The Planning for a Business Plan Plan

“Do I need a business plan?”

Yes and no.

There was a time where you would go to a bank to ask for a loan for your business. They in turn would ask you for several things, including a detailed business plan. Depending on who and what kind of business you were trying to start, a business plan would go up to ten, twenty, thirty, sometimes fifty pages. Your eyes would glaze over, your hands would turn into claws as you hovered over your Oliver or Smith-Corona typewriter. PowerPoint was a T-Square, a protractor, some colors pencils and a compass that could kill a moose. You also had to find a commercial real estate broker for a space, buy office furniture, have a rotary phone installed and try not shatter the giant glass water cooler bottle while changing it, forget about trying not to spill all the water on the floor.

Today, you go sign a piece of paper at WeWork, move into a fully furnished office and they even supply the fruit infused water with no potential for glass breaking or getting your shoes wet. Same goes for a business plan. It has become a bit simpler, but you still need one.

Unless you’re planning to get a loan from a bank or any other type of financial institution, chances are that they will expect a detailed business plan. This will be how they will understand your plans to profit and subsequently pay off your loan. But if you’re planning to start your business with your own capital or through others means with less red tape, an overly detailed business plan is not necessary.

When clients come to me with an idea or even product, I ask them what’s their plan moving forward. Their usual response is, “do I need a business plan?”

I smile and give them a one page business plan template that has twelve boxes:

1. Company Identity

2. Problem

3. Your Solution

4. Target Market

5. The Competition

6. Revenue Streams

7. Initial Marketing Plan

8. Expenses

9. Team & Key Roles

10. Timeline

11. Future

12. Exit Plan

Some will need more space than others for the information, depending on the business, service or product. These basic categories will help you further understand what you are creating, its structure and its future.

With these basic blocks, you can start putting together your business model canvas and your visual presentation deck, two things that you definitely need at the outset. I will explain these in further detail in future posts.

So, no, you don’t need three reams of paper’s worth of a business plan but you do need a plan. Something clear and concise that will serve as a guide for you and your team.

Building Brand Integrity

You open up your smartphone and immediately one of your apps starts updating. A while later your looking for the app, you swear it was in this folder but you don’t see it. Then you realize that the app updated and the company has rebranded with a new look, logo or color scheme.

Every 2–3 years, companies rebrand for several reasons. They modernize their look, expand their services or product line, attempt to change public perception after some negative publicity or just because they have profited and can afford to do so.

What doesn’t change, what shouldn’t change is the brand’s integrity. As a startup, a new company a large part of your mission is what your company stands for, what overarching idea it encompasses as a product or service without compromise. As companies grow their brand mission can expand as well, but the integrity that was the original foundation stays the same. If it doesn’t, you risk alienating your early adopters and possibly confusing or creating doubt with potential new markets.

Let’s define brand integrity. Simply put it’s what your company stands for and how they make their products or provide their services and how this reflects on the company from the consumers point of view. Adding to that and just as important is your work practices and the environment for your company’s workforce. This should be laid out clearly in your company’s mission statement, as the inspiration to your business plan with clear and precise core values.

On the product side, say if you’re a food product, are you non-GMO? Organic? How are you sourcing your ingredients? Fair Trade? If you’re a clothing company, we can apply similar attributes. Fair Trade sourcing? Where is the product made? What kind of labor practices are conducted at the manufacturing point? Are you going with Made in the USA? Are you Assembled in the USA? Just to name a few.

Brand integrity also includes the post-buying experience. How’s your customer service? Your warranty? Product repair and/or replacement? Ever hear someone say, “I love this product but when I had a problem, the customer service sucked!”

This can be a death knell for a company that’s barely off the ground.

It’s all about keeping your promise of how you are making your product and following through on this even after it has been sold.

Take a look at Patagonia. They’re universally known and respected brand is based on a strong commitment to their core values:

Quality — the pursuit of ever greater quality in everything we do.

Integrity — relationships built on integrity and respect.

Environmentalism — serve as a catalyst for personal and corporate action.

Not Bound by Convention — our success — and much of the fun — lies in developing innovative ways of doing things.

