will you make money? Here's where your business model comes in. Read more »
How to Create an Elevator Speech (With Examples)
A great elevator speech can spark interest in your business and hopefully lead to a deeper conversation—and maybe even a partnership or funding opportunity. Read more »
The History of Lean Planning
The traditional business plan simply didn't fit the needs of modern, fast-moving companies. It was time to bring a scientific approach to business planning—and so Lean Planning was born. Read more »
