Business Planning ~a case study

Talking with my sister about her upcoming venture as well as my new direction for both my companies, I've decided to revisit business planning and business plans. From everything I've read and learned over the years two things come to mind. Have a vision and have a market, you can wing everything else.

I remember miserably working on my business plan for Lotions and Potions freaking out over my financials, long strategies and other things I had no idea about, because I'd never run a cosmetics company before! Asked some University of Calgary business students look at my company to see what they would suggest for a business plan (yeah kinda validated what I thought about business school ~ a complete waste of time unless you were doing business). They had me expanding to a giant facility and having 200 customers/month with no mention on how I would find these 200 people. I didn't have a clear vision about my product, how to sell it or who would buy it. Yep, the most important terms were the most vague. I became so depressed at the hopelessness of all this I lost control of my company. I happily gave my power away to my mom, who wanted to help me succeed, but because I'd checked out my company was doomed.

Fast forward five years. I learned some Body Talk techniques to energetically balance your business, which put the right people in the right place. In my case I needed to add a third piece of advice make sure you own your business! (Worked wonders, two days after I used that technique I got a $50 order out of nowhere) After reading Rework, 4 hour work week, E-myth (which surprised me, because E stands for Entrepreneurial not Electronic) it was time to do things a bit differently. I decided to focus on winning the hearts and minds of Vegans, who are a growing population and want to buy high quality cosmetic products made with vegetable ingredients. What a difference! I never would have thought I'd be on track to be doing an internet TV series, starring me.

Five years ago I never saw myself where I am today. In the next five years I have no idea where I'll be, but I DO know that if I work on a project by project basis I'll see results to base my next ones on.  Short term planning offers the most flexibility and responsiveness to constantly changing business conditions. At bare bones of it all, know what you want to sell or provide and know who wants to buy it. Take control of your company to focus your energy on understanding your market and find ways to make sure yours is the product to solve their problems. Everything else? Wing it.

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