Recreation and Travel

Checklists
Published Apr. 29, 2011 application/pdf icon

A comprehensive source of information resources compiled under 3 main categories of Planning Tools, Sources of Data, and General Sources.  Each of these 3 categories is broken down into subcategories and detail lists under the navy blue headings.  While Northern Illinois SCORE has made every effort to insure the accuracy of this list, we can not be responsible for changes in the URLs or the content on these references.

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A comprehensive source of information resources compiled under 3 main categories of Planning Tools, Sources of Data, and General Sources.  Each of these 3 categories is broken down into subcategories and detail lists under the navy blue headings.  While Northern Illinois SCORE has made every effort to insure the accuracy of this list, we can not be responsible for changes in the URLs or the content on these references.

Templates
Published Apr. 29, 2011 application/pdf icon

Planning and analysis templates in Excel, PDF, or Word format to help you analyze specific areas of your business start-up or growth venture.

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Planning and analysis templates in Excel, PDF, or Word format to help you analyze specific areas of your business start-up or growth venture.

Hiking Yoga

Eric Kipp has invented a new idea in social exercise for the Facebook generation—he calls it Hiking Yoga. The concept: making outdoor yoga fitness challenging, social and accessible to busy city-dwellers. On any given day, Eric’s team of more than 50 yoga and fitness teachers may be trekking through San Francisco’s waterfront, climbing the wild hills of San Diego, doing the downward dog in DC, or stretching on Dallas’s Katy Trail. Wherever they go, they are combining the cardio of hiking with the power of yoga—all supercharged in exciting urban and rural settings of beauty. And the business has thrived using low-cost social media and the power of online groups.

Eric dreamed up the concept while he was guiding outdoor tours in Hawaii, Alaska and California and teaching yoga in San Francisco. Why not combine the two? .

Kipp’s original concept was based on tourists. “When I first started, I thought I would get many of the 17,000,000 visitors to SF each year. Today, 90% of our customers are local,” says Eric, noting his surprise. Kipp has adjusted his business model accordingly. Hiking Yoga aims at a sophisticated, fit and busy young audience looking to explore their neighborhood, or a new city, without feeling like tourists. The bonus: they meet new people and get a great workout. A slick national web scheduling system allows travelers to book a hike from afar, and streamlines the business’s accounting, payroll and tracking functions.

Kipp’s service business model does not require brick-and-mortar locations, and Kipp has made the most of cyber-marketing, integrating website, social networking (blogs, facebook, twitter), internet marketing (Yelp), and package sales through Groupon. “Groupon played a big role in helping us open locations faster in different markets,” says Kipp, who cautions that he must sometimes temper his ambitions for sustainable growth: “Opening in new states takes time and money to do right.”

“In today’s market, a successful business is not just about being of value; it is about being findable, “ says Kipp.” That has been one of the big victories for us-- getting the word out in a consistent, attractive way. “
 

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Owner/Founder
Eric Kipp
My Location
http://www.hikingyoga.com
San Francisco CA
United States
Employees
3
Year Company Formed
2008
My Successes

Today Hiking Yoga boasts 13 locations, about half in California, with others in Texas, Arizona, Chicago, St. Louis, and Washington DC. A New York City launch is expected this spring. There are 3 full-time employees, and 50 instructors who offer between two and eight 90-minute Yoga Hikes each week. To date, 11,000 people have participated and the business has been featured on CBS, ABC, CNBC, and in Forbes Magazine and Men's Journal. 

What's Great About My Mentor?

Eric knew about business planning and had heard of SCORE years earlier. He even had a dusty business plan he had shelved. He began working one-on-one with San Francisco SCORE counselor Richard Fivis about a year before the 2009 launch 

How SCORE Helped

For Eric, working with Richard Fivis at San Francisco Score has provided valuable structure and a “sounding board” he could not get elsewhere. “ I love the accountability of having to tell your story to your advisor every few weeks. It gave structure to my whirlwind project.” Eric continues seeing Richard every month or so and says, “Richard Fivis has been invaluable in our development. He is wise, patient, and supportive. I am a pretty excitable guy and his calm demeanor is a perfect balance.”

