Business Plan Blues

You Gotta Have a Plan

(If you want to succeed, you've got to do it.)

Hello Everyone! I am rising from the depths. I have been missing in action lately due to working on my business plan. I have finished and handed in the plan and now the waiting begins. I've let my finger nails grow long in anticipation, also good for holding snacks while I work.

 

Anyone who's ever written a business plan knows that it's a special kind of hell, but it is a very necessary evil. I have been saved unbelievable heartache by going through the process. You have to run your business on paper, accounting for labor, material costs, and packaging. It really forces you to completely think everything through and I have dropped a lot of products I was sure would be in the shop due to things like they require a disproportionate amount of labor against return. There are a lot of little items, I thought I would stock for impulse purchases, are in the down the road file, because of the high quantity requirements to stock them. You have to look at how much money you're going to make on that product and also have balance how long it's going to take to get a return on it. In the beginning I can't afford to have a big investment in stored inventory. This review goes for every single item you're stocking, or making, weather it's a dollar or a C-note. That little tidbit is not even a beginning of how soul deadening this process is.

Are you sure about those sales figures?

It is very difficult not to be repetitive on a business plan. It's the 3^rd degree for your business and just like a detective trying to solve a case, you're trying to solve the problems with your business before they happen. If you look at a standard business plan form. You will notice a couple of things. One that The Table of Contents is very long and two there are a lot of slightly different repetitive questions. There really is a reason for this. Things can wrong for non-obvious reasons and the more angles that you consider the same question from, the more likely you are to uncover those things. It is all consuming and takes every bit of my computer energy. When I finish for the day I drop the lid on my laptop so fast, I'm surprised I haven't cracked the screen. And was really amazed when I saw just how much email I get when I don't check it for 5 days.

The plan is to open a homemade candy and curiosity shop in the building on the 62 side of the Grand View, where the kitchen for the restaurant was. The merchandise will be up front and the candy counter will be in front of the kitchen. At the front of the building on the post office side will be a display area for large items and furniture that we make and restore. The curiosity may open before the candy, but not visa verse. Getting in the kitchen and making candy is my reward for doing all the paper and foot work required to stock all the merchandise I need to get the store open.

My office by the time I finished.

Crawling away from the desk at night.

I've been working on this plan since we closed the restaurant last year and I'm really looking forward to getting the plan into action. Unfortunately it has taken even longer than my most liberal estimates and I won't be open by May as I had hoped. It is an important process though, because the things I've learned by doing it have potentially saved me many thousands of dollars and untold hours. Something I have experienced in other businesses, so I understand firsthand what it means to live through mistakes.
It's not a guarantee of success. I have done plans with my other businesses and there's always going to be something that looks like it's going to work on paper, but just doesn't in real life. It can be something unexpected, like a sudden change in the economy. Your test marketing might be skewed by some factor that escaped your attention, or something might just fall flat once put on the shelf. Or a shift in what's hot and what's not. Which traditionally only shifts suddenly. Never chase a fad. If you're left holding a bunch of Fad Stock, it's going to be at least twenty years before people start looking for that stuff on Ebay.

Bottom Line

Alexander Sisyphus

Each time I write one I get a little better at it and I never want to do it. I've got it all in my head. Right? No, bad head. If you want to have a successful business, you have to write it down. Make a plan. I know it's hard to do. I am completely sold on the idea and I have to mentally whip myself, like a slave building a pyramid, to get myself to do it. The closer I get to finishing the harder it gets. It's like the mountain gets suddenly steep at the end of the trail and that rock gets a lot harder to roll.

I'll let you know the results, when I know more, and you can watch them for yourselves as I open the store.

Peace,

Alexander