“The key to a growing a small business? Have a plan! For a business of any size, it’s important to know what you’re about and where you’re going,” says Mark Drager, president of Phanta Media, a corporate video production company in Markham, Ont. He sees his company’s plan as being like something a general would use before a war, to rally the troops.
A traditional business plan begins with an executive summary to allow the reader a quick look without delving into details. The company overview follows, outlining the mission statement, goals and objectives, corporate values or philosophy and vision statement. Following is a description of the business environment, which looks at the market trends for the particular industry, as well as the company’s competition; then, a description of the company and company strategy, which outlines strategies about the industry, markets and competition.
Finally is the financial plan, which covers the position at the start of business and where the financial position is expected to be in the future. It includes an income statement (revenues less costs to show profits), balance sheet (record of the financial position at a given time) and cash-flow statement (cash in and out as it’s received and spent). A good business plan also includes an action plan, showing how the business plan will be carried out.
A business plan doesn’t have to fit the traditional model to be valuable, though. Drager says he would write a full plan if he needed it for bank financing, but instead he develops what he calls an annual vision statement. “This concentrates mostly on what the company will be like in the future. Where will we be in one year? Three years? Five years? It’s a two-page document that outlines aspects like the company’s vision, mission, positioning in the market, objectives and corporate values.”
It also gives staff and prospective employees a sense of the culture of the company, something that Drager feels is critical. “We use it as a recruitment tool.” Once they’re close to hiring someone, they share the document with prospective employees. “This is what we’re about. And this is where we’re going. If the person is not on board with it, then they’re not a good fit with the company culture.”
It can be difficult to write a business plan as you launch your business, because there’s a lot you still don’t know about where you’re heading. But it’s worthwhile. “If you don’t write it down, you can’t articulate what you’re doing as a company,” Drager says. “And you need to articulate your plan for staff, investors and clients. That gives you the confidence and allows other people to buy into your plan.”
Once the plan is up and running, it needs to be maintained. Sue Sutcliffe, owner/manager of aWEBthatWORKS, an Internet marketing company, feels one of the most important aspects of working with a business plan is a system to track your goals and objectives. “I look at my plan once a month and update it two or three times a year. I do this whenever we have a new project or new product, to see what’s working, and tweak it. Action items have to have a date associated with them, for example, achieving this much in revenue by a certain time. But we track a lot of other aspects, too, such as where customers come from.”
Drager does the same. “I do quarterly goal-setting, and the action items are specific, for example, to systems, marketing or accounting. Our quarterly goals are only for one or two of those, so that they’re achievable.” Goals may be related to revenue or about next steps for growth, for example hiring staff or opening a new office.
The process of updating the business plan is one Drager does himself, as president. “You’re driving it,” he says. “But you’re not in it alone.” So he shares the plan with staff and gets feedback. “Then everyone will make sure it happens.”
Drager’s advice about business plans is to “just do it. You won’t see the benefits if you don’t do it. And, unless you’re taking it to the bank, don’t struggle to make it perfect.”
— Sherry Hinman is a freelance writer/editor and owner of The Write Angle. info@thewriteangle.ca.
Toronto Sun | Last Updated: October 19, 2010 4:20pm
LinkedIn is a fast-growing social website, connecting over 65 million business professionals in over 200 countries, with a new member joining approximately every second. Join Sue Sutcliffe as she guides you in the first steps to getting connected on this valuable network. By optimizing your professional profile, learning the power of groups, using LinkedIn business listings and creating a professional profile, you can build your professional network with other entrepreneurs to share valuable information and gain an advantage in developing your business.
Todd Skinner grew up and lived in a modest neighbourhoor in Oshawa, Ontario; the average “Kid Next Door”- but, the passion he discovered for business and enterprise at a young age was anything but average. His innate driven sense for business and a passion for learning would grant him the oppourtunity to spend the next two decades of his life delving into a wide variety of business experiences at home and across the globe.It wasn’t until one night, he found himself far from home, on a business trip in India, where he came to the realization that the foundation of business success was rooted in helping people to lead extraordinary lives. Todd found that regardless of culture, position or resources, people living to their full potential made a difference by creating extraordinary businesses, communities and families.Thus, Todd started the journey of sharing his extensive experience, and knowledge to help organizations and leaders build companies and people that inspire, motivate and challenge one another to live big lives and make a difference.
Ever since its launch in 1998, the company founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, has continued to grow and always expanded more and more. Today when thinking of Google it isn’t just a search engine anymore but also one of the biggest advertising platform world wide (the biggest?), a software distributor and a mobile phone manufacturer. Google is rumoured to venture even further and recently announced Google TV, an operating system for television sets. Only yesterday the company announced that it is positioning itself better in the VOIP and telephony space as well. Nobody knows when the company will stop to acquire and expand its services.
Calling your organization a public benefit corporation so the public can easily know your intent is to provide for the public good?
Limiting the liability of your volunteer Directors?
Accessing Community Bonds with credible oversight to raise funds?
Ensuring that the threshold for annual audits is not reduced to $100,000?
Maintaining your organization’s choice on the use of proxies?
Find out more via Centre for Social Innovation‘s post on this topic and register now for ONN and the Canadian Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) teleconference session on Wednesday, August 18th at 10am.
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Visited @HeartlandEquestrian horse ranch today. What a fun family place! We had a blast. Thanks for coming out everyone! Ponies, horses, and tons of nice people and fun things to do. Congrats to Debbie Williams for turning her dream into reality, organizing another awesome event, and the funnest grand opening I’ve been to in ages. Way to go!
Here’s my photos…
If you have pictures from the awesome afternoon, we invite you to upload them to flickr, and contribute them to the HeartlandEquestrian flickr group.
Interested in spending time in a family-fun horse ranch? Heartland Equestrian offers horse boarding, lessons and camps for horse lovers of all ages.
Heartland Equestrian.ca is proud to announce their grand opening and fundraiser event taking place this Sunday, June 13th. Join us for a day of family fun!
In addition to offering a tour of the facilities, a riding demonstration, the opportunity to meet the ponies & horses and other entertainment, Heartland will be raising funds in support of Camp BUCKO, BUrn Camp for Kids in Ontario.
The company announced the release of its Caffeine indexing technology–which it has been testing for almost a year–in a blog post late Tuesday evening. “Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before,” the company said in a blog post.
