The “bad” book I read was from a series, only a few years old, and it hit all of the major areas of a business plan. But, while covering all of the contents of a plan it did nothing in the way of advising readers how to focus their energy within the plan and how to think like a funder. A reader of this book would be swamped with all of the writing work required, never understanding the big picture. They would write a forty page-long plan based on the instructions given in this book and would then be at a loss as to how they could cut it down to a manageable size.

There are hundreds of business planning/business plan writing books out there. Now, I haven’t written a business planning book myself and I don’t plan to anytime soon. But I have read better books, so I know that this a topic which can be captured in a book well if handled carefully and thoughtfully.

When choosing a book, choose one from a writer with a track record of entrepreneurial success or by someone who has been in a position to fund or not fund plans (a venture capitalist, angel investor, banker, etc). Watch out for books from a series, even if under a reputable name, unless the writer for that series fits this profile. One very accessible, but thorough book is Bankable Business Plans by Edward Rogoff (a professor at my business school Baruch). As I read others I can heartily recommend I will talk about them as well.

If you are launching a business, the first book you should buy is not a business planning book, but a book about entrepreneurship like The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber or The Knack by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlington. These types of books will help you focus your concept, decide if you are ready to be an entrepreneur, and think about what a plan needs to accomplish. The writing itself should not be a difficult process if your heart and mind are fully in the business and you recognize your own limitations as a writer (seek help from a business plan writer or consultant if you need it).

Consultant vs Manager Differences

A consultant:

- Is compensated from completing a project

- Is judged in aggregate on a body of work

- Is often not in control of the implementation of their recommended strategy

- Offers deep knowledge or process experience on limited engagement

A manager:

- Is compensated by salary (by the day), bonuses for performance

- Is judged after each assignment (constantly)

- Is in control of the implementation of a recommended strategy

- Offers general knowledge or process experience on all responsibilities

Importance and Occurrence

An important question to ask when choosing whether to bring on a consultant for a problem or opportunity or to work on it with in-house resources or a new hire is “will company face the challenge again?” The second question is “how important is it for us to find a solution to this challenge?’ Low importance means there is a minimal effect on profitability, high has high effect on profitability (expenses, revenues or both).

In situations of high occurrence the answer tends toward the in-house solution – making the resource part of the operations of the company. In situations of low occurrence the answer leans tends towards the consultant solution – setting up distinct, one-time projects.

When there is high importance and low occurrence seek a consultant with specific experience in area.

High importance, high occurrence – Assign to a senior manager with experience in area or seek to hire this individual. You’ll save money in the long-run by solving these challenges in-house.

Low importance, high occurrence – Assign to lower managers or employees who have experience or are trained to deal with this type of problem. High occurrence will allow for time for training.

Low importance, low occurrence – Employees without experience in area  should be empowered to deal with this category. However, it may be better to have a senior manager take care of this category at the start since they’ll bring their general experience to the problem and set rules or systems for how to handle the problems it they should arise again.

Knowledge

Another variable that come into play in the consultant vs. manager question is the proprietary nature of learning that will occur while working on the problem. Is this in-house knowledge that will result worth the extra expense of having a manager work on it (and remember that the cost of a manager’s time is really the opportunity cost of the highest work that manager could be doing for the company, not just their salary and related overhead).

Length of the Challenge

Another variable is the length of challenge:

Long-term – (over 1 year) – lean toward a hire

Medium-term (6 mos – 1 year) – lean toward a temporary hire or intern help (if low importance)

Short-term (Up to 6 mos) – lean toward a consultant if high importance, freelancer if low importance

Generally, the longer-term and higher occurrence of the challenge, the more the company should wants to learn from the solution and carry that skill in-house.

The Right Role

Look for a consultant who takes the kind of role you need fulfilled. If it is a project of strategy formulation you need a consultant who will take a collaborator role and work alongside your team (especially one who understands the process of strategy formulation). If you need knowledge out of the project primarily, seek a consultant who takes an expert role in the area you are interested in. If you seek skilled implementation of a solution, look for a consultant skilled in management. If you just need additional labor to implement a solution, find a consultant comfortable taking a “pair of hands” role. This is not the same as these other types of consultants.

However, when seeking out a skilled consultant to lead an implementation remember that this should build capacity in your team to do this type of implementation in the future (assuming it may occur again). Your team should also take interest in the process of implementation that is chosen and have a conversation about this if there are concerns. Don’t let your team step back and wait for the consultant to fall flat so they can lay the blame externally. Everyone loses in this situation. Make sure the consultant and your team undergo a collaborative process to solve this.

