BIRD WILLIAMS: You're listening to Bird Means Business Episode 6. 

First off, don't y'all just love the new intro music. It kind of makes you want to dance. Right? Well, my husband helped me with that because he is the best. And guess what else? He also redid our guest bedroom closet where I record these podcasts. So for the first time. I'm recording in this closet, without an old suitcase as a laptop stand, and my knees hurting me, burning up. Y'all I told him that I was so hot while recording these episodes, and he got a USB-powered fan up in here. Yeah, he is the best. I am going to have to link the video of the makeover in the show notes in this episode description so that you can see how awesome he is. But all of that to say, I am going to feel a lot more comfortable with my legs space for these new episodes. So y'all can tell I'm clearly excited but honestly, it was the best birthday present. And I love him so much. 

So if you listen to Episode Two “Secure Your Money Team”, you heard me go in on the importance of a business plan. I talked about how when meeting with potential accountants, or attorneys, having gone through the process of a business plan makes you come across a lot more knowledgeable. You won't be scrambling and fumbling around with your answers. And I also talked about how it would be a costly mistake to have an attorney draft all of your contracts or waivers or agreements, based on your idea. And then once you really get into your business and realize what you're really doing and what you really need, then you have to go back and pay to redraft things. So today I'm going to dive deeper into why you need a business plan and what it actually is. 

So before we get started, I am super excited to share a listener shout-out so Ski the Trainer, on Instagram, his handle is ski_ just fit said, “These podcasts be putting me on game.” I love that and I saw it come through on the day when I went live with Bird Means Business. And y'all. It was the exact encouragement I needed in the moment. I really can't say enough how much it means to me just to know that any of this, any of what I'm doing is actually helping people. I mean that's the whole reason I'm doing this. To put you on game. And reviews like that does really give me the motivation to keep going. So ski, thank you for that and I wish you all the best with your fitness business. 

All right so let's get into it. Okay. So in my opinion, business plans get a bad rap in most people's minds. It's like a random, check-the-box kind of thing you do when you start a business. Like, it's a nice-to-have kind of thing. But, you know, I don't really need it. And that's true, to start a business, you do not have to have a business plan, but I look at it very differently. For me, a business plan serves a few purposes and I'm going to discuss those in a bit, but first let's talk about what a business plan actually is. So, a business plan tells the story of your business, why you're doing what you're doing, who you're serving and what problem you're solving, your goals, and how you're going to get to achieving those goals. 

I've seen people call a business plan, what is actually just a part of the whole thing. Like my business plan is my strategic marketing plan. Or my business plan is my financial plan. But see your business plan isn't just one piece of the story. It's the whole story. It’s how all of these pieces are going to interact together. So you don't want to look at your marketing, separate from your financials, separate from your purpose, which is why you're doing this in the first place, separate from your team. You see it all works together. And again, your business plan will reflect the heart behind your business so you can't leave anything out. And it's dynamic. It evolves as your business evolves. So, let me give you a quick example of what I mean. My husband and I own a gym business here in Houston called The League, and we started it in 2013. As I prepared for this episode I thought, you know it could be helpful to go back and look at what our very first iteration of our business plan looked like. And guess what, the initial name was League of Legends. Yeah, I actually sent my business plan to my old director back in New York and she graciously said yes to reviewing it. So to kind of give you some background, I had left New York, and I was actually the only analyst in her group. It was just her and I for years working together, and it was an amazing opportunity because she's one of those women who all the analysts in our program looked up to and thought was just a superwoman because she was. Her background and also does her heart and personality. Was just amazing. So the fact that I could even work with her was amazing and a blessing. And, you know, fast forward a couple of years, I'm basically telling her, hey, even though I got this offer to stay on for a third year, I actually don't want to do this anymore and I want to move on to entrepreneurship. I was terrified to tell her this. I felt like I was abandoning her, and it was awful. It was probably at the time the hardest decision I had ever made. And over margaritas, we cried together and she gave me all the wisdom she could on starting my own business and graced me to go forward with it. So, you know, fast forward a year, here I am getting ready to launch this business and I reached out to her. We've kept in touch. I'd actually been to New York a few months before sending her this, and we had lunch. And she knew what was coming and so I sent her our presentation and she gave me tons of feedback which was so helpful. I'm getting feedback on my business plan from a New York Wall Street investment banking director. It was really awesome. And I'm going to read to you what she said. So she sends this email and it has all these different points and then at the very end, she said, “Hope helpful, xo Sarah” and she said, “P.S., what about just calling it The League? I like the legends part because it's very inspirational. But from a marketing perspective, The League is simple, kind of mysterious, and sounds like a club I want to join. I want to be a part of The League. It has definite professional athlete overtones. Just a thought.” 

Does that remind anyone else of The Social Network situation? I don't know if you've seen that movie. It's a story of Facebook, and the Justin Timberlake character in the movie tells them to take off the data from Facebook. It was initially called The Facebook. That's what it kind of reminds me of. I mean we're not as cool as Facebook. But she basically kind of changed the game for us in terms of our branding and our name by helping us shorten it. So I say all that to say, it's okay for this to change. This is a dynamic document. But it's just something that's going to help you kind of map out what you're trying to do. And there'll be iterations of it over time. 

