OK, I'll admit it ahead of time. I'm a business dummy. My contracting business was based on the "Gee, I hope he pays me" model, and even my childhood lemonade stands folded since I wasn't charging enough for the cups. (A fact that thoroughly annoyed my mother, I might add.) That's why, when I recently decided to go into business for myself, I woke up the next morning with something of Buyer's Remorse. I had no idea how to get out of bed knowing that I'd just quit my job, much less an idea of what came next in starting a business.

Most online business resources said that having a business plan was essential, something I took to heart. I figured that if I could blunder through writing about the idea, I could probably find the motivation to learn what I needed to know. After an hour in the bookstore, I settled on the yellow-and-black Dummies book. It seemed, from the brief run-through, to be comprehensive, and it had examples of business plans for reference. Sold! $19.95 lighter, I went home excitedly to read.

The first chapter, on determining where you want to go with your business, is pretty much self-explanatory. It's light reading, and offers some very solid tips about what to include in your mission and values statements, as well as offering some standouts in various fields. At this point, I was pretty happy with the expenditure.

By mid-chapter two, however, I was asleep. Not just asleep, either, but snoring with my mouth open and drooling asleep.

It's obvious to me at this point, in retrospect, that Business Plans for Dummies is written for people planning to go into a brick-and-mortar, selling-a-product type business. For anyone involved in new media or consulting, this book discusses some interesting tidbits here and there (especially if you ever plan to take on employees or subcontractors), but generally has no clue what the market forecast is for an internet-based or new media based business.

The third, fourth, and fifth chapters talk in great, excruciating detail about financial information, something that most, if not all, small start-up internet companies won't have any idea about. Unless you're coming in with a trust fund or an uncle who's a venture capitalist, skim these chapters and move on.

Quite honestly, the best parts of the book, and the only parts that doesn't make it a total wash, are the chapters that come next: six, seven and eight. They talk about identifying your target demographic and profiling your customers as a section of your business plan. Knowing thy customer is the new mantra for the millenium, as opposed to the eighties' knowing of thy enemy -- these three chapters, if ripped from the rest of the book, would still be worth the $20.

If you're starting a business and are a complete idiot (as I am) about these kinds of things, it's worth it -- but barely. If a book is available at your local bookstore that profiles building a business plan for new media, and that's what you're going into, I'd definitely recommend getting the latter. Business Plans for Dummies is helpful, but not anywhere near the "reference for the rest of us" that it claims to be.

You're better off finding resources for the New Media rest of us, right here, on the web.

[ by Elizabeth Badurina ]