What is ignored in this equation is the answer to “why did the business run out of money?” The answer to this is the real reason for the business’s failure. It could be because there was no sales strategy or a malfunctioning marketing plan. It could be because competitors were really already serving the market need well and the founders were wearing rose-colored glasses when considering their chances at carving out market share. It could be because costs were 2x, 5x or 10x what was expected because of poor research and planning or a lack of a risk management strategy. These are the real reasons businesses fail. Stating that more capital could save these new businesses infers that money answers everything. If it buys more time to fix the real problem, maybe it would have helped. If more capital would have meant throwing good money after bad on the business, isn’t it better for our economy to know that businesses are failing when they run out of money (read – the confidence of investors, lenders, and shareholders in the business) rather than wasting more capital?

Let’s stop citing undercapitalization as a reason for business failure. It is too simplistic and tells us nothing about what led to the situation of undercapitalization. What we are really talking about is a poorly crafted strategy or insufficient planning and digging into this can provide real guidance for entrepreneurs.

Here are a few websites where “undercapitalization” is cited as a top reason for new business failure:

http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/business-failure.htm – Reason Number 3 for business failure given as ‘insufficient capital”

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/78826/a_look_at_why_most_new_businesses_fail_pg2_pg2.html?cat=3 – Reason number 5 here.

http://www.allbusiness.com/business-planning-structures/business-plans/1440-1.html - A number of the reasons given here are around the undercapitalization idea

http://www.evancarmichael.com/Starting-A-Business/866/12-REASONS-WHY-NEW-BUSINESSES-FAIL.html - Number 2 reason here.

First, notice a mission statement I wrote for Artist Collective NYC here. Click on About Us to see the piece I contributed.

I’ve been writing articles for Growthink, a business plan consulting company, to accompany their new initiative to sell business plan templates geared towards dozens of different business sectors. More will continue to appear on their site in the coming month. Here are some examples of the work I’ve done over the past few weeks, some of which may be interesting to you:

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/how-to-open-a-bar

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/bar-business-plan

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/hotel-business-plans

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/how-to-start-a-hotel

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/how-to-start-a-day-care

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/day-care-business-plan

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/non-profit-business-plans

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/how-to-start-a-non-profit-organization

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/hair-salon-business-plan

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/financial-advisor-business-plan

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/financial-services-business-plan

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/how-to-open-a-store

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/store-business-plan

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/how-to-start-a-record-label

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/how-to-start-a-catering-business

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/catering-business-plan

http://www.growthink.com/businessplan/help-center/coffee-shop-business-plan

If you think this way, please consider how harmful to your own reputation this mind-set can be. The subtext here is that you will selectively answer messages based on your unstated priorities and that you consider yourself special for receiving so many emails.

First of all, you ARE in control of the volume of email you receive and if you feel your email controls you then you are letting it:

- You control where your address is posted and can remove it from locations if you desire.

- You control the lists you are on and can remove yourself if the emails you receive are no longer of interest.

- You manage the reasons why you should be emailed by explaining with statements about the types of messages that should be sent to you or not sent to you. If some questions about your business should go to a different address, you can write text that says so.

- You set your spam blocker to the appropriate level.

- And, if you made mistakes in the past and made your address simply too widely known, you can start from scratch: Close the account, open a new one, and tell only your desired contacts the new email address.

So, don’t give the excuse that you cannot keep up with email. If you offer email as a way for clients, colleagues, or customers to get in touch with you, the only professional way to handle it is to take responsibility and answer non-spam emails quickly. If you cannot answer them within a day or two, set an autoresponder to explain the delay to your correspondents so their expectations are set.

The flip-side of this problem is that, for those who do manage to treat correspondents with respect and get back to them swiftly, there is a great opportunity to build a stellar reputation as someone who cares and doesn’t treat an email response as a privilege. Timely email response should contribute to showing your customer/client focus and you have the power to change the way you treat email.

Don’t Be Just A Hammer:

First become aware of this bias and seek to overcome it. The bias may cause you to believe that you have to answer with your own toolbox in order to make any sales at all, but that is taking a very short-term view if there is a good chance the client’s problem will not be properly fixed. Expand what you can offer by knowing other service providers you can trust, and expanding your own toolbox strategically as you master each new tool.