Okay, so this is where you're going to want to get out a pen and paper. Here are some of the things that your business plan will include. And if you're driving or doing your hair or doing dishes or something, no worries. I'm going to link all of this stuff in the show notes so you'll be able to go to the episode description and see it there. But here are just eight things. Some businesses will need more. Here are eight solid things that you're going to need in your business plan. 

First, your purpose or mission statement. Second, the problem you're solving, you want to explain what it is you're actually solving. Number three is going to be the solution to that problem. How is your business positioned to solve this problem that you found? Number four is information on your team. Number five is competition or the market landscape where you kind of fit amongst all of the other photography businesses or all of the other restaurants. Number six, sorry, is information on your product or service. So what does it actually look like? What are you actually doing? And this right here is where you want to figure out how you're going to be unique. There are tons of restaurants out there but how is yours different. And then, seven is going to be your business model. So when you hear the word ‘business model’ you might be like, what in the world is that? It's basically how you're going to make money. And then, lastly is going to be your financials. For us, it was like we did a revenue build-out to kind of show how our revenue would grow over I think it was five years. And then we also did summary financials, so basically some background of your financials. 

Okay, I'm like holding back because I can go in on all of these parts, and you know, stay tuned because I actually will go in. But here, I'll just say this. You might hear this list of things you do in your business plan and kind of brush past the team. But don't, especially when you have no historical financials. If you have no money in the bank from your business, and you're repurposing your business plan for an investor presentation like we did when we launched The League. This is huge. 

So let me kind of explain. When we started The League, we didn't have the money that we needed to launch the business. It would have been amazing if we had. And we didn't want to wait forever to save up the money to then start because we might have never actually started. So we went out to investors. And by investors, I mean, angel investors, family, and friends. And I'll have to do a whole other podcast episode on that because I know people have lots of questions on that and it's a long story. But when we met with these people, they basically didn't have any historical financials to go off of. So while we could talk about our revenue build-out and all this other stuff. At the end of the day, the reason they decided to invest was because they were investing in Ashley and Terry. They saw that Ashley had all these years of experience on Wall Street. Actually just two. Just kidding. Actually had two years of experience on Wall Street, but that meant something to them. And it wasn't just what I wrote in the pitch deck. It was also how I communicated it to them when I spoke with them. But also probably bigger, I think the biggest is Terry's background. He had a master's degree in Health and Human Performance and it wasn't just his degree because anyone can go get a degree. But he was working in like six or eight different studios around town. I could name them off, but I know not everyone will know what they are. But really cool clubs and studios. And he was like the top instructor at all these places. He was doing really well. He had a knack for fitness. So combining his skill and my skill, it was like okay, a gym business. He knows the gym stuff. She knows the business stuff. This could work. So they were really investing in us. So you don't want to just throw your bio on there. You're really trying to convey to them, we don't have any tangible business things that we can show you that we've done, but we are dedicated and excited and passionate and we’re going to make this great. And that's why you don't want to skimp on the team part. 

Okay, this is the moment where I'm going to use that fan because it's getting a little hot. I'm getting a little excited. So, give me a break. This podcast is brought to you by my husband, Terry, and this USB-powered fan. I'm not gonna even name the brand. But it is helping your girl right now as I finish recording. I don't know if I'm actually going to use this, this might be edited out.

Back to business. Okay so you might be thinking, what ways will I actually use this business plan? I need more detail. So I have five ways here, and you can jot these down too if you're taking notes. The first one is what I think is the most important, and that is going through the process of creating a business plan. It helps you prove your business idea to yourself. Let's just emphasize the word idea. A lot of people have ideas. There are a lot of business ideas out there. I literally have on my phone, a list of business ideas in like my notes of things that just come to me. I mean people come to me all the time with, I want to do X business. And you have ideas in your head right now of a business that you want to start and going through the process of a business plan. You're having to answer hard questions, really hard questions, some of which may require deeper digging before you've spent your hard-earned money and time on an idea that has a weak foundation. It’s actually a lot like the blueprint of a house. So when you're building a home, spending time with the architect on the front end is crucial, because every subcontractor who will eventually pour the foundation or lay the brick and mortar, or run electrical cable. They'll all be following the plans of that pre-determined blueprint because these contractors are following a master plan and all of those pieces are going to fit together. And you know I've never built a home myself. I've never gone through the process of a home build. But I imagine that if in the middle of this construction process, you walk up to your home that's being built and you see this guy adding a door, and you walk up and you say, “What do you think about instead of like doing a regular door, we do a fridge door because that'd be really cool and then I really love if it was like on the other side of the room because blah blah blah blah blah.” This man was looking at you like you were crazy because he already cut the hole for the door and brought the materials that he was instructed by the master plan to get. And while it is possible for him to switch such a foundational piece of the home. It would require a lot of time and money. It would have been much better if from the very beginning you knew what you wanted and you knew where you were going. And so everyone involved could run with that vision. Your business plan is your blueprint. It instructs the decisions you make, the partnerships you agree to, the people you hire, when you hire, the services you offer, the discounts you give, etc. I mean I had business ideas presented to me that sound amazing, but then as I said sat down and worked through the business plan process. We realized we can monetize this or, who are we really serving or if this is just way too broad, or we don't even know what we're doing. And it doesn't mean that you don't move forward with your business. It just means that you need to dive deeper in addressing those issues, or maybe pause and table it until you feel right about what to do next. I've also gone through this process and there were so many red flags that came to the conclusion that this wasn't a viable business and that I needed to really rethink some things I've also gone through this process, and it was magical. Like, confirmation after confirmation after confirmation. Like oh my god, I'm about to kill this. So that's one of the biggest reasons that you want to do this, a business plan because you're going to be proving your idea to yourself. 

