DREAM Model to Start a Small Business

Introduction Someone may start a business without money and succeed. But, even with reasonable capital, an entrepreneur who starts a business without a dream will fail. Being an on-purpose person is a very fundamental criterion to enter the world of business. Some people started with a dream and failed. They lost sight of their dream. They failed to make the necessary connection between dream and reality. They failed to feed their dream. They failed to visualize their dream. They failed to live their dream. They lost their dream. Dream and reality are two complementary sides of our existence. We cannot afford ignoring either one of them without compromising our chance of success in our everyday endeavors. The DREAM model is a small business start-up approach. Its primary goal is to introduce the reader to the basic concepts related to planning, implementation, and management of a small business. At the end of each chapter, there are some “DO IT YOURSELF” exercises to facilitate your learning. The DREAM model outlined in this text is a conceptual framework that provides some simple steps people can use to make their entrepreneurship dream come true. The steps consist of: • Dreaming, • Researching, • Expressing, • Acting, • And Managing. Dreaming is the inspirational and intellectual experience that an entrepreneur enjoys when envisioning to start a business. This is the stage where you define your vision and mission statements, goals, and objectives that you want to accomplish. Chapter one is about dreaming. Researching consists of identifying the challenges, aptitudes, resources, and attitudes (CARA) that will enable an entrepreneur to materialize the dream to own a business. The CARA approach suggests a set of questions whose answers will provide critical information to write your business plan and better manage your business. Chapter two elaborates more about this stage. Expressing is an additional step toward action. This third stage of the DREAM model implies the organization of your dream, vision, mission, goals, and objectives into a series of activities through a document called “Business Plan”. The expressing stage is illustrated in chapter three. Acting is the fourth stage of the DREAM model. At this stage you develop your implementation calendar, satisfy legal compliance, and process the settlement and operation of business activities. Chapter four underscores the items related to the acting stage. Managing is the fifth and ultimate stage of the model. You don’t start a business to let it fail. However, this possibility will be always alive and serve as your companion if you mismanage your business. Although this text is an introduction to the process of starting a business, it stresses, in chapters five through ten, practical information about operations, personnel, financial, information, and risk management. This text is especially for people who want to start a business. It can be a new business. It can be the purchase of an existing business. It can be a franchise. It can also be an existing business that you want to rejuvenate. The purpose is to help you understand that you do not have to be afraid of your dream. There is a systematic way to put it into reality. Your dream may be too small to accomplish. But, it will never be too big to achieve. My dream is that this text serve as a jump starter for every business dreamer, every business starter. For almost everything in life, the most important is where you want to go, and the decision to make the first step to get there. Actually, the first step counts more than any other further step. The DREAM model is an invitation to make the first step, no matter what. I hope you will. Enjoy your reading! Emmanuel Jean-Francois, Ph.D.