Posted In: Business Development by admin

Just telling a small business that they need to create a business plan often strikes fear and loathing into even the sturdiest of entrepreneurs.

Whenever I tell a client they need one, they look like I just told them they were being audited, kicked them in the weiner, and dry humped their dog. (See photo)

The reality is that there are different types of business plans. Yes, there are the voluminous ones with reams of research and data, but those are usually reserved for projects where a source of funding is required. And I believe in these cases, a solid justification is both understandable and necessary. After all, if you are giving me $10 Million to launch a new business, you deserve to know exactly what I am going to be doing with it and exactly how I am going to be providing a return on your investment.

But for most entrepreneurs, a huge business plan is just not necessary.

For the majority of entrepreneurs, a business plan is simply a target that keeps your focus and the top level strategies for reaching that destination. This is where a 1 page plan is enough. It is designed to serve as a tool to keep you on track and to aid in decision making. That’s It. And in EVERY case I have seen it implemented in, it is a giant help. The 1 page plan provides the who, what, where, why, and how of your business at the 10,000 foot level.

Here’s what it should include.

Business Description: This section is a top level view of what your company does.

Company Mission: This is the most touchy-feely section of the plan. Your plan is to of course make money, but this is the section where you explain your values and why you are doing it.

Product/Service: Pretty self explanatory. This is the products or services that you plan to offer

Competitive Advantage: In this section you need to describe WHY someone would buy your product over someone else’s or why your business will succeed where others won’t. Key point, if you don’t have any competition now (brand new concept) you will. Otherwise it is probably not a niche you want to be in. Highlight your real advantages over anyone else. If you don’t have any, you had better find some.

Markets: This can be expanded or changed, but try to be as specific as possible. This will help you jump into the shoes of your prospects more easily. The “Putting a face to your target market exercise” is very useful here. [[/caption]

Revenue Channels: This section will most likely change as your experience with the business grows. That’s OK, but it is important to have a focal point to help you make better decisions.

Distribution Channels: For information marketers, this section will be easy. For physical product retailers or eCommerce sites, this will become a very important section. If you fall into the latter group, you need to make sure to take time to work out the fulfillment phase in quite a bit of detail.

Competition: It is important to spend a good bit of time analyzing your competition. You need to know what products they offer it, price points, how they market, profit margins, what they are good at, and what they stink at. A keen understanding of their core-competencies is crucial to exploiting your own. It is also important to constantly keep current on what you competition is doing.

Financial Goals It is understandable that this step may have some discomfort, especially in the early stages. While it is not important to have an exact figure early on, it is extremely important to have SOME challenging figure. You can always readjust up if you are more successful than planned (and I hope you are). There are several schools of thought on how to best use sales goals to motivate you. My personal philosophy is to make these numbers very challenging, but obtainable under ideal circumstances.

How to use your One Page Business Plan

In the initial stages, you should be re-evaluating and repurposing this document at 6 month intervals. Any more often and you risk losing focus (the main reason you are doing it to start with) less frequent and you could be missing valuable opportunities. Keep a copy on your wall or someplace handy and review it often. Whenever you are facing a tough decision, pull out this document to keep you on track. Below is an actual 1 page plan that I used with a client who was expanding their current Karate school to include at-home study program for women’s self defense.

Sample 1 Page Business Plan – InYourDefense

Business Description: InYourDefense creates, designs, develops, information products, videos, and seminars in the market niche of women’s self defense.

Company Mission: Our goal is to help our customers feel secure and in control at all times. We will do this through a system of education, training, and peer support.

Product/Service: information products, videos, and seminars about Women’s Self Defense Competitive Advantage: President is 6th degree black belt in Tae Kwan Do with 15 years of experience teaching. Wife of president is also 2nd degree black belt and can serve as the “face” of the company as well as providing first hand insight into buyers needs and desires.

Markets: Buyers are women aged 18-55 of all socio-economic backgrounds interested in personal safety. [/caption] Target must be easily reachable via internet and ready/willing to buy. In addition, the constant churn of natural new interest in this space make customer acquisition an easier task

Revenue Channels: Fundamental revenue comes from three streams: dvd instructional videos, personal coaching systems, and affiliate sales.

Distribution Channels: Internet distribution of digital content, postal mail of dvd and training packages. Partner/affiliate distribution will be evaluated.