As a solo entrepreneur, says Kipp, “ you feel stuck in a bubble of your own ideas sometimes. Being able to talk about your business with someone trained and experienced is so different from the support of friends and family. The counselor’s objectivity is very powerful.”

Says Fivis, “As we all know, it is lonely at the top, and Eric can discuss different hypotheticals and strategies for growing his business in a supportive environment at Score.” 

Published Apr. 27, 2011 application/pdf icon

The selection of a business entity (form) will affect your exposure to personal liability, how you draw profits and pay taxes, your ability to raise capital, how you run your business, and how difficult it is for business reporting.

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Generally, all businesses fall into one of these broad categories: Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Limited Liability Corporation, or Corporation.

A sole proprietorship is an unincorporated business owned by one individual. A partnership is a legal entity existing between two or more persons who join to carry on a trade or business.

How To Articles
Published Apr. 27, 2011

If financial problems have overwhelmed your finances, Bankruptcy may be an option.  Read some of the basics here.

http:// http://www.nhbar.org/for-the-public/bankruptypamphlet.asp

Travel Alive

For many people, the ideal overseas vacation consists of living as if they had never left home. Not for Tom LeaMond, co-founder and CEO of Travel Alive.  After an extended career in business and finance, Tom began preparing his business plan in late 2004, partnered with Molly Besta-Alscheid in 2005, and turned to Chicago SCORE in 2006 to help turn a dream into reality. SCORE helped him by developing a business plan and working on a marketing strategy.

Owner/Founder
Tom LeaMond and Molly Besta-Alscheid
My Location
Oak Park IL
United States
Year Company Formed
2006
My Successes

The Oak Park, Illinois-based travel company offers what it describes as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to volunteer and grow in a foreign land.” Specifically, Travel Alive provides travel packages that offer language immersion and volunteer experience for students and professionals who want to improve their language skills while making a difference in the world. 

In 2006, Travel Alive sent five participants to Ocotal, Nicaragua. In 2007 more than 80 clients will travel to Nicaragua and, late in the year, volunteers will begin traveling to Ecuador.  Late in 2008, Travel Alive expects to send its first participants to Brazil as part of an overall goal of more than 300 volunteers they have recruited for next year.

A year into the business, SCORE introduced Tom and Molly to Nicki Tader, another entrepreneur with a dream to start a volunteer-based travel company—this time in Brazil.  The trio combined operations under the Travel Alive name. “We were excited,” Tom says.”With Brazil as a destination, we were able to offer clients a new country and a new immersion language, Portuguese.”

What's Great About My Mentor?

SCORE Mentors Bill Broderick and Ingrid Van Weenen met several times with Tom and Molly to review business plan progress and help develop a marketing strategy. “We were investing a lot of time and our personal funds to get this off the ground, and Bill and Ingrid offered expertise and encouragement when we needed it most,” Tom says.

The pair also attended a number of SCORE seminars and enjoyed ready access to other SCORE mentors, including Mike Koen, an expert in business development, and Peg Corwin, who helped the pair maximize the company’s Internet presence.

Consuelo’s Travel

Consuelo Castillo knows a few things about long-distance travel. Like many other Latin Americans who have come to the United States, the native of Peru had experienced the difficulties of making travel arrangements and dealing with immigration issues while also trying to overcome a language barrier. With the Hispanic population in and around her new home in Lakewood, NJ, growing steadily, Consuelo set her sights on starting a travel agency that specialized in serving Spanish-speaking customers.

Owner/Founder
Consuelo Castillo
My Location
Lakewood NJ
United States
Employees
4
Year Company Formed
1998
My Successes

Consuelo realized that she had much to learn first. She spent several months working as an unpaid part-time employee for another travel agent to gain experience while also building her English skills. In 1998, she felt ready to take the plunge.  Drawing on her personal savings and the part-time assistance of her husband, Orlando, she launched Conseulo’s Travel.

“We soon found that customers were asking for help for other things such as money transfers, translations, tax returns and immigration counseling,” Consuelo recalls. “My husband and I quickly learned as much as we could about them so we could add those services.

Consuelo soon found it necessary to hire another part-time employee, and to seek financial assistance for new equipment and leasehold improvements. While researching information at the local library, she saw a notice for a SCORE-sponsored seminar on business start-ups. That led to one-on-one mentoring with Bob Miesemer, the former president/CEO of a business machines company.

