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.

Looking for more information – check out these articles

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http://bit.ly/4m5tC4

http://bit.ly/9Uu75M

Many entrepreneurs use a Board of Advisors  when starting a new project or venture.  It can be helpful to have a group of people who can share insight or feedback for the idea and provide a sounding board for the entrepreneur.

But it’s hard to know who to approach when you are first starting.  And you may not have the “people capital” established yet to know how to ask a group of talented entrepreneurs, bankers, accountants, lawyers and other small business experts to support you with your business.  (Plus it takes time to coordinate schedules and plan the agenda!)

So I’ll recommend using an accountability partner as you start your business. Continue Reading »

I started using a new strategy this year for my business – Focus on Three.

Yes, that’s correct.  I’m setting three goals.  Three big goals for the year where I can review at the end of the year the impact that they made on my business.   Three focused one liners that are already starting to make a difference how I spend my free time, my resources and where I focus my energy.

Why? Because there is so much a great information out there and it’s easy to become overwhelmed.  I sat on Twitter the other night and just counted how fast the info came in on my news feed. And that’s not counting my RSS feeds, Facebook and email.  Everyone has great info and great ideas.

But the problem is how to use the ones that work – and spend less time debating about the ones I “should” try. Continue Reading »

What is feng shui?

http://www.way2fengshui.com/what-is-feng-shui.html

To learn more about feng shui, connect with Elaine Wright:

http://www.way2fengshui.com/

It’s that time of year when there are more parties per evening than there are minutes to  attend them.  You spend time scheduling the ones you want to attend (is it the work or the  friends event?), wrapping gifts,  buying holiday outfits – and measuring the time you’ll have to rest and recover from the celebrations.

This year I recommend that you use the opportunity of reconnecting with friends and family at Holiday gatherings from both a personal and professional aspect.  It is a great time to reconnect with your warm, slightly warm and lukewarm network. Continue Reading »

In Part I of ‘Tis the Season for Asking Powerful Questions, I shared a series of questions I use to assess my learning and growth from the previous year. After getting clear on these discoveries, I put them aside–for I know that what I’m meant to hold onto has been incorporated intellectually, physically, and spiritually—and then I go outline the year ahead. And when I say “outline,” I really mean that I go sit by some body of water, spray a lot of lavender, eat a cupcake (or 2 or 3), close my eyes, and ask the heavens: What’s going to be in the year ahead? How can I get out of my own way so that I can allow the plan for me to unfold? I let whatever comes up, come up…. and then I jot down my musings in a journal. Here is some of what spilled forth during last year’s “outlining” day:

-Laugh more often

-Proudly say I live in Las Vegas

-Publish a book

-Forgive faster

-Get interviewed on TV

-Buy a house

-Make a Greek dessert

Now, clearly not all of these items are of equal importance, nor have they all happened (I still have yet to make that Greek dessert), but 86% of the items on the list have happened and all 5 of my core goals (see below) will be achieved!!!

For the next part of this process, I reflect on my core values list–p. 50-52 in Awaken Your CAREEpreneur–ask the universe, and again listen, for which 5 of the 20ish things that previously came up move me towards better alignment with my core values. These become my goals or priorities for the next year.

I then pull out my planner and identify how on December 31st of the next year I’ll know if I succeeded in having achieved each of my priorities. For many of them are not items to check off a list. Last year, one of my top 5 included: live with more love and courage. (One of my grounds for assessment has been–walk away from conversations feeling I’ve communicated honestly and from a heart-centered place.) This area has been my greatest achievement (as far as I’m concerned this year), and being able to ask myself in situations calling for brave communication–Am I being honest and heart-centered?–has definitely empowered me to be the best version of myself.

Now, after getting clarity on my 5 priorities–which can be focused on any of the life spheres– I work backwards from the next December to January of the coming year listing any targets I feel are necessary to set for myself each month. (For a target to be set, I MUST have quite a bit of control over the outcome. For example, I can say I plan to call ____ people or attend ____ types of events. I’m not going to say I will have landed 3 national commercials or found my dream mate by a particular date. These kinds of goals are manipulative and set us up to fail.) I also plan in time each month to reflect on my progress, do some mini-celebration, and make any necessary tweaks to my priorities or design for living them.

Next, I grab a nice combo of business, home, lifestyle, and travel mags. I spend some time cutting out pictures, quotes, and articles that best represent my top 5 priorities and put them up on a big board that I hang in my office. And finally, I write a letter to myself congratulating Lex for who she’s become over the last year. I find writing this letter to be one of the most powerful visioning practices I engage in. It really creates a bridge from who I’ve been to who I’m aspiring to be…. and also illuminates necessary action steps that when I think in a linear way, I often overlook.

Whether you follow the exact outline proposed in this post, take a few of the exercises/practices that work for you, or follow your own or someone else’s practice, my hope is that you create the time necessary to intentionally close-out one year and make room for the next. And, just as importantly, prioritize goals in your development as a person (and in your roles as a child, parent, professional, leader, community member, etc.) over “stuff.” One of my favorite Marianne Williamson quotes, which I’ll wrap up with, is: “God laughs hardest when you tell Him your plans.”

While those who know me are aware that I am about as self-reflective as a human comes, I concede to even more self-analysis during the holiday season as I try to make sense of what has unfolded over the last year before having an eye towards the year ahead. I take stock of the good, the bad, and the confusing. I assess how many of my goals I got to. But most importantly, I take account of my learning and growth. And if I’m able to walk away saying I have been enough of an observer of my life to have created new beliefs, new habits, and new levels of gratitude as a result of my year’s living…. than by golly, I have had a successful year!

I like to create little lists of lessons I’ve learned…. and never need to learn again…to ensure that whatever gunk I had to wade through in a given year gets archived as useful accoutrement of character building. And in 2010, these top 5 lessons include: Continue Reading »

Part of the challenge of growing a business or your professional brand is developing a system to organize all of the mountains of information that you receive daily.

• Emails sent with upcoming events.  Can I attend?  What’s on my calendar that week?
• Tweets with cool links that you want to read…but you’ll need 20 min and that’s going to derail you from your other work.
• And let’s not forget webinars and video content with their funny stories or valuable information.  They are great but who has 20-30 min to sit in front of a screen and watch and listen?

This was my story yesterday.  And it’s pretty typical daily.  Before sitting down to work, there are 50 emails and 2 voice mails.  And many of them do deserve my attention.   That’s a minimum of an hour  -  not counting the research to answer the questions.  How are you supposed to fit it all in?  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 »