Entrepreneurs Learn Planning and Marketing Skills at Forum
Ventura County is flush with businesses, but its entrepreneurs, like their counterparts across the country, generally have difficulty creating marketing plans and projecting cash flow, said Steve Matthews, who organizes a monthly business forum based in Ventura.
“I think the problems beginning businesses have here are not unlike those you would have in Minnesota, Massachusetts, anywhere,” said Matthews, who helps plan local meetings for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum. The local group is a chapter of an organization founded by MIT alumni to discuss challenges faced by entrepreneurs as their businesses grow and change.
“It’s common for us to see someone with a patent on a super, brand-new widget who thinks that people should beat a path to his door.”
But that’s not exactly what happens.
“Planning for how a product is going to fit into the mix, understanding what the market is and how to distribute the product is generally not something that’s understood among smaller companies and even larger ones,” said Matthews, president of Quest Central Coast, a business sales and acquisitions company serving Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
In working with the MIT Forum, Matthews said he has come across owners of a wide range of businesses, all of whom have similar difficulties planning for the future.
“Ventura County has a lot of entrepreneurial business. We’ve seen everything from software and Internet-related companies to companies dealing with CD-ROM technology to companies that manufacture rockets for commercial application,” he said. “Many entrepreneurs who may be very skilled in developing particular products may not be skilled in managing cash flow.”
Matthews said business owners often do not understand that as a company grows so does its inventory, equipment and accounts receivable.
“They may not realize that that may eat up not only the profits, but additional money as well. The businesses may need cash injections,” he said. “That’s the area in which companies can fail.”