Competition: Several competitors exist in the internet place including xxx, xxx, and xxx. However pricing strategies, poor marketing and execution, and relative weak experience in training makes this an open market. We will advance beyond the competition due to position as experts in this field , our knowledge of marketing best practices , and pre-exiting catalog of teaching content.

Financial Goals



Year 1: 20,000 (transition into full time)

Year 2: 75,000 (now full time position)

Year 3: 150,000 (start growth, few outsourcers)

Year 4: 500,000 (Begin full time employees, migration from worker to leader)



Wrapping it up

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. As I said earlier, tape this up on your wall and refer to it whenever you are faced with a difficult business decision. Another benefit of this document is that it provides a tangible action plan for tasks and a basis for your marketing plan. Whenever you are unsure on what you should tackle next in your new business, review this plan again. As you can see in the example above, there are numerous examples of areas that you need to explore fully before your business can become a success!

Hope this helps some of you. As always, feel free to post a comment with your thoughts or any questions you might have, and I’ll be happy to respond.

JJ Kennedy is CEO of Evil Genius TV, the small business coaching and strategy arm of Evil Genius Interactive, a web and marketing development firm located in Gainesville, FL. He is an MBA, happily married to a Veteranarian, and is hoping to have a few little ones soon.

Posted In: Business Development by admin

As governments search for solutions to the current finanial crisis others are looking for who to blame and business schools are getting their share of the blame.

A colleague – who also holds and MBA – sent me the article “Harvard’s Masters of the apocalypse” in early May. Which discusses the accolades given and the business cases written by business schools at the heart of this and earlier crises and says;

Business schools have shown a remarkable ability to miss the economic catastrophes unfolding before their eyes.

The debate is being played out on the Harvard site, where Harvard defends itself saying that those responsible for the companies and organisations involved in the current crisis graduated some years ago and the courses have changed since then. Yet the Harvard graduate writing in the Times article above points out that both Enron and RBS were studied as best practice up to the time of their respective falls. Granted RBS was studied from the perspective its successful acquistion and integration of NatWest, but still the company has fallen a long way in a year, and the CEO is now labelled as the “world’s worst banker” (according to Daniel Gross at Slate). So the defence offered by Harvard doesn’t really hold.

Some commentators predict that the age of the MBA is over, I don’t think so – and not just because I happen to have one. But there need to be some changes.

Conflict of Interest

The first thing that needs to be addressed is that there is a fundamental conflict of interest; students pay a lot of money to join courses – making it difficult for school’s to kick students out for either bad performance or unethical behaviour. At my school, in my year, there was one student who cheated and one who did not perform, taking a second attempt at every exam. The exam retakes were legal but both guys have the same degree as me, effectively undercutting the value of my degree. But they paid the same as me.

Silo Thinking

During the degree subjects are studied separately; finance, accounting, organisational development, HR, marketing are all kept separate. Business ethics and shareholder management come far down the list. But the subjects affect each other and need to be integrated. A friend who went to IMD told me of one case study they did where each group recommended strategy changes to grow the business. At the end the professor of organisational development criticised them all saying “this is a family business – why did you all assume that the right thing to do was to grow big? why did none of you think of the current culture of the company?”

By getting out of the silo thinking students would be required to integrate finance, marketing, growth, organisational culture and ethics in developing their strategy.

Subjects studied

Beyond the risk and return ration and the discussion of WACC I don’t remember much about risk management. Judging by the current fall out it’s been missing from some other school curricula.

Underlying assumptions

The underlying premise of almost all of MBA teaching is that the company should grow. That you measure the success of the company by market capitalisation, or by market share, or by any other simple numeric measure relating to size – one company director boasted of headcount.

But companies can define other measures of success particularly if they’re private companies and not driven by the shareholders’ expectations.

There are other changes suggested, doctors and lawyers have to register each year, ship’s captains and pilots have to update their training regularly. Perhaps it’s time for this level or professionalisation to occur in the business world. Afterall the accounting is regulated and audited, internal processes are now guided by SOX. Certifying business leaders might be the only thing left.

I work at the intersection of communications, technology and business and part of my job is to stimulate the adoption of new technologies in a way that makes business sense.

So I research, read, review and write about technology, communications and leadership.

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