Scrubbing the Business Plan

I was suppose to drive to Massachusetts this weekend to go see my father and thank him in person, as well as have a good heart-to-heart with him, but I’m postponing the trip. I have too much work that needs to get done. I need to do a major scrub over of the business plan. Unfortunately, I haven’t started yet, because I’m not 100% sure how to approach it. There are a multitude of ways things might unfold according to where we are today. Martin and I spent a lot of time white boarding and discussing options this week.

We have created a bootstrap option, which requires around $100,000 of funding and a greater emphasis on creating equity partnerships. The bootstrap option ends up having more phases and a series of soft launches. However, since we are also investing a great deal of energy in raising funds…we obviously would like that option to pan out. With funding we have more marketing and selling power to do a large and hard launch.

No matter what...our concept has many phases—I just have to figure out how to break it all out into the plan accordingly. The original plan still applies, but definitely requires greater details.

I have great apprehensions when it comes to send the plan out. I really have to get over that!! We’ll be sending out close to 100 hard copies of the plan in the next few weeks.

Conundrum and Catch 22

What to do, what to do, what to do…

A little over a week ago I had dinner with a friend, who I actually met through an online dating site about three years ago. We catch up for dinner every blue moon. We hadn’t seen each other for well over a year, so I spent a lot of time catching him up on what I have been up to (and vice versa). You know, from the disappointment and heartbreak of closing down the Coaching Agency, the lessons I learned and of course the new venture I was embarking upon.

He was very interested in Why Go Solo and he definitely thought it was an awesome idea. I then, whined, complained and bitched about my impatients and experience of going about securing funding. He has raised money in the past, so he clearly understood what I was talking about. He offered some good advice and also offered to send my info and business plan to an associate of his that is connected to the founder of the online dating site LavaLife.

I got really excited, since someone with that type of background and available cash would be a wonderful potential investor. I thanked him dearly and planned to get home and send everything to him. By everything, it also meant sending out a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

On my drive home, I began to think about what could happen if I sent out the business plan. No, I wasn’t thinking about how quickly the money would come in, but rather my idea being sent all over the place and then stolen.

Guy Kawasaki, in his book The Art of the Start, says something along the line that, that is pure paranoia on the part of the entrepreneur and VC firms and Angel Investor groups do not sign NDAs. I understand that...kinda, but I feel it’s different when you send it to individuals. My friend would sign the NDA, but what about the next guy, and the next guy and the next guy.

You want to keep positive control of your business plan. You want to know who it is being sent to and preferably you want to get it back. I much rather give someone a hard copy of the plan and get it back after a certain amount of time. Yes, the person could make a copy, but that is much more limiting then having a soft copy which can be easily changed and forwarded.

The conundrum of course then becomes…if I don’t send out the plan, then how can I expect to get this potential investor? What’s a gal to do? I’m leaning towards sending out the executive summary and the blog website address. If the interest is truly there, then I can have direct contact with the investor and ask him to personally sign the NDA, then send the plan.

It’s a longer process and possibly one that might not work, but I have to do what makes me comfortable with this matter. Anyone have any other thoughts on this?

Writing the Business Plan

This is definitely not an official post on how to go about writing a business plan, but rather, a recap of what the experience was like for me and the steps I took.

The first business plan I ever wrote, which was for the Coaching Agency, was done based off reading a few books on the subject. Thankfully, the books also provided a few examples and outlines of specific parts every business plans need to have. I couldn’t cut and paste but I could, at least, plagiarize a little. This second time around, I borrowed some software (Business Plan Pro 2006) from a friend. Okay, I didn’t borrow it. He highly recommended I use it, since you can actually insert test and simply massage it to meet your needs. I thought: “Hey, alright, that ought to make things real easy”

Once the software was loaded on my laptop, I took the following steps:

Step One: I bought a double fudge chocolate cake, made a full pot of coffee and conjured up some fake motivation in an attempt to get started on writing the plan. The cake and coffee were a way to bribe myself into getting this done or at least started. So, once I was done eating the chocolate cake and drinking massive amounts of coffee (this is, btw, the reason I gained 15 plus pounds with my first business) I was all hyped up on caffeine and sugar, but hadn’t really gotten far at all.

That’s the thing with me when it comes to writing…it’s all there in my head, but getting it out can be quite challenging.

Step Two: I surfed the internet…more specifically Craiglists and the men seeking women section and decided to call it “research”. Funny thing about that, is that, I found myself really enjoying many of the posts I read. A vast majority were very well written, thought out and seemed truly genuine.

Step Three: I answered a few posts, and by a few, I mean probably close to a dozen. I got some great replies and even met up with a handful of the guys that were on there…but I digress. Besides getting a few dates, what really conspired, is that replying to the ads is what got me to write and it’s what turned out to be the source of my inspiration to finally, truly, get cranking on writing the business plan.

Step Four: Write, write and write. I was finally getting the concept out of my head. Once I got into the flow, it came pouring out. While I was writing, I was also doing research. I had many late nights and I often went to Panera Bread and Starbucks to change things up.

Step Five: I got to a point where I needed more data and this where Martin’s expansion of the concept really paid off. We now had the meat and potato we needed to give the concept and the business plan greater validity.

Step Six: Outsource what you can’t do yourself. Like I mentioned in another post, I suck at doing financial spreadsheets, so Martin began working on those with information we brainstormed together. We both got really giddy at the time we were making projections and talking about what we could realistically accomplish. The financial numbers were bigger then anything he or I had ever seen in our lives. We really became intoxicated on the true potential and possibilities of this business. Ruth thought we were both a little wacky. She was definitely the one we went to in order to balance out the assumptions we were making. Sometimes she thought we were too high and sometimes she thought we were too low.

Step Seven: Allow things to settle in. Writing the plan and seeing our financial future was very exciting and scary. Were we being realistic? Could we really pull this off?

Step Eight: Bounce the idea/concept off some people. As we were getting closer to finalizing the plan (as if it will EVER be finalized), we started talking and meeting up with some people in order to make sure we were on the right track and indeed, not being unrealistic. Since this post is getting kinda long, I’ll talk about who those people were in later posts. However, I do want to point out that everyone we spoke with provided excellent constructive criticisms, loved the concept and gave us great support.

I haven’t looked at the plan for a few weeks now; I need to and will in the next few days. We haven’t received the funding we need yet, so we’re getting back out there and we need a strong plan to get us what we’re seeking. Next post will be about that painful road we’re on…which is, trying to secure funding.