Our 5 Step Process:
The business plan: your roadmap to success
The Business Plan is a living document that accompanies you on your entrepreneurial journey. You might think of it as a nuisance and distraction that keeps you from doing the actual work. Are your precious insights stored neatly and safe in your head? Yes, no, maybe, some, who knows? We thought so! To gain clarity and understanding they should live in your evergreen business plan. Why? Because we don’t want you to get distracted and lost, given the many balls you have to juggle at the same time just to stay afloat. Do yourself a favor and choose structure and accountability so that you can have a clear roadmap for success and above all peace of mind and clarity of purpose.
Do I really need a business plan?
Oh, the dreaded, awful business plan! Why do you need it if it keeps changing anyway and it’s just an unwelcome distraction from the actual work, eh? Especially when you have no investor, funder or other pesky individual bothering you about it! Well, we agree (kind of) …no one can foretell the future and most of the projections are rubbish anyway BUT you need it, trust us, you do! Why? Because it’s very helpful to have a systematic way to test your assumptions, get a clear understanding of the market, make scenarios, estimate cash flows (even and especially if reality proves them wrong), set and monitor other essential metrics (your KPI’s in fancy talk). After all, you wouldn’t venture in the jungle without a compass, would you? Ok, maybe you don’t use a compass but you would at least need the GPS on your smartphone, right?
1. Explore
In this phase we work together to better understand your business, the market you are operating in and set key milestones for your business going forward as well as your financial goals. This typically takes place over a skype call or in person, depending on your location, and is usually finalized within 1 hour.
2. Write & Model
In this phase we get to work on your business plan by writing out all the necessary parts: we will start by conducting a thorough market research and build into your business plan the most updated available information, including 3 years of forecasted financial statements. This phase usually is completed within one week of the initial exploratory discussion and includes besides the distilled findings all the reference materials and methodology including assumptions that were considered in writing the business plan.
3. Revise
Now it’s your turn to take a look at the final draft of the business plan, check the assumptions, market analysis and financial projections and suggest changes if needed. We typically make any required changes within 2-3 business days following your feedback.
5. Use & Repurpose
You now have a solid business plan in place with all the typical parts required by investors, lenders, business partners and most of all you, the entrepreneur. What shall you do with it next? Well, it depends. If you have to submit it as part of the investing or lending process, you can go ahead and do that. As an evergreen document, we however recommend to regularly update and check your assumptions against reality, so that you can make strategic and tactical decisions along the way. But don’t worry, you don’t have to do it alone, our strategic advisory products make accountability and follow-through easy. Because as you well know, consistency is the key to long term success!
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