Recommend whatever is right for the client, not what builds your sales fastest:

You must serve the client’s best interests and if their best interest is served through a referral to another service or even with a free resource you direct them to, then that is what is best for you, too. Overcome the mindset that it is a lost sale if you refer them to someone you might consider a competitor in some respects. If you have complementary expertise, the person who might seem to be your competitor can become a partner.

Build reputation one recommendation at a time:

You must show you have the client’s best interest at heart and will not take advantage of their inexperience by helping them in a way that helps you most. The goodwill you build with that client will grow into reputation as the word is spread. And reputation is more valuable than the sales you “miss” by referring your clients to the right person for what they need.

Don’t be just a hammer. Recommend whatever is right for the client, not what builds your sales fastest. Build reputation one recommendation at a time.

For Small Business Owners

Introductory Meeting: A free 2 hour interview and consultation, where I will ask the owner to cover, in broad terms:

1. The critical issue facing their company (In the owner’s terms, although I may steer towards redefining this critical issue)

2. Company activities in each of these seven systems:

- Executive Leadership

- Financial Stewardship

- Innovation

- Sales and Marketing

- Operations and Logistics

- Human Resources

- Legal and Compliance

Recommendations: I will offer recommendations on where problems lie, and, if the owner chooses to work with me, I will create an agreement as to the scope of the project or potential projects.

Depending on the needs of the company, the projects may consist of:

- Mission/Purpose, Goals, and Objectives setting to coordinate the direction the company’s activities

- Strategy development (to achieve the mission, goals, and objectives, often with an eye towards an exit strategy for the owner wherein they build equity in the company)

- Operations systems and processes audit and redesign (redesign systems which are hurting the company’s profitability or are not aligned with its mission)

- Activity analysis (Map the work of the owner/company, breaking the activities into the seven systems to determine the best strategy to begin to delegate, outsource, and grow the company at the lowest possible cost)

- Marketing strategy analysis (looking at the clear definition of the company’s product or service positioning, target market, and the coordination of communication, market and competitor research)

- Designing and software or cloud computing solutions for sales, marketing, and operations (ACT!, Quickbooks, Excel, Salesforce.com, Freshbooks)

- Develop company wiki/knowledge base

Entrepreneurs

Potential projects are based on the entrepreneur’s stage of development:

Stage 1 – Idea without Business Plan

- Consult on business model

- Create business strategy

- Undergo feasibility study

- Market research

- Create business plan and pro forma financial statements

- Create business plan slide presentation

Stage 2 – Business Plan without funding

- Develop funding strategy, create pitch for investors

Please contact me with interest in any of these areas by email or by commenting here.

“If you can dream it, you can do it. Everyone looked at Susan Boyle on “You’ve Got Talent” and jumped to the conclusion that she would not be successful. They were dead wrong.”

However, Susan Boyle only had to rely on herself to be confident and sing. Inspiration aside, a business is different – it needs other people – customers, funders, partners, and vendors. Shouldn’t you heed their concerns if they are about your market potential, business model, or uncertainties that neither you or they can know? I’m not saying to give up, just that ignoring cynics may mean missing a chance to figure out how to respond to their claims and move beyond them.

The problem is that email programs are meant for email communication, not for task management. Furthermore, many individuals soon find themselves maintaining multiple to-do lists – in their inbox, in their task management program, on a pad of paper, etc. The work of prioritizing tasks between these multiple sources becomes increasingly complex and tasks may be lost in the shuffle.

Under Hurst’s system, emails should be read, responded to if they can be answered within a short time (~5 mins) and removed from the inbox. If there is key information to refer to later, they can be saved in a folder. If the email represents a to-do, it should be transferred to your t0-do list. Hurst offers a task management program that integrates with email at goodtodo.com (which I have to admit that I have not used yet). Outlook’s task management will also work, but doesn’t offer the same integration as Goodtodo.

The ultimate goal is to end each workday with the email inbox at zero. Beyond the productivity gains and increased accuracy from better prioritization and fewer missed tasks, there is an emotional relief that comes with getting your inbox to zero which cannot be quantified easily.

Many find the idea of this task daunting as they may have many thousand emails in their inbox. There is no trick method to start this system – you simply have to spend the time deleting and filing those emails. As you do this you will realize how much the oldest email have become obsolete, but you may also come across some items you missed that are now relevant to current work and must be revisited. Regardless, the process becomes faster and faster as you get into it, so I’d recommend devoting at least an hour at a time to this task, as boring as it sounds.

For more information on Mark Hust’s company visit Goodexperience.com. And I heartily recommend Bit Literacy as a good read for anyone suffering from email overload.