Here’s the thing that I’ve found difficult with learning about small business. You can look at a business from the outside and believe it successful, profitable, growing, and all those good things, but you never really know how it is doing unless the owner(s) come out and spills the details. This is extremely unlikely to happen, unless you personally know and have a good relationship with an owner, and here are a couple reasons why:

  • The majority of small businesses are not publicly traded and are thus not required to divulge their financials.
  • Business owners are worried someone else will steal their ideas. If everyone else knew what you knew, what competitive edge would you have, right?

Why are financials so important to business?

You need to see those financials to see how a business is doing. Some may argue, “Greg, business is not all about the money”. I agree. However, making money is the end goal of business. Without profits your business will cease to exist. You can be unprofitable for certain periods of time, but no business can operate indefinitely without profits. If profits isn’t your motive, you don’t run a business. Look at Bill Gates. Microsoft is his business, but when his goal is not money, he’s running a charity (The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).

Business is not as transparent as sports. In a 100m race, you can tell who won by just looking at the race. In business however, who sold the most isn’t necessarily the winner. GM is pulling in billions of dollars in revenue every year, but since we know how profitable they are because they are a publicly traded company, we know they’re not winning the selling cars and being profitable race.

What about the non-financials of business, those are important?

Correct, the strategy, tactics, ideas, plan and all those aspects of a business are important. Those are easier than financials to come by, but again, when we’re talking about small business, so this is not terribly easy to do so without connections. I’ve had numerous people call me up to talk about my businesses over the years, lots of them wanting to start a similar business up on their own. I would talk about setting up a business in general terms, but I didn’t go in-depth and show them everything about the business. I didn’t have the time. If I did have the time, I still wouldn’t have for fear of giving away all my ideas.

Can you learn about a business from the media?

Think again. I was shocked when media reporters would almost entirely regurgitate what I said to them about my past businesses (like here and here). I didn’t lie, but I could have. When you’re getting press about your company, you’re also not going to mention any of the negatives, real difficulties, or even the secrets that make your business work. If we’re talking about big business, there’s a chance for more scrutiny, but how many times have we seen big companies tell lies and have it reported as fact?

Can you see how successful a business is based on awards?

Just like the media you could feed the award committees anything you like and many of the judges judging small business awards would take what you say at face value. Again, never lied to any award committee myself, but I could have. In any case, I believe that the small business owners that are successful are usually so busy being successful, that they aren’t bothering about awards. If one come their way, they’ll accept it, but they’re not going out of their way to get one, unless it is part of their PR (public relations) strategy.

What about learning about business from the business owner?

Hey, that would be great if successful business owners would talk about their businesses. They do. You can get nuggets of information here and there, from a speech, the business person’s website, or books that they write. Can you get the whole business picture though? Will you get a transparent look at not only the overarching strategy of the business, but also the nuts and bolts?

Lucky for you, I’m willing to do such a thing, to give a transparent look into what I’m doing in business. Unluckily for you, I wouldn’t consider myself very successful in business. The first step will lie in my business plan.

Greg’s Business Plan

I’ll be publishing an uncensored version of my business plan. Most of the times business plans are marked confidential and are only to be seen by privileged eyes such as bankers and investors. In some cases, busineses will have people will sign NDA’s (non-disclosure agreements) so that they won’t talk about the plan.

When I first was starting business I was paranoid about telling people about my ideas for fear that someone would steal them. That was more than 10 years ago when the Internet was just starting to become mainstream and before most people fully understood how ideas could zip around the world in an instant via the Internet. It is now 2010, so it would seem even more foolish to publicly make available my plan for business. Here’s my thinking?

I want to help small businesses

I’ve spent a lot of time, energy, heartache, and money on the pursuit of business. I know that there are millions of others doing the same everyday. The way I learn best about things is by looking at real life examples. I’m not talking about text books from business courses where hindsight is 20/20 and we’re talking about big businesses. I’m talking about small businesses that don’t get analyzed, scrutinized, and otherwise investigated nearly as much as big business. If by looking at my failures and successes means other people will benefit, than that will help my goal of helping small business.

With the Internet, currency can come around in many different ways. One type of currency is reputation. If I’m known for helping small businesses, then that will translate into business for me. Reputation is publicity, which is free advertising, the best kind. You can monetize reputation into many different ways.

Sadly, there’s going to be nothing brilliant or earth shattering in my plan. The beauty of the Internet is that it sets these ideas free, allows people to comment on them, modify them, apply them to different things, and in the end make a better idea. I’m actually counting on people looking at my business plan and helping to improve it. Maybe I’m being naive and posting the business plan and discussing it openly will be a mistake, but I’m betting that it won’t.

What I will be doing is posting my business plan on this blog with the aim of it being a working document that will continually change with time. As I change the plan, I’ll update it on the blog. I will provide monthly updates on how the plan is tracking. Since the plan at the start is new, I will assume that it will change more drastically at the start than a year from now.

Keep posted for the first installment of the plan.

The Business Plan

There are 8 sections to the business plan, go ahead, dive in.

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Company Profile
  3. Marketing Plan
  4. SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
  5. Operating Plan
  6. Risk Assessment
  7. Start-Up and Implementation
  8. Financials
  9. Updates