Branson Centre Foundations - Writing a Business Plan

Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship - Session 6, Part 2:
Writing a Business Plan

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So this is it. The moment we've been working up to over the last five and a half lessons.
*cue dramatic, suspenseful drum roll*

The BUSINESS PLAN!

*boom, crash, thunder, gasp, wide eyes all around*

Those of us who have been paying attention in class (ok... the compliance session doesn't count!) and doing the homework are ready. I feel a little like I'm about to skydive for the first time. I've gone through the training and the parachute is strapped to my back... And I'm clinging onto the plane, white knuckles and all. I can do this!

Starting and running a business without planning properly is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. If you do survive - it will probably be very painful, and take a long time to fully recover.

A business plan is not just a stack of paper with copy and paste information on it, that will gather dust in some forgotten filing cabinet. It's a working document, and it should change as your business changes. It's also an essential planning tool that forces you to think through your all aspects of your business so that you are fully aware of and able to mitigate the risks.

In South Africa, many small businesses are born out of necessity. With the rate of unemployment and the need to put food on the table, most small business owners are focused on the short term, day-to-day needs. The problem with this approach is that it's not sustainable. If you want your business to survive, you need to be able to think and see beyond your immediate needs. We will always have needs. However, if we fail to plan we will be stuck in a reactive cycle, where our circumstances dictate our life choices. Rather stand back and take stock. Think about where you want your business to be. See it. Plan for it. Aim for it, and then do it.

Now, after that lengthy intro - let me get into the meat of the last session of the Branson Centre Foundations Course:

• First off, keep it simple, formal and professional. Don't include irrelevant information. Nobody is interested in the fact that you won a spelling bee in grade 2. A long business plan does not necessarily mean a good business plan.
• Use spell check! Proof read your plan. Get your grammar nazi friend to proof read your plan. Nothing says "careless" like a business plan with spelling or grammatical errors.
• Make your plan stand out. Don't misunderstand me here. It's possible to go over the top. Remember that the focus is on the written content, and make sure any graphic elements are relevant to your business. For heavens sake, don't use screen bean clipart or the Comic Sans font.
• If you have used reference material as part of your research, by all means, include it - but make sure that you credit the source properly.

A business plan should have the following components:

• Cover page
• An Executive Summary
• Table of Contents
• Business Description
• The Market
• Development and Production
• Sales and Marketing
• Management
• Financials

If you're looking fo a template to get you started - check out www.southafrica.smetoolkit.org 

Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship - Session 6

Branson Centre Session 6 - Part 1: Compliance is EXCITING! (...right?)

To view Session 1 click here

To view Session 2 click here

To view Session 3 click here

To view Session 4 click here
To view Session 5 click here

I thought I would fall asleep in the accounting session, but I didn't. I thought I would fall asleep in the session on business compliance... and I nearly did. Not because the Branson Centre Foundations course manual makes it seem boring. Unfortunately business, like life, is not always fun. There's some serious slog work involved, like having to deal with topics that could cure even the most extreme case of insomnia.

Welcome to the real world of being an entrepreneur in South Africa. If you want to build a business that can not only survive, but thrive in a tough economy - you need to have all your ducks in a row. Claiming ignorance is not going to cut it. This is not high school where you can get away with anything by giving a teacher the "puppy dog eyes" look. 

Not complying can have a number of negative consequences - some more scary than others. You might be able to hide away from someone coming to check your TV licence - but SARS has eyes everywhere. If your company is not compliant, you could face some very serious legal and financial consequences. You could lose your business because of willful ignorance. I know for most of us, the word "legislation" may as well be an expletive, but you can't get away from it. Face it head on. Find out what you need to do to be compliant, and get it over and done with. Rip that bandaid off. Its painful for a moment, but you'll be glad you did it later. 

Are you ready? Make sure you have match-sticks handy so you can keep your eyelids open during the next paragraph.

