“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” - Benjamin Franklin.  That saying applies perfectly to business planning, or as I like to see it, planning your business journey.

In this episode of ‘I Hate Numbers’ I am going to be talking about Planning your Business Journey, how to turn your business dream into a closer reality

Why you need a business plan

Your business plan is a smart way to map out your future story. Lots of businesses do not bother writing one, then again lots of businesses do not survive and thrive. If you fancy running a business and making money, then have a listen.

If you would rather have a time-consuming hobby and chase your tail, then read no more. You hear business plan, and think it is only needed when you are after funding. You hear business plan and think a waste of your time and energy. You hear business plan and think what I need one for, I know what I am doing.

If that is what you think or been told, think again,

Content

A good business plan makes sense of your jumbled-up thinking. A good business plan helps you focus, chucks that outdated thinking onto the rotting veg pile. A good business plan focuses the mind, brings clarity to where you want to take your business and helps you make money.

We need to consider the main building blocks to our business story, to our business planning.  We need a coherent and consistent story.  The main chapters, the main building blocks include

✅ Business Summary & Purpose

✅ Business goals and objectives

✅ Markets and competitors

✅ Sales and marketing

✅ Operations (not the medical kind)

✅ Your Numbers

✅ Risks

✅ Monitoring and accountability

Numbers

“A Business Plan with no numbers & detail is like going to a restaurant that doesn’t serve food, it’s pointless”,

Your numbers for your business plan reflect the story to be told.  Numbers come second, get your story straight, overlay the numbers, edit, review, and publish.

Your business plan is there to help make you money, not run a hobby. If you want to make money, you need to spend, understand risk, control, and bring that money in.

Good to Know

“Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.” Mike Tyson.

Your business plan is not cast in stone, you need to react and adapt to changing circumstances.  You need to grab opportunities that come your way, ones that you had not envisaged.  However, keep a focus, and do not be distracted by shiny business baubles.  Put in that sweat to get that equity.

What Next

Grab a coffee, make yourself comfortable, sit back and listen.

I love doing this podcast and sharing my love of Numbers with you.  Check out the link to subscribe and don’t miss an episode.  Help me spread that Number Love by downloading it, listening, and taking action in your business.

In This Episode

• Understanding the reasons why your business planning is about story telling
• 
  
• Knowing the key parts of business planning and how they fit together
• 
  
• The vital role that your numbers play in your business planning
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• Developing your own Numbers confidence and decisions
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• Take more control of your numbers to help make you money, survive and thrive

Links

https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/proactiveresolutionss-podcast/id1500471288

https://play.google.com/music/m/I3pvpztpjvjw6yrw2kctmtyckam?t=I_Hate_Numbers

https://open.spotify.com/show/5lKjqgbYaxnIAoTeK0zins

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/proactiveresolutionss-podcast

https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business–Economics-Podcasts/I-Hate-Numbers-p1298505/

You are listening to the I Hate Numbers Podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

Hi guys. Welcome to another weekly episode of I Hate Numbers. Now, before you start panicking, the show isn't about dissing numbers. It's not about hating numbers. Far from it. I live in the world of numbers, and I love numbers, and I love numbers because once you get connected to them in your business, then your business will not only make money, it'll survive and it'll thrive.

This show is my attempt to get you closer to your numbers, break down any phobia, embarrassment that you might have about numbers and actually power your business to greater opportunities and prosperity. So, what are we going to be talking about today? Well, I love the quote by Mike Tyson. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

And today's topic is focusing on that idea of business planning. Now, before you start panicking and thinking, my God, we're not talking about writing a 58-page document here. Business planning for me is more about a mindset and a philosophy than it is about the end document here. Having said that, lots of businesses, whatever your business shape is, whatever your business size is, and they fail

in executing and achieving what they want to because they don't actually have a plan. They have a plan in their head. They have an idea what they want to do, but it's largely going to be a bit of mashed up thinking there, and your business plan is a smart way to map out your future story. Now, lots of businesses don't bother writing one.

I've got no denial of that one. But then again, lots of businesses don't survive. Lots of businesses don't thrive, and lots of businesses don't make money. We may come across the idea of a business plan. If we think we've got to go to the bank and borrow some money, we want to encourage investors to put money into it,

you may go for a funding opportunity. You think, right, I've got to produce this business plan. You might be thinking it's a waste of your time and energy. You might be thinking, what do I need one for? I know what I'm doing. If that's what you think, that's what you've been told, I'd like you to put that thinking to one side and think again.