What's Great About My Mentor?

“We needed help developing business plan, our marketing strategy, and legal requirements,” Consuelo says. “Bob took us through each one step by step, showing us what elements were needed and why they were important.”

With Bob’s help, Consuelo received her loan and continued to grow her business. Unfortunately, the rent on her leased space began to take off as well. That challenge simply created a new opportunity. In 2002, the couple purchased a three-story building ideally located across from the Lakewood municipal building. Consuelo’s business occupies the ground floor, with the remaining space leased to tenants that include a lawyer, employment agency, and a newspaper. With her fully bilingual staff, which includes Orlando, Consuelo enjoys steadily growth in both her revenue and customer base.

One frequent visitor to her business is Bob Miesemer, who drops by to check on their progress and answer questions. “I really appreciate his counseling and support,” Consuelo says. “When you talk with SCORE, they are as interested and excited about your business as if it was their own.”

How SCORE Helped

“When you talk with SCORE, they are as interested and excited about your business as if it was their own.” says Consuelo Castillo.

With Bob’s encouragement, Consuelo is working on becoming a SCORE volunteer so that other Hispanic entrepreneurs will benefit from her experience. “I tell them that if I can succeed after being in the United States for only seven years, anybody can,” Consuelo says. “You just need to be sure of what you want to do, and where to go to get help.”

River Excitement!

 

In 1986, John Marshall was trying to figure out how to combine his passion for fishing with his Associates Degree from the New York Board of Regents as a Sous Chef graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. He did it by creating a unique venture known as River Excitement!

As a Licensed and Registered New Hampshire Fishing Guide and a Vermont Registered Fishing Guide, John takes guests on fly fishing or light spinning McKenzie Drift Boat float trips on the Connecticut River and - along the way - treats them to gourmet river side lunches or snacks complete with white table cloths, china, and sterling silver serving pieces.

A native of Newport, Rhode Island where the waterfront was his childhood playground, John, eager to learn about fly fishing, stumbled into Wally Kolkowski, a veteran fly fisherman from Pennsylvania who was eager to share his extensive knowledge. Fast forward to the late 70's when John and his wife Susan started to vacation in the Upper Valley and eventually decided to make the move to the north country - Hartland, Vermont to be exact.

To support their new adventure, Susan went to work for the VA Hospital in White River and John went to work for Billings Dairy in Norwich and, eventually, for the VA as well. “I had the perfect job at the VA,” said John who is now retired. “I was able to take time off during the fishing season when I started to book my float trips and build my business.”

Two years ago, John added a private mountaintop pond near Woodstock to his fishing and dining offerings and, recently wrote and self-published a book, Fish On! The book captures his experience and information so others can enhance their enjoyment of the outdoors. It’s available in paperback and Kindle format through Amazon.com and in local bookshops.

Despite the success of River Excitement!, John thought it might be wise to contact SCORE to see if there were marketing techniques that would enable him to fill in those open dates in his schedule. Counselors Barry Rotman from Norwich and Jeff Bendis from Woodstock worked with John.

“Barry encouraged me to contact local chambers of commerce and local inns and Jeff and Barry suggested that I get on the‘speaking circuit’ of the local Rotary Clubs so more local residents and businesses would learn about River Excitement!” said John. “The SCORE counselors also gave me tips on how to get the word out about my float trips to travelers to the area before they arrived.” Hopefully, these ideas will build on John’s already successful venture in this up coming fishing season.

This really has nothing to do with the success story of John Marshall’s River Excitement!, but it’s a lovely add-on. In 2009, John’s wife, Susan Marshall, was named Nurse of the Year at the VA Hospital. Congratulations, Susan!

To book your river or mountaintop pond fishing or bird watching or leaf peeping trip or just to learn more about what River Excitement! has to offer, check out John’s web site at www.riverexcitement.com or e-mail him at JMarshall@RiverExcitement.com or call him at 802-457-4021.

 

Owner/Founder
John Marshall
Published Apr. 21, 2011 application/pdf icon

A list of suggested service providers for SCORE Clients

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Workbooks
Published Apr. 21, 2011 application/msword icon

Data sources of marketing and demographic data for client use, primarily for Business Plans

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