This has been the company’s brand since Yvon Chouinard founded the company in 1973. Patagonia has been known to provide customer service and repair clothing that was purchased over 20 years ago! Checkout this great episode of NPR’s How I Built This where they talk to Yvon and the growth of his company.

On the company’s staff side, what kind of working culture are you trying to create? Will it be a stiff hierarchy where the executive suite is separated from the non-executives even when the company has ten or less employees? Will you offer equity to early employees and make them feel part of something bigger? Does everyone have a chance to contribute ideas and opinions? Look at Pixar’s Room of Candor for reference. This is another area where Patagonia is recognized is at the forefront of company culture. It’s more than just ping pong tables and free beer at a co-working space.

Some of these will be budget related and difficult for startups and small companies to get it right off the get go, but not impossible. As long as you set strong core values, a clear mission statement supported by a clear business plan, you can define your brand integrity and see it through as you launch your product and services and continue to be true to it as your company succeeds and grows. Budget related or not, don’t compromise.

Feel free to share your thoughts or add to the discussion on brand integrity in the comments section.

Thanks to Wiley, Patagonia.com, White River Design and Smart Brief for info and reference points.

Read.

There are moments I find myself lacking creativity, in thought, in life practice, for a new song, a blog post, sometimes even when I’m cooking. When I feel that lack, that emptiness, drained of all original thought or conceptual feeling, only one thing has cured me over the years: reading.

Reading centers me again. For years it was fiction or historical accounts, with the last two years a bit more focused on the personal development side. This year I’ve gone back to fiction and added more biographies of historical figures whose lives intrigue and inspire me.

Then a word I have to look up or a sentence fragment sparks me. I highlight it, I copy it in my journal and I repeat it to myself over and over. All with a smile on my face and my mind scrolling at the speed of light on what I can create with it, what does it mean to me.

Heck, even a Men’s Health magazine on my iPad during a long flight delay recently had me screen shoting quotes, recipes and recommendations, once again getting my mental chemicals going.

Read. Read a little. Read a lot.

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or CEO, it is highly recommended you read. Read about your business, your market, read about general business success stories. Read about the successful people in your generation and the prior ones. Read about people and things that fascinate you.

Read for knowledge, read for fun, read out of curiosity, read for your life. Read to get unstuck, to come up with new ideas, new business practices. Ideas can come from reading a fiction novel that has nothing to do with your company but a new perspective, a new point of view can materialize.

Read for wisdom, for guidance, to heal and free your soul. Do it to battle anxiety, pain, suffering, trauma, read to forgive yourself and others. Read for joy, enlightenment and for overall good vibes.

There are some great apps out there for reading or listening to audio books on the go. Audible is great for listening on the go(keep an eye out for membership and book discounts), but if you have a library card checkout Hoopla and Libby, both have lots of great titles for free. RBDigital App, available for both iPhone and Android users, for free periodicals.

What are you reading these days? Leave a comment, tell me your titles, ask me what I’m reading.

Who are you marketing to?

You have a product and you’re ready to figure out how to market it.

One thing I hear all the time is: “This product is for everyone! It will appeal to the mass market and everyone will want to buy it”.

Well, several problems with that line of thinking. If you’re a new, small company, you most likely don’t have the marketing dollars to reach that mass market yet. In the nascent stage your distribution channels are probably going to be limited to e-commerce and Amazon (where your margins…well, that’s a whole other post). But don’t fret, thanks to social media and e-mail, you can start getting a good amount of targeted customers that not only will buy your product but also potentially champion your cause to the bigger market.

Let’s use the protein bar market as an example. Twenty years or so ago, the market was pretty much Power Bar and MET-Rx and some other bars here and there, nowhere as ubiquitous as bars are today. Today, the bar market is so incredibly saturated, with more companies and market angles popping up every month.

You have created a protein bar, in a few flavors, non-GMO, all natural, perhaps even all organic with 12 grams of protein. Now, who do you sell it to?

Well, is it:

• Ketogenic? High fat, low carb, very low to no sugar.

• Is it low glycemic? How the carb content affects blood glucose levels.

• Is it vegan suitable? Plant based, no animal products whatsoever.

• Is it Kosher? Kosher certified — meat, dairy or neutral. Do your research and get to know “circle U”, “circle K”, “D” and pareve.

