Welcome to Lena-in-the-Trenches!

I often start my talks with the words ”there are too many bad business plans written!” I do this partly because I want to grab the attention of an audience full of people deeply engrossed in social media messages they are receiving or sharing. But the other part is that it is true; there are far too many mediocre business plans written. I see two reasons for this. Firstly, it is too easy to write a business plan. You just have to Google “business plan”, download a template, focus on answering the questions where you think you are strong, and try to avoid any questions where you are weak. Secondly, most entrepreneurs jump too soon to execution, not working through and answering the fundamental question, i.e. “is there a business opportunity in what I am working on?”.

I am Lena Ramfelt and I love working with entrepreneurs! Doesn't matter if they are in the Himalayas or Stockholm. Doesn't matter if they are building toilets in Africa, disrupting the travel industry from an HQ in Amman, or designing beautiful toy houses in Los Angeles. I just love to be there with you, share my experience and assist you in becoming successful in your business.

I am professionally raised at Stanford University, during a period when things were both good and bad in Silicon Valley. I learned a lot from teaching, advising companies (big, small, successful, not at all successful, old, and new) during those years. I was in the trenches for almost 15 years. Not that I understood that, that insight came later.

I support, suggest, and listen more than I talk when I have the pleasure of working with entrepreneurs. At heart, I am an educator, and my mission here in the trenches is to always be relevant and to make a difference in the lives of hard-working entrepreneurs.

In this blog, I want to offer my “in-the-trenches” suggestions to any entrepreneur who has a little bit of time to read, digest, and hopefully put them into practice.

My promise is to never write pieces that are hard to comprehend or take a long time to read. Why? Because I know that entrepreneurs don´t have time to read; they need to do. My contribution to the “do” is to, as often as I can, include "easy-to-put into practice" suggestions with the blog so I don’t leave anyone only with a “what” but also with a “how”. The tools are most often designed as “reaction” to challenges I have worked on with entrepreneurs. They are meant to facilitate a faster, smarter, less frustrating development of any business. I do the best I can at designing them so that an entrepreneur can “plug-and-play” it, i.e., look at it and as fast as possible start working with it. I try to avoid 2x2 matrix, too much lingo and jargon, and “closer to the moon than to the next step” of the business types of tools. I am never completely finished with the development of a tool. Always eager to learn from entrepreneurs how I can make it better, what works, what doesn’t. And of course; any suggestions for topics or questions where tool and/or a blogpost would be of help is appreciated. I promise to credit the entrepreneur who triggered the inclusion of a “in-the-trenches” topic in the blog. Looking forward to many interesting discussions!

PS The older posts in the blog are previously published on my facebook page, Lena in the Trenches.