Your business plan is more than just a document. It's a route map. It's a living, breathing document as much tells the world that you are thinking about the way forward, and you're not focusing on what's happened behind you. Take the analogy. Now, if you were going on holiday, you've got two choices, haven't you?

You can either just turn up at the airport or the ports, whatever your destination route is from starting, and you could think, right, let's see what the departure board is looking like, and that's where I'm going. You can have a great holiday, bit of a rollercoaster, but you've got a massive risk of ending up somewhere which doesn't have accommodation, ending up somewhere

that actually is not your ideal, and therefore what you're probably going to do if you want to have a more enjoyable holiday, is to actually at least think about the routes, think about the accommodation, think about the local customs, what you might want to check out, what you might want to do. So, you're going to have an idea of planning out that holiday.

Well, it should be no different to your business there. Now, in today's episode, what I'm going to be focusing on is what the business plan is and probably as much as anything else, what the business plan isn't. Now, remember, the business plan here is a way to structure, not straitjacket, a way to formulate how you're going to get your end destination.

And for me, typically, when I'm putting together a business plan, I always like to think about the end destination. So, where is it you want to end up? And then we're working backwards to figure out how we're actually going to go there. Figure about your business plan as your route map, your journey plan to get to where you want your business to go.

Typically, I'm going to throw in a few words to here, which we're going to expand on in the future episodes. Now, lots of people mix up words and use words like goals, objectives, smart thinking. Well, let's just get a bit of clarity here. Think about your end goal. Now, a goal isn't just an aspirational thing that says, I want to be rich, who doesn't, but that in itself is a meaningless statement.

Nothing wrong with being wealthy. Nothing wrong with being rich, but effectively, how do you actually know when you've got there if you've got nothing that quantifies turns that goal into something more measurable or more meaningful? A typical goal might be in 12-months time, in two-years time, whenever your time frame is, I wish to increase my profitability by X percent, and obviously X can be 20-30, whatever number makes more sense.

I might wish to increase my turnover by 15%. So, goal is somewhere where you want to get to, but you've got to add a number to it because that number serves two or three purposes. Number one is a milestone. Number two, when you have that conversation with yourself in 12-month’s time, in two-years time, you're going to sit down and say, did I actually achieve what I was going to?

We all set ourselves goals in many facets of life. So, if you are somebody who feels that they want to improve their health, improve their fitness, your goal might be to aim for a target reduction in weight. It might be to go for a certain BMI index, it might be to achieve a certain level of fitness. So, if you have that goal and you add a number to it, it becomes more meaningful.

If you merely just say, I want to be rich, I want to make more profit, I want to have a better lifestyle balance, those are great aspirations, great missions, but effectively they're basically pointless in the context of business planning. Once you've got that end destination if you want, then we can talk about objectives,

and objectives are your tactics. How do I actually go from here to get to that end point? Now, I've said 12-months time, two-years time, you've got to decide how far ahead do you wish to look into your business? Now, looking ahead tomorrow morning, it's going to be impossible to know what's going to happen. So, thinking ahead 12 months, you might think that's a real big ask.

Thinking ahead two years is a big ask. Some organisations I've worked with and businesses have typically done a business plan over a five-year time period. The further we go ahead, the less certainty there is, but at least it's thinking about how you're going to get there. So, within your business plan, think of it as your mindset, and it's for me, detail is really critical here.

So, if you think about getting to that end point of achieving a certain level of turnover growth, achieving a certain level of profitability growth, maybe you have different goals as well. Maybe you wish to move your business into different arenas. Maybe you wish to introduce new products, new services.

The objectives are your tactics. How do you actually do that? And what I'm really a keen fan of here is when you actually put your business plan together, all you want to do, even if you just get a piece of A4 paper or do it in a Word document or however you do that, sketch it out. Get a framework.

Now, within that, here, you're thinking about what are your key goals. I would suggest that you don't go for more than two or three. Within that, and again, I'm a big fan of working backwards here. Think about your elevator pitch, the summary of your business. What is your business about? Who does it serve?

What does it do? What makes you so special? And try to go from the meaningless, bland statements to something that's more concrete and substantial. Within that, what we're going to be working on then is to break it down and typically within your business plan, you're going to have to think about those important things about who you're selling to.

So, your customers. Do not think, oh, I can sell this to everybody because not everybody, however wonderful you are, however lovely you are, however brilliant your products are, not everybody is going to be buying products from you. So, there are going to be certain customers who'll be more interested than others.

