The 20 Question Business Plan

The "20 Question Business Plan" is a simple way to craft a business plan as well as to rekindle your relationship with your business. This Week with Sara Fitts is using the "20 Question Business Plan" because last week 2 of my clients (who own small businesses) were both needing to re-engage in their businesses. For whatever reason these clients had let the day-to-day thrills of running a business fall by the wayside and get replaced with fear and frustration. You, too, can use these 20 questions to get yourself back on track if you are self-employed, own your own business, or are thinking of building your own business.

The 20 Question Business Plan

1. Describe your business in 25 words or less.
2. What is the purpose for building your business?
3. What trend is your business going to invent or remove?
4. Why will you be successful? Why have you been successful in the past?
5. What's the mission of your business in 10 words or less?
6. What's the pain or frustration that your business will help your customers reduce?
7. How do you know you'll meet your customers needs?
8. Where will your next 5 customers come from and how much will they pay?
9. Why should your customers use you instead of some other business that does almost the same thing?
10. How do you intend to get 1000 potential buyers interested in your product or service?
11. Who's going to handle customer service and what are your 5 performance benchmarks in this area?
12. How much will it take to fund your business this year?
13. What are the weaknesses or shortcomings that you plan to outsource or compnesate for?
14. What will tell you that your business is going well - and what will tell you that your business in not going well?
15. What is the biggest limitation to your business?
16. How vibrant is the industry in which you offer your product or service?
17. How will you handle the money and accounting?
18. How quickly will your business be profitable and by how much?
19. What is your profit margin (revenue less actual cost of the product/service)?
20. Who do you need to bring in to ensure your success?

Bonus Question: How much do you plan to sell your business for and in how many years?

These 20 questions provide a simple exercise that I believe all self-employed professionals, small business owners, and anyone who is thinking of building a business needs to answer candidly. And sometimes we all need to dust off the business plan we wrote when we first started our businesses - and renew our interest and lift our spirits. Sometimes we just need to get back to the roots of our desire to own and run a business.

If you have questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you. I hope that today's post will help you re-kindle the fire and love for your business.

4 Ways our Environment Controls Our Results

There are numerous ways that our environment controls our results. Today's post will discuss 4 ways.

1. When we surround ourselves with negative people (employees, colleagues, friends, etc.), we become less positive. We may actually become negative as a direct result of being around negative people.
2. When we surround ourselves with positive, upbeat people, we naturally become more positive and upbeat.
3. When we develop a "work when it's time to work and play when it's time to play" philosophy, we become more balanced and produce better results.
4. When we throw caution to the wind, we really jeopardize our results.

These 4 ways are quite simplistic in scope; however, designing productive environments is not rocket science or brain surgery. It is basically common sense with deliberate action. Without deliberate action, our environments may never be as conducive to productivity and solid results.

Our environment really does control our results - and we can exert enough control over the design and development of our environments in order to get the best results possible.

More to come.....

Our Environment Controls Our Results

This Week with Sara Fitts takes a look at results - and what causes some results to be better than others. While reading Reposition Yourself by Bishop T. D. Jakes, he writes "Environment has so much to do with results." As I reflected on that quote, what came to me is this: We can control our results by controlling our environment. While some things in our environment cannot be changed, we definitely have the power to change a lot of things within our environment - our business or personal environment.

In our business environment we can design a supportive environment. We can surround ourselves with positive, supportive people as well as structures for success that will help us focus on the most important elements of our businesses. Here is a basic list of items that successful environments have:

• the best business plan we can develop
• the best staff we can assemble
• the best product/services we can deliver
• the best target market we can define
• the best location in which to grow our business
• the best support structures to include software, hardware, technology, etc.
• the best communication system in order to solve any and all issues that distract from the work at hand - on any given day

Too many times we look at our results and wonder why we aren't doing better. And, too many times we never really consider the real reason for less than optimal results. I think the key lies in the environment. Whether our results are good or bad, the environment in which we work determines to a great extent our success - or failure.

We can design the best environment for our success - and then we can create it. While a great deal of work must go into this process, it really is a simple process at its basic level. Here are some questions that can get us thinking about the kind of environment we really want to create in order to get the best results possible:

• What is the vision for this business?
• What is the purpose of this business?
• What are the 3 most important factors that we must have in order to get good results?
• What are the 3 key attributes of each employee that must be present in the environment?
• What are the 3 key attributes of each client or customer?
• What must we never have in our environment?
• How will we change when the need arises?
• How will we measure our results - and our overall success?

We can change our results by changing our environments - because our environment controls our results.

If you want to explore how you can improve your results, please contact Sara Fitts and schedule a one-on-one strategy session. She gets results for her clients. For more information please visit http://www.SLFConsulting.com or call 703.791.4741 today.