• Does it have sweeteners like stevia? Some people are allergic to alternative sweeteners.

• Gluten Free?

• Nut Free? No tree nuts or legumes (peanuts).

• Paleo Friendly? No processed ingredients.

We can list more categories but let’s stick with these and pick three. Let’s say your bar is vegan, low carb and low sugar. That’s a good starting point for a low budget or guerrilla marketing plan. Let’s grab vegan and break it down:

Potential Vegan Targets:

• Vegan Cafés or Specialialty Shops — These are popping up everywhere, especially in the bigger cities and always looking for more products for their customers. A quick search of #vegancafes lon Instagram lead me to a bunch of posts of vegan shops you can target and reach out to with your bar.

• Vegan Athletes — In the NBA, Marc Gasol and Kyrie Irving, an investor for Beyond Meat, and Ryan O’Reilly of the NHL are some of the more notable athletes who have gone with a plant based diet. But there are many amateur athletes who have adopted plant based diets, including some pretty ripped body builders who you can also market too.

• Dietary and/or Health Reasons — Some people I know personally have gone vegan due health issues. Customers in this category are always looking for snacks and on the go food that fit their new lifestyle.

Do some due diligence and some more research so you can start targeting your product. Don’t be afraid to search on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for potential customers that fit in these target markets and reach out to them. Tag them directly, direct message them and hashtag your posts (#vegan, #veganfood, #veganrecipes and so on). Build an e-mail list and send out your Mail Chimp campaigns to them.

The people that respond, end up trying your product and hopefully liking it, can become your early adopters. These are the customers who you can ask to give you great Amazon reviews, testimonials for your website/social media accounts and become your loyal followers. Once this happens, you can start gaining visibility, generating revenue and eventually finance the bigger marketing campaigns you strive to do for your product.

Mid Year Pains

Next month is my birthday and for about 20 years now I’ve used my birthday as more of a mid year review. Where most people like to have a big party and celebrate I prefer to be alone go out to dinner with by myself, bring a notepad and write down all the things that I’ve accomplished up to that point and what am I looking forward to do for the rest of the year. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I find this system works much better for me. Not only has it helped me with my personal development but in the last few years it has helped me with my business development as well. It has helped me to identify my mid year pain points and get my mind working on what to do to solve them.

So, what are your pain points this year? What’s going on in your business? What’s going on with your product? What are you trying to solve? What’s keeping you up at night? I implore all of you to answer these questions and to think about your company’s/product’s midyear review.

I know right now most of you are starting to mentally check out because the weather is getting nicer, sun is out, summer is here and we’re already thinking about our vacations for July and August. So before you start checking out completely, start asking yourself and your team, “what do we need to do the second half of this year to improve our company/product? What pain points are we trying to solve?”

Don’t wait a second longer. Because soon enough it will be the fall season, then I’ll be winter, then I’ll be 2020.

By starting this process now doesn’t mean you have to come up with the answers right away, but at least you will start putting it into your subconscious that this is what you’re trying to fix or improve upon or streamline.

Perhaps when you’re sitting on the beach or by the pool or sipping on your favorite libation during your vacation, and you are enjoying yourself, the answer will come up.

And like that, the epiphany will lead to you solving your problem.

Your Product in 3 Words

One of the biggest challenges clients I work with face is quickly describing or pitching their idea. The exercise I use to get them to simplify is to describe their product in three words. This can be difficult because most people want to over explain and get other people interested or excited as much as they are in their own company, product or idea. The reality is when telling people about your product most people are not going to be as excited as you are and most people don’t have the attention span to listen to you go on and on for 10 to 15 minutes.

And if you are in a situation where you’re pitching your product to investors, potential distribution or a wholesale market, you won’t get 5 minutes, let alone 10 minutes. Simplify and get it down to three words.

For example, if someone comes up to me and says, “Uber for Cats!” I get it, heck my cat Max will get it! Although, validity and growth potential will come to mind, you will get my attention and a chance for you to explain further.

Three words leads to a fifteen second elevator pitch, which subsequently leads to a 30 second pitch and then to a 3–5 minute pitch. This exact formula got my client and I to the finals at StartUp Fest — Montreal in 2016.

Describe your product in 3 words and grab the attention you want, the right attention you need.