I have taught many courses on writing business plans for entrepreneurs.  So it might surprise you that I am a believer in the Anti Business Plan.

Yes, it’s important to spend time to think through your business idea.  Yes, you need to consider who is interested in buying your solution.  Yes, you need to figure out how much you want to spend on your start-up costs and how much the product or service will cost you to make.

However, many people get trapped in the theoretical aspects of writing the plan and never finish the plan.  So I would rather you spend less time working on the plan and more time on running the business…and going back to the plan and making revisions.  The key reason to write the plan is to test and validate your business idea.  You don’t need 200 pages of charts, graphs and financial projections.    And you certainly don’t need to spend time researching your ideas without testing them.

So if you had limited time (or patience) and wanted to write the Anti Business plan – here are the core areas that you need to focus on. 

Vision Statement

This describes your raison d’ etre – what problem are you solving by starting this company?  If you are successful in your business, what will change in the lives of the individuals or companies that use your product or service?

While it will probably considerable time to brainstorm and word smith this statement, I recommend that you keep the text under two lines.  In addition, make sure your words pack a powerful competitive advantage – someone should be able to read your company’s vision and be invested on a personal level and from their pocketbooks.

Mission Statement

This section describes the core values and philosophies of your company.  It’s the sign you display in your office to remind you why you started the firm and it’s the language that will instruct employees, contractors, vendors and anyone who liaises with your firm how they could expect to be treated and how they need to behave.

Don’t worry about it being a masterpiece.  Keep it simple and powerful and be willing to revise it several times until you have the final statement.  Similar to the vision statement, it should be under a few lines.

Marketing Strategies

Assuming that you have done your homework and identified your niche target market (and not 1% of the entire market), you will need to identify 5-7 marketing strategies for your business.  How will you spend your time and money this year on telling your market that your company can help them solve their problems?

I recommend you update this section on an annual or bi-annual basis and use it as a goal setting tool for how you’ll spend your marketing time and dollars.

Consider the best ways for you to share the message about your company – social media, events, online, offline, etc – and back up your ideas with target goals and numbers.  For example, if you want to increase your social media strategy, don’t share “I will use social media to create 5,000 fans”.  The final number is not as important as why you need the 5,000 fans.

Instead identify how you gather the support of 500 of those 5,000 fans to help you communicate your message.  It speaks volumes about your business if you are able to get people to share comments and feedback and share the messages about your company with their friends and family – rather than stacking the numbers of people who liked your Facebook Fan Page.

Be willing to refer to this section throughout your year and make adjustments where necessary.

Sales Goals

Connected tightly with your marketing goals are sales goals.  Select 5-7 sales goals over a specified time period and share how you will achieve them.  Your marketing tells the world about your product/service while your sales convinces people to buy.  They are two separate but closely aligned goals.

Start testing your sales goals while you are writing the plan.  Many people are often weak in sales and don’t realize the amount of time and resources they will need to spend to secure each sale.  For example, by using the earlier example of the Facebook friends, you might discover as you are gathering your 500 champions  - it really takes 10 people to like your page, 2 who are champions and one who eventually buys your product.  Ensure that you factor in the time and resource that it will take to gather that one person

As you start gathering results on your sales projections, review the information three to four times a year to see what you’ll need to revise.  This makes for a much stronger Sales Goals section rather than selecting random projections that sound good.

Financial Statements

There are many key financial statements I would recommend in a full business plan.  However, the Anti-Business plan looks at three key areas

• Your anticipated revenue = how much money you will make from your sales
• Your anticipated expenses = thinking about all areas from technology to marketing to sales calls to professional fees
• Your estimated profit

This statement is really only an estimate.  Include every category that you can think of and use templates to give you ideas for the categories.  Spend time every six months reviewing your actual expenses and income to see how closely aligned to your projections that you are.

The entire Anti Business plan is approximately 3-5 pages long and would take only a weekend of solid writing and editing.  I encourage you to get started and draft your ideas using this template.

Let me know additional questions you have as you are working!

For many of you who are considering starting a business or are in the early days of running it, the last thing you are probably considering is how it will end.  I’d like to challenge you to consider it and decide now what options you want to create.

It’s like Life Insurance – no one wants to talk about it but you need to buy it.

I share this because recently a good friend had the unfortunate incident of being placed in charge of running the family business.  She is the spouse of a successful business owner.  He stepped down due to health conditions and had to have his legal dependent, his wife, take over the reins of the company.

Many of his workers are not happy.  The wife lacks many of the management and leadership skills that her husband had and is not familiar with the day to day operations of the business.

I blame poor planning.

All business owners  – regardless of the size of the business – need to consider how they want to leave their business.  Whether it’s due to Father Time or unforeseen incidents you need to consider options.

It’s also a good to consider an exit plan if you should decide one day that you want to try another industry or are interested in starting a new business.  It’s not just for someone who has worked in one business for 25 years.  You need to consider if you want to sell to another firm, offer shares to your current employees or dissolve the entity completely.  There are pros and cons to all options and I advise you consult with a lawyer and experienced entrepreneurs who have been in the position to exit their business for advice.

The key take-away – The exit plan is not just designed for some fancy smancy high tech startup looking to be bought out in 2 years.  There is huge value for businesses of all sizes and purposes to consider it well in the early stages of planning.

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A friend and I were recently chatting about a new business idea she was considering.  She had already had a few customers and was brainstorming ideas about marketing and how much she would need to spend to fully launch the idea.

Now I was happy that she came me to ready to work on the planning of her business.  But I thought it would make more sense for her to start with a feasibility plan to test out her idea -rather than the full mechanics of a business plan. Continue Reading »

Did you realize that we are less than 90 days before the end of the year?  Have you taken a moment of down time to review your personal and business goals?

This was the focus of a recent conversation I had with a service provider with whom I meet monthly.  While scheduling the next appointment, the Office Manager and I remarked that we would be already planning for November.  We chatted about her plans for Holiday shopping and festivities.  Yet my mind started racing to all of the personal and business goals I still had yet to achieve before the year ended. Continue Reading »