Business Planning for Better Decisions

Let's start with some basics. What is a business plan?

Take one step further back: what are you doing all of this for?

Writing a business plan is not easy. Find out why it is:

• Hard to start the plan, and

• Hard to write the plan

And be prepared to overcome these challenges when you start

Find out

• The 4 key advantages you will get from writing a business plan

• How the methods in this course directly combat the challenges

This lecture will explore the three main reasons new businesses struggle and how planning helps reduce those risks.

There are 3 core elements you have to understand and define to launch your business and, of course, to write an accurate business plan. Learn to recognize which stage you are in and how to address it correctly.

It has been said that an intelligent question has more value than an intelligent answer. Use that for your business plan.

The first section of your business plan for you to tackle is people. Here is the magic question to determine whether you have the right people.

Next, you will write your product description.

Now, this is not just "We sell garlic peelers". This section is to explain what your product is and how it stands apart from the competition.

Now that you've explained your product, you can tell us how you intend to sell it. In this section, you'll explain how you will get people to buy from you.

In the competitive advantage section of your business plan, you will explain what else is out there for your clients and you will explain your competitive angle.

This section of your business plan will show the financial health of your business both now and in the future.

Now you go back to the beginning: only write your Executive Summary as a last step.

Concluding the Better Questions method, what have you learned?

The value of a business plan is the thought process that goes into it. How much great information can you produce in 10 minutes?

Start with guiding foundations: mission and values.

Building off of your foundations, now decide how you operate in your chosen market.

Your choice of people will make or break your business.

And with your last minute remaining? Review it all.

That's a pretty good output for only 10 minutes of work, isn't it?

The third creative method that we will use for writing a business plan is the sum of its parts method. With this method, we will cover three areas again, but with a different focus.

Starting with foundations again - Mission and Values - but approaching them in a different way.

Writing process is a logical step after mission and vision, because now that you know who you are and you know where you want to go, procedures will say how you operate every day and how you will get to your destination.

To be valuable to your clients means to change their lives in some positive way. Learn how to define that change.

One of the great benefits that you get by defining all the parts of your business in this specific and deliberate way, is that you make it function on its own. Learn what it means to have an autonomous business.

A business is more than a sum of its parts. With this approach, you have learned how to give value to all the factors that contribute to success.

In this course, I keep talking about how a lot of what you're learning here applies to planning, as well as running and managing and making decisions about your business. Here are some examples on how to translate your plan into hiring criteria, messaging, and customer experience.

Being the cheapest option is a high risk strategy: any competitor only has to beat your price by one dollar or euro and they can steal your business.

Instead build business strength with one these three sustainable differentiation options.

Values are great concepts. But to bring them to life, they need to be more than concepts. Learn how to turn your values into behaviors that will guide how your business acts and grows.

In the lesson on writing your value proposition, we talked about features versus benefits and how that leads all the way to value. But how about what that means ultimately for the customer?

Hiring the right people is a major difference between success and failure in business. So how do you hire right the first time?

You use the information you created in this course.

In this lecture, we explore the standard business plan format recommended by the U.S. Small Business Administration. While this course emphasizes unconventional and creative approaches to business planning, gaining a solid understanding of the traditional model will provide a valuable foundation for comparison. Learn the key components of a classic business plan and discover how this structure can serve as a springboard for innovative thinking about your own business.

Your company description covers various key talking points, and will be the first formal introduction of your business in your business plan.

In your market analysis you get to show how well you understand your clients and competitors.

Here you will present your business and who is in it. This section is used to demonstrate that you have the right people, and that they are doing the right things.

It is time to make your product shine. This section is where you prove that your business can create value.

In previous sections you discussed your target market and your pricing and your product. Bring that all together now and add some action for your go to market section.

How you will spend money, how you will make money, with some added reports and formality.

And finally, at the end, we can work on the beginning. The key factors for a successful executive summary.