So, think about those customers who are likely to buy from you. So, typically, if you are a, let's say, a hospitality business, your certain type of cuisine here may not actually appeal to somebody. If you are running a training business, that training product is not going to be suitable and likable by everybody.

So, think about, put yourself in the shoes of the customer, be a customer-driven organisation and business. Don't be a product based. Don't think, oh, what I do is so brilliant, everyone's going to buy it. I can tell you for now, guys, it's not going to work that way. I do wonderful things. I like to think of my business

not everybody is going to be suitably engaged. Not everybody's going to be interested. So, we don't want a shotgun, a scattergun approach to our business. We want a laser-sighted, more focused approach. So, think about who your customers are. What that helps us with, believe it or not, is once we've identified that arena, those customers who are likely to be interested, it makes our marketing, it makes our messaging more discreet as well.

So, this is just about. Get assembling some of those thoughts. Think about your competitors. And then we like to think we don't have any competitors. We like to think what we're doing is so unique, but everyone's hustling. Everyone's mustling in on your space here. So, think about those people who you might be competing against and make sure you do it on a like-for-like sensible basis.

So, if you are a retailer who's got a, say, a high-street store, you're not going to be competing through a major supermarket chain or major retail chain. It's not a like-for-like comparison. If you are working in the leisure industry, let's say you are a bar, a music venue, well, effectively don't think of it, it's just other music venues.

It's those businesses that may be competing in that leisure space there as well. So, it could be cinemas, it could be theaters, it could be alternative ways that people spend their money on leisure. Other things as well. You need some understanding of where you are at the moment. So, in the next podcast we're going to be talking about some of the things in your toolkit that you can do to actually understand where you are at the moment

because where you are at the moment has a great impact on where you’re likely to end up in the future. Typically, in your business plan, before we abandon it completely, you're going to have to think ultimately about when you come up with your plan of action. And this plan of action, by the way, is a movable feast.

It's not a straitjacket, it doesn't bind you, but it gives you a path to follow. And as you follow that path, there are going to be twists in the road, there's going to be crashes, hopefully not too many. There's going to be reverse gear. Do not expect to make your business go in a straight line. You need to convert that ultimately into what the financial impact will be as well.

So, what are we going to take away from this particular sort of episode today? We're talking about planning. Now, I say business plan because ultimately I think we should get all our thoughts, we should unscramble them, we should try and structure them in a particular way that we've got typically a four to six page action plan.

It tells us what our business is about, our elevator pitch, our summary, our calling card to the world. It tells us about the end destination. Call your goals and again, have, I would suggest about two to three. Two to three is probably a good number because you don't want to dilute, you don't want to splinter your efforts.

Think about your objectives. Those are the tactics that we are going to adopt to get to that end destination. So, if our end destination is improving profitability, that might mean that we're actually looking to sell more products of a certain type. Introducing more services of a certain type, and that's how we are going to get there.

Timelines and milestones. So, if we've got an endpoint within, say, 12 months, work it backwards. What does that look like after two months? What does it look after four, after six? Personal view. I always like these things broken down into monthly milestones. So, when you get to the end of each month, you've got a milestone that you should have achieved.

That is an accountability thing here, and therefore that's going to make it hopefully your mind more focused. Look at your markets, your competitors. Look at the financial plan. What does that mean in number terms. And remember, if you're running a business, bottom line is, if your business is not structured to make money at some point, then basically everybody, you've got a hobby on your hands, a very time-consuming and expensive one,

but that's what you have. And I'm assuming all of us in business have in our crosshairs, is that we need to make money, and by money we're talking about profitability. Now, your business plan, in essence, is going to clarify your idea, define your long-term objectives, and give you a blueprint to actually how you're going to drive your business forwards.

Guys, that's enough from me today. So, we've got this idea in our heads about a business plan. I would suggest as a tip to think about before we have our come back next week, is think about your own business and think for yourself two or three goals that you want or need for your business itself. So, whether it's a profitability issue, obviously that should be, whether it's having enough cash in the bank issue, think about two or three goals and play around with them.

And then, next podcast episode, we're going to get into the nitty gritty here, and I'm going to give you, share some thoughts with you about the toolkit you can use to analyse where you are, so that helps you know where you're going to be and how you're going to get there. Listen to the show notes afterwards.

We've got lots of good information shared on our website, which will be really useful. Let me know what you think of the show. Ultimately, listen, thoughts, download the episode, and I'll speak to you guys, next week. Have a good week. We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show.

We hope you got some value. If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode. We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.