Entrepreneur business plan template

I've also recently updated my site with a page all about my new entrepreneur business plan template.  This template is a bit different (and better) than most that are available on the web, because I not only give you the areas to focus on, but tell you why they're important and help you to determine if the business you're hoping to create is right for you.

In addition, it gives you guidelines for creating your plan and teaches you what questions your plan should answer so that you can evaluate how effective your plan will be before submitting it to lenders or prospective investors.

It works well for both established businesses who need a plan or for those who are in just in start-up mode.

-Susan Martin, Business Coaching NYC.

Cash flow, profitability and bookkeeping

Larry runs a marketing company in a suburb of Chicago.  He's had a lot of success over the past year, but you'd never know it from what was happening with his bank account.  It seemed that whenever he sat down to write payroll checks or pay vendors he always came up short and often couldn't afford to cash his own paycheck.

When Larry first called me, he had just bounced a couple of checks to key vendors, and was very concerned about cash flow.  He seemed anxious to get this problem solved as quickly as possible.

I asked him for a recent set of financials including a Profit and Loss Statement, and a copy of his General Ledger.  He said that this would be no problem, since he was keeping everything on quickbooks.

When I got the reports, nothing seemed to make sense.  When I dug a little deeper, it seemed that a lot of errors had been made.  Entries were categorized incorrectly, there were deposits missing and no one had reconciled the bank account in months.

Instead of using a bookkeeper, he'd asked his assistant to do the bookkeeping, who knows little about it.  Unfortunately, Larry attemps to save money backfired on him.

Luckily, the situation was salvageable.  With some effort, we were able to straighten things out.  When we did we were able to start analyzing his finances.

We looked at his sales, overhead, and cogs.  We found out that he was losing money and that he lacked enough working capital to do the amount of business he currently had in house.

From there, we created a budget and projections for the coming year.  We determined where to cut costs, and learned how much more in sales he needed to do to become profitable.

Once we did this, we could focus on getting there.  A year later, Larry's business is showing a profit and he's taking home more money every week.

When armed with the correct financial information, great things can happen.

How accurate are your financial records?

-Susan Martin, NYC Business Coach

Who's minding the store?

Mark runs a small graphic design studio.  He's the art director, and has two full time and one part time designers on staff.  Mark's day to day tasks mostly revolve around supervising the designers, doing presentations, trouble shooting, dealing with printers and making sure projects are done on time.

His busy schedule over the last couple of months hasn't left much time for dealing with much else.

Because of this, a lot of things have been pushed to the side.  He hasn't kept up with his books, so he's behind in his invoicing and hasn't paid his bills recently.  He's neglected to get back to several potential clients who have called, and frankly, he's forgotten who they are or where he put their numbers. 

He hasn 't done any marketing in quite a while, and Mark had a bad feeling that once he's finished with the current jobs in house, that he'll be hitting a dry spell...

A rush job had to be delivered to one of his best clients the next day.  Mark couldn't understand why it had been stuck at the printers for such a long time.  He called the printer, and found out that his job had been pushed to the side in favor of a customer who "pays their bills on time".  Mark was out of time, and even though he offered to send over the check right away, the printer couldn't guarantee that the job could go on press for a day or so...

Mark was stressing out about this when the phone rang.  It was an old client who'd requested a quote 3 weeks ago.  Although he had given Mark all the details, Mark had no idea of what he did with them, and the conversation ended with the customer threatening to go elsewhere.

As he searched through the papers on his desk trying to find the info. for the quote, he came across two things.  One was a notice from the IRS that he had completely forgotten about.  His tardiness on this matter had already cost him about $1000 in interest and penalties, and now it was probably even more.  The other was an envelope of packing slips for some jobs that had gone out last month which he hadn't gotten around to invoicing. 

The last straw occured Friday, when he started to write out the paychecks and realized that he didn't have enough in the account to cover payroll.  (if he had only done his invoicing...)

Who's minding your store?

-Susan Martin, Business Sanity Coach

Costly Mistakes of Working "In" Instead of "On" Your Business

Years ago, in his bestselling book "The E-Myth Revisited" Michael Gerber pointed out that the typical entrepreneur, business owner or professional spends most of his or her time working "in" the business, instead of working "on" the business; and this is the most significant reason that most small businesses don't work.

Not much has changed since.  The vast majority of clients I've met since starting Business Sanity have certainly followed suit.  After all, it makes perfect sense, since so many people start businesses because they have a specific talent, ability or skill; and want to use it to make money for themselves, rather than a boss.  The trouble begins when they continue to behave as though they're working for someone else, and just do the work; not run the business.

What are some of the areas that are overlooked when you only work "in" the business?

• Sales and marketing: So many business owners neglect to go after new business when they're busy; as a result, they fall into the dreaded "feast and famine" cycle and tend to get desperate and scramble when things are slow.
• Strategic business planning:  Many are so pre-occupied with the work at hand, that business planning gets pushed to the side, often indefinitely.  Often this behavior leads to "crises management" and downhill from there.
• Finances: Depending upon the size of the business, all sorts of financial issues are overlooked, from paying bills and doing invoices to bookkeeping, to financial planning and analysis; dangerous territory that's too often tread upon.
• Production and quality control: There's nothing worse than when you get the business and then screw it up.  Maintaining on-time deliveries and a high standard of quality were never more important.
• Time management and productivity:  Getting caught up working "in" the business often eats up your time, so that you have none left for running the business. 

What areas of your business have been neglecting by working "for" not "on" the business?

-Susan Martin, NYC based business coach.