Different forms of business have different compliance requirements when it comes to things like:
- The CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Properties Commission)
- Accounting records and financial statements
- Audits
- Solvency and Liquidity
- Directors and prescribed officers

You'll also need to investigate what your compliance requirements are in terms of:

Company Tax
VAT
PAYE
UIF
SDL
COID

and WTF. For those of you who aren't familiar with WTF, your social media strategy needs some attention. If clients are using this term when it comes to your product or service, you have some pressing customer service issues to deal with.

If you're really battling to sleep, you may want to read through the following Acts:

The Companies Act, No 71 of 2008
The Income Tax Act No 58 of 1962
The Unemployment Insurance Act No 63 of 2001
The Skills Development Act no 97 of 1998
The Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act no 130 of 1993 as amended

The bottom line is, know and make sure you comply with the requirements for your form of business. And make sure that your business is compliant in terms of the above legislation.

Branson Centre Foundations - Session 5

To view Session 1 click here

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To view Session 3 click here

To view Session 4 click here

The F word

Before Friday's session on accounting, finance was just another F word to me.

I nearly ventured into the murky waters of accounting in my first year of high school, but when I went to collect my textbooks - the French one looked far more interesting.

In the last 5 weeks I've enjoyed every one of the sessions but somehow my aversion to accounting made me wish I had some plausible excuse for missing this session.

In the first 5 minutes of the session I was glad I'd made the effort to drag myself out of bed. I have 3 children, all under 5 years old, so staying in bed was never a real option anyway... but a girl can dream can't she?

Hats off to Adam Franklin, who, in the space of 8 hours managed to demystify accounting for a room full of wide eyed entrepreneurs. If the Accounting Comes Alive - Color Accounting system had been around way back in my school days I would have skipped French. I think. Ok I can manage accounting for a day, but I'm not a masochist. French would probably still have won.



Before we got started Adam asked us to introduce ourselves, state what we knew or thought of accounting, and say what our favorite drinks were. I learnt two things during this exercise. First, most of us are either confused by, petrified of or downright hated accounting. Second a lot of people lied about their favorite drinks! In a class of 20 people (some of whom I have already seen knock back beers) there were an unbelievable number (no really, I don't believe it at all) of health nuts - with water being their favorite drink. Psssh. I think we all need to learn a bit more about being more real instead of adjusting who we are to suit the audience. Its part of being consistent with your values and principles. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with liking water, but if it isn't your favorite drink - and you actually like Black Label then stick your neck out there and take a risk! Be comfortable enough with who you are to be willing to stand out.

Back to finance... The Color Accounting system is a stroke of sheer genius. As a creative, my brain thinks in pictures and descriptive language - not technical jargon.

                                     Understanding The Balance Sheet, Income Statement and transactions made easy

The system helps you take baby steps toward understanding some complicated concepts in a fun way.

The first thing we learnt was that most of us had some sort of baggage when it came to accounting. Misconceptions and misinformation we had picked up along the way. All of our baggage had to be left at the door.

Over the course of the day we absorbed so much information that we thought our heads would burst. There were a lot of confused faces at first, but as the day progressed there were more and more "aha" moments, and less worried frowns.

I can now say with confidence that I understand the basics of how to prepare, read and interpret balance sheets and income statements.

My biggest learning from the day is that as a business owner you need to have a good understanding of the language of finance. It's not good enough to leave it up to your bookkeeper to prepare, read and interpret those statements. He or she doesn't understand the business as well as you do, and may not spot problem areas before its too late. If you know how to read your company's financials it empowers you to act swiftly when correction is needed. It also has influence on determining the strategy your company needs to implement.

The next step for me is to prepare my company's balance sheet and income statement. I'm still feeling a little daunted, but overall I feel that the knowledge gained during this intensive 1 day course has empowered me to take on a task that seemed impossible before.

Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship - Session 4: Communicating with your Customer

Royalty and strip-poker

To view Session 1 click here
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We've all heard the cliched catchphrase "customer is king". While just reading the phrase makes me want to gag - there's a truth hidden in there somewhere.

