Write Your Business Plan

By John E. Anderson

Why write a business plan? There are two main reasons. A business plan helps entrepreneurs to improve operational sustainability while reducing risk. Banks and investors typically require a business plan to demonstrate the business has been carefully designed and possible difficulties have been identified and solutions considered.

How to begin:
Define your objectives.
Are these objectives realistic?
How will you reach your objectives?
From your answers to these questions you can produce a basic plan.

A Plan Outline
1. Executive Summary – brief description of your business, what you do and how you do it.
2. Customers – who are they, their needs and how you fill those needs.
3. Competition – know everything about them, strengths, weaknesses, pricing and costs.
4. Suppliers – strengths and weaknesses.
5. Marketing – sales channel, how you reach customers, what is your value proposition message, how you communicate to them and do you have the funds to do that.
6. Staff – Key staff strengths and weaknesses, what functions do you outsource?
7. Processes – methods, policies and procedures, employee job descriptions and duties.
8. Financial – forecast for 3 to 5 years. Profit and loss and balance sheets.

Completing this plan will clarify your objectives. It will be a dynamic plan, changing every day.
Keep your plan up to date with a quarterly, annual and multi-year perspective. Refine and develop the plan each 90 days to reflect changes.
As you develop your plan, consider your personal objectives. What personal lifestyle, investment and retirement goals do you have that you would like your business to help you achieve? Your business is your profit engine to create greater personal wealth and security.

Create Cash Reserves
Building a secure, personal investment portfolio and cash reserve will enable you to make loans to your business as it goes through varying economic circumstances. Being a successful business owner requires strategic, long-term planning with preparation for booms and busts in the marketplace.

Anticipate the Unexpecteded
You owe it to your family, employees and customers to anticipate and prepare for all eventualities. Training and development of key employees for succession includes your transition out of daily responsibilities at some point. This planning and employee training is a critical responsibility best done over many years to insure a successful continuation of the firm.

john@BeCauseBusiness.com
800.249.1622

What's Important, Setting Goals, Establishing Priorities

Determining What Is Important,

Setting Goals and Establishing Priorities

As a successful entrepreneur, you perform these three actions every day, all day. Much of the time you do this tactically to achieve short-term objectives. Of course, running in the background is your strategic perspective. How today’s and this week’s achievements will fulfill your long-term targets for the month, quarter and year.

Today, right here and now, I invite you to put these ideas in writing. You know the power of written goals. Many studies have shown that written goals are much more frequently accomplished than great ideas merely thought or spoken. Many opportunities and brilliant plans are lost because they are not captured and acted upon.

Spend a few minutes now and draft out some ideas. What’s important? What are your goals? What are the priorities and sequences necessary for producing the results you see as possible and desirable? These can be for your business or personal life or both.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Salt Lake City - Experience It!

Salt Lake City - Experience It!
Today we arrived in Salt Lake after a midnight blizzard in Southern Idaho. It was white-out, blowing snow last night on I-84 east of Boise. Packed snow on the signs prevented us from knowing exactly where we were.

Stopping at midnight for gas and directions, we were told the weather would be worse for the next 100 miles. We decided a warm bed was the wise choice. It was!

This morning the sun was bright and except for packed snow and ice on portions of the highway the roads were clear. Like yesterday when we crossed the high deserts of eastern Oregon, the drive to Salt Lake was spectacular. Broad expanses of wide, open country that make me take a deep breath looking at the fields, mountains and open prairie.

We're here for visioning with Bob Adams and Diane Cole, the Be Cause Team tax strategists, about the challenges facing businesses and how they might actualize sustainable prosperity using organizational development.

Bob and Diane typically find $2,000 in additional tax refunds in 60% of the prior year tax returns they review. They look at tax returns for the three prior years at no charge and with no obligation.

Most wage-earning people (80 million Americans) are aware of only three basic
deductions: dependents, mortgage interest and education. This is part of the two tax systems of America. Fourteen million American taxpayers have businesses and can start with 157 possible deductions.

What is possible for organizations? What can we create?

We are considering questions:
1. If you had all the money, education, resources and abilities you would like to have or feel you need, what would you spend your life doing?

2. If you were suddenly told you have a year to live, what would you do?

3. If the doctor said you have a month to live, what would you do? Who would you communicate with? What would you say? What important dreams have you wanted to accomplish? What would you do?

We invite you to answer these questions and email your thoughts to us. For the next two full days, Kathleen and I will be in an "Experience It" training here to presence new possibilities we can bring to our "research and development team." We are organizational developers for sustainable prosperity!