Business Plans as a Roadmap to Success

The Ambiguous &: Business Basics & Beyond

Host Molly Beyer talks about the necessity of creating a solid business plan in this episode. Likening owning a business to being a traveller in a foreign land, a map is the key to success on the journey. A business plan is exactly that: the map of how to navigate our business to success. Molly walks us through the first questions to answer that define our businesses.

Molly acknowledges that different types of business plans cater to different goals. A traditional plan with data and financial projections is vital when we’re seeking financing or funding, but a lean startup plan can accommodate some of the information in the traditional plan in a less in-depth, more story-based way. The main structure of defining a business, however, remains comparable.

Join Molly to learn exactly what the executive summary and market analysis portions of a traditional business plan examine. This information is the minimum of what we should know before starting a business. Molly walks through the first eight questions in the business plan questionnaire provided with the episode, explaining what they ask and how she answered for her own business as a demonstration of what we need to know. This is vital information for any business owner looking to start or revise the goals of their business.

Resources in this episode:

• Business Plan Questionnaire

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Contact Molly Beyer:

• MKBeyerBooks.com
• MKBeyerConsults.com
• Facebook: MK Beyer Books
  
  

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Transcript

Molly Beyer: Hello, hello, I am Molly Beyer, host of The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond, a podcast where we have frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success. There are so many ands that impact being your own boss. Join us as we explore all these ands and more. Like, subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts and let's explore these ambiguous ands.

Molly Beyer: Hello and welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. I'm your host, Molly Beyer, and I'm here to lead you through frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. We're going to start this episode with a little story. Imagine you're on holiday in a foreign land, and you decide you want to visit a local tourist spot that you've always wanted to see. You have a general idea of where you're going, and maybe you can even see your destination far off in the distance, so you set off down the path. The path starts to wind through villages and fields, and you stop being able to see your destination. When you started, you knew the general direction. So you decide to use the sun as your guide and continue on the way. After a while, the sun goes under the clouds and you start to question if you're still headed in the right direction. You decide to ask a local how to get where you're going. They give you directions using the local language, which you barely speak, and describe landmarks that don't make any sense to you. But you head off in the direction they pointed, following the path into the woods. Now you definitely can't see the sun. The path has disappeared, and you start to feel the eyes of predators on you as you stumble around. You remember you have a map you drew before starting out and take it out of your pack, but you've wandered so far off track that you aren't even sure if you're still on the map.

Molly Beyer: This is what it can feel like to start a business. You have a beautiful idea, a general sense of how to turn it into an enterprise, and a bunch of random resources you can use on the way. So in the last episode, we talked about defining success for ourselves as whole people. This episode, we're going to talk about defining the metrics that make a business successful. Generally, this means it can make long-term profits, generate sustainable growth, and meet the changing needs of its customers. When talking about success, I also talked about my love of the journey story and helping any business owner to find success. Well, the journey story of a business starts with a business plan, using it as a map to get through the seemingly foreign land of business management. There are many pieces to laying a solid foundation for a business. Liken it to erecting a skyscraper, you need to anchor deep into the bedrock to make sure your building does not topple over. Or an example from the natural world is a plant taking root. The stabilizing structure grows first before you ever see a sprout above ground. Building a business is much the same. Great energy must be spent solidifying the foundation so the structure we see is stable and strong. General advice to laying the foundation is that all businesses start with a business plan, but there are many formats that a business plan can take, so it is important to find the one that works best for your business. Having a fully written out, detailed, traditional business plan with data and financial projections is necessary when you're seeking financing or funding, or sometimes for a business in a heavily regulated field. Using a lean startup plan can get some of the information in the traditional plan, but is less in-depth, does not generally include data and financials, and tends to be more story-based.

Molly Beyer: This could be an option for a business that is self-funding, but wants a great outline of the business before moving forward. For a solopreneur taking their passion to the masses as a service provider, it may be even more scaled-down and may only include exercises on defining some specifics like product or service, ideal client, market-dominating position, messaging, and sales processes. No matter what, though, it's incredibly important to answer the questions lined out in a business plan for yourself as a roadmap on how to structure, run, and grow the business, and as the basis for decision-making through the life of the business. But just like our idea of success, this map is fluid. And even if you've been in business for years, reviewing and revising these questions or this plan can mean the difference between stagnation and exponential growth. Follow the link in the episode description to download a fillable PDF business plan questionnaire. This is a great exercise for all businesses and can help set or reinforce a solid foundation. Whether just starting a business, feeling stagnant, or looking for meaningful ways to get teams or management engaged with the business, because this is a great team-building activity.

Molly Beyer: Today we are going to focus on the executive summary and market analysis portions of a traditional business plan with a little dip into marketing and sales management. This is the very minimum of what you should know before you start a business. If you're following along in the business plan questionnaire, this is questions one through eight. For each question, I will give an abbreviated answer from when I started my business. But my actual answers to these questions were much longer and went significantly deeper. Now the first question is also the start of the executive summary. The executive summary in a business plan comes first, though I do recommend writing it last if you're creating a traditional business plan. Creating the rest of the plan will give you all of the infor...