Think about the royalty you know. The first thing I think of is some poor ginger being hunted by the paparazzi (while playing an innocent card game) in the privacy of his Las Vegas hotel room. There are two points I want to make here. First - royals misbehave, or shall I say, they behave in a way we think they shouldn't. Second - hotels should have curtains, or tinted windows... oh wait a minute... no, that wasn't my second point.

My real second point is that royals, kings, customers - are people. They do what they like. They have opinions and weird habits (some weirder than others!). The most pertinent point
is that their behavior is seldom governed by what we think they should do.

As a business owner, you're in a dangerous place when you assume that what is important to you is important to your customer. When your marketing efforts are focussed on communicating information that is important only to your business, your customer's "what's in it for me?" question goes unanswered.

"Ultimately, marketing is not about the strategies you put together
or the brilliant advertising or branding you design;
its about how your customer experiences your business."

- Branson Centre, Foundations of Entrepreneurship

In Session 4 of the Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship course, we were challenged to think beyond "me, myself and I". We evaluated a number of different products/ services from a customers perspective. We tried to identify what their top priorities and expectations were. It was quite a challenge because most of us are so used to trying to promote our own products and services. Its difficult to be objective. You actually have to switch roles and look at your business from a customer's perspective before you can effectively communicate that your offering meets their needs.

If you don't go through the process of correctly identify customer needs, its far too easy to get distracted or focus on things that are irrelevant to the customer. Its a bit like peddling on a stationary bike. You work up a sweat. You puff and you pant. You're exhausted when you get off the bike - but in reality you haven't moved forward. And now you are wet and smelly too.

Back from the tangent I just went on... Once your focus is on your customer, you are in the right mental space to develop an effective Marketing plan. Essentially developing this plan boils down to answering 3 questions:
1. How do you make potential customers aware that you exist?
2. How do you get them interested in doing business with you?
3. How do you put your product or service in their hands?

From there we went on to learn about the various components of the Marketing cycle, which starts with researching and understanding  your market environment. Once you have a good understanding of this, you can develop and implement pointed and effective marketing, promotional and sales strategies. All of these activities are rounded off by a thoughtful and deliberate customer service approach - which encourages repeat business.

A new concept to me is touch points. I think the concept may have been floating around somewhere in my overtaxed grey matter, but now I have a neat little name for it.
Every business has a brand. That brand is a set of beliefs that customers associate with either the business, the product, or the service. Your brand is essentially a promise to your customers of what they can expect when they deal with they interact with your business.

Touch points are contact points that customers, or prospective customers have with your organisation. Each of these interactions provide an opportunity for the brand to either uphold or break its promise. Websites, sales staff, receptionists, product performance, payment mechanism or even delivery and installation are all touch points.

Lastly, we came to grips with the different stages of the sales process. This is a summarized version of what it looks like:

1. Generate leads
2. Qualify opportunities 
3. Develop and submit a proposal
4. Negotiate and close the sale

There's so much content in those 4 points, I think it best to split them into future topics on their own instead of trying to tackle them all here. One thing I'd like to highlight is that there needs to be a fair mix of prospects in different stages of the sales process. Its no good having a million prospects, but few have been qualified, negotiated or closed. 

Similarly, if you've closed a number of deals, but your new prospects are looking dry - you're going to suffer down the line! Keep it flowing! A large percentage of every day needs to be focussed on activities that are sales oriented. 

A final though, and something I'm going to try and put into practice following this session - systematize your sales process. Devise a system that works for your company that standardises customer contact methods and frequency. Once you've made the system, put it into practice. 

In my next post, I'll cover how I've implemented the knowledge gained in this session to my own business - so keep an eye out for that. 

Until then - be sure to close the curtains when you play strip poker. You never know where those sneaky photographers are lurking!

Ready, aim, fire

Reflections on Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship - Session 3

To view Session 1 click here
To view Session 2 click here
To view Session 3 click here


One of the "aha" moments that I had during the "Strategise it, Plan it, Do it" session was that as an entrepreneur  there is no room for living by default. Well, technically there is - if your goal is to fail, then living by default is a great way for you to achieve that goal.

This session has prompted me to examine myself carefully and ask some tough questions.  It wasn't fun admitting that there was disparity between my principles and their practical application in my daily activities, both personal and professional.  Eek! I've determined though, that I'm not going to shy away from making change where its evidently needed. In my personal life, and my business - my plan is to live with purpose, not by default.

The practical exercises have helped me to pinpoint what is really important to me - as a person, and how that affect the business I run. I've evaluated how I currently do business, including how I deal with customers, suppliers and managing finances. I've identified a number of areas where things need to change. Goals have been set, and action steps have been identified.

A big realisation that came through facilitator feedback on my homework (thanks Bushera Bashir!) is that goal setting as a business is broader than just financial. Its easy to focus on wanting to make more money when you are currently cash strapped. Its not a bad thing to want to make money, but it should be as the positive knock-on effect of really understanding your market, planning well, working smart and addressing areas that have been identified as weakness in your SWOT analysis.

The bottom line is do your homework, get yourself ready (SWOT, systems and research) set your goals, aim - and then FIRE!

Strategy, focus, action... and juggling

Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship - Session 3

To view Session 1, click here

To view Session 2, click here

There's nothing graceful about learning to juggle. You may feel like a total klutz, madly waving your arms in every direction while every ball crashes down at once.  Here's a little secret... Unless you are one of the few exceptionally coordinated - you DO look as bad as you feel. 

Here's another secret. Possibly one that every entrepreneur will want to shout from the nearest rooftop. It's ok to admit that you have no idea how to juggle.

If you want to learn how to stay open for business though, you need to keep many different balls in the air at once and be focused enough to know which one to catch when.

Let's move on from the cleverly crafted metaphor I am silently patting myself on the back for and on to my thoughts of Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship Session 3.

Session 3 was entitled "Strategise it, Plan it and then Just DO IT!"
We started off by identifying the principles and values we ascribe to. As an entrepreneur, your personal values carry through strongly into your business. They influence how the business operates.

In his book "Lose the business plan",  Allon Raiz (founder of Raiscorp) says

"Have you ever steered a small boat? The key to going forward is to make sure that the rudder, the mechanism that controls the boat is aligned with the bow, or front, of the boat. If the rudder is not pointed in the same direction, the boat will go around in circles. It is the same with a business. The rudder is the values of the business owner; the boat is the values of the business."
(Raiz, 2010:53)

After identifying what was important to us as individuals and writing a personal vision statements, we were better equipped to write vision and mission statements for our businesses. Not the kind that get framed, hung on a wall and then forgotten. The kind that you can refer back to and know, unequivocally, what is important to the business, why  and how it does what it does and for whom.

We also took a look at the standard strategy acronyms that everybody has heard of but few actually use as often (or effectively) as they should. You guessed it SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable  Realistic and Time-bound) goal setting.

Having clearly identified our target markets in a previous session, as well as checking out what our competition was up to, made doing the SWOT analysis easier.

We were asked to set 3 goals for our business over the next 3 years. I honestly had to think very hard on this one. It's easy to be flippant or thumb suck a goal, but it had to be both achievable and realistic. In the early days as a business owner, when you're living from day to day, trying to pay bills - you (and by that I mean I) hope things will work out - but you're so caught up in the now that proper planning seems like too time intensive an exercise. 

Long term planning is essential. If you don't have a destination in mind for your business, then you will land up in a place you don't want to be in - by default. Or you may go around in circles indefinitely.

Once you know where you want your business to go, and your long term goals are set - you can work on the "How do we get from here to there?" question. This is where monthly, weekly and daily planning comes in. 

It's also where the next essential component fits. Putting the right systems in place.
I love the way its stated in the Branson Centre Foundations manual:

"S.Y.S.T.E.M - Save. Yourself. Time. Energy and Money."

We were encouraged to take a critical look at how our businesses operate as well as the systems we currently had in place. Part of our (growing pile of) homework was identifying the systems that needed to be implemented in our companies. 

If you want to become a successful juggler... I mean entrepreneur - then you need to start by strategising, planning and doing.