Second is for raising capital. I talked about this a little bit earlier. Let's say you don't have the $100,000 you need to start your business and you need to raise capital, you're gonna go to either a bank for maybe an SBA loan or a regular loan or a construction loan, or you might go to investors, and you're not going to give them this exact document. You're not going to be like, oh, let me just give you my business plan and just forward it right over. But you're going to tailor it for what they need to know. So you're going to maybe take some pages out. You might redo some of the financial stuff. But you're going to already have a baseline to start from in preparing that for them. 

You're also going to be able to repurpose your business plan for partnerships. Since we launched our business we've had a lot of different companies wanting to come to us and partner with us for different things and it looks really cool if you're able to. In the beginning stages maybe they don't know a whole lot about your business, present them with a little PowerPoint presentation, and say hey this is what we're about. This is kind of what our growth has looked like. You're not going to give them the actual numbers, maybe just percentage growth or whatever it might be, whatever you're comfortable with. But you are going to just basically repurpose a business plan you've already made. It's going to make you look really prepared and invested in this partnership, but it's not something you had to create from scratch. 

Next is going to be for an investor, if you do have investors or like if you have a board of advisors, updating them. So we had both. A board of advisors is not people who make decisions. They don't tell you what to do. They're just there to kind of have wisdom and guidance as you go along. And we would do annual updates to both our investors and our board of advisors and those presentations look differently. But basically, we will update our business plan, which was actually really cool to do because we were able to see, like, wow we really grew. We have these new things going on. We have these new products. We find our packages make them work better, this, this and that. And then this is another really important one, it's making big decisions. I love this especially if you're going to be in partnership with someone, and especially if that someone is your spouse. I love my husband. I would choose no other business partner, but it's really hard to separate business and personal when it's your husband. But regardless of what kind of partnership it looks like for you, when you're having to make big decisions that you don't agree on, you can go back to your business plan and say, which of these outcomes aligns best with our intentions from the beginning, or our most recent like what ties the heart behind what we're doing. It's a great way to help you make decisions. 

Okay, so you might be thinking, when should I start a business plan, like when is the right time, at what point in his process. I don't know when and I really need to do this. There's an African proverb that I love, and it says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.” When it comes to everything in life and particularly business, you are building. It will take time to see the fruit. There are no overnight successes. Everyone had to start somewhere, with something, with planting a seed. And sure some businesses, some journeys happen a lot faster than others. But instead of being paralyzed by fear and wondering, how do I make this perfect. Just start with what you have in your hands today. Do what you can now because what if it's gonna take you 10 years to really make your business the success you want it to be. Wouldn't you have wanted to use the time you have now, and not wait a year or five years down the road to even start and push things out further? 

So I'm gonna tell you a story. Okay. I had a friend reach out to me because she saw me in a photo with a celebrity that's become a friend of mine. And she said, Oh my gosh, I didn't know y'all were really close like that I mean I love what she's doing. And I aspire to do the same. And it would just be so cool if I could just get some tips from her for my journey and this and that. And you this celebrity friend of mine is really incredible and sweet and I thought you know maybe she'd be open to connecting with her. So I said to my other friend, okay, what do you have that I could share with her to kind of show her what you're trying to do? Crickets. Well, I haven't really started because I didn't really to know and this and that. There wasn't really anything she had. She didn't have a plan. She didn't have anything and I am so much more motivated to help you if you've put skin in the game. If you're trying, as opposed to waiting for a hero to come alongside and kind of make it easy for you and give you the one thing that you need. See there's no hero coming. You are the hero in what you're waiting for is inside of you. It was put in you for this moment. So my question to you is what if tomorrow you were offered the opportunity to put your business on the map. Would you even be ready? Do you even have a draft of your book? Have you started writing anything down like in Word, just typing stuff out? Could you even articulate what you're doing and what your goals are? Do you even have a layout of your business plan? 

Well, guess what, I'm about to help you walk through yours. Boom shaka freakin laka. I cannot wait to share this with you guys. I'm so excited. I can finally let you in on what I've been cooking. It’s called, “Making Sense of It”, of course for developing a profitable business plan. Yep. At the end of my four-week course, you will have in your hands, well, you know downloaded on your computer as a file, a document that lays out all of what we discussed. And obviously, I'm going to go a lot deeper in the course and also interact with you in our private Facebook group with weekly Q&As and other resources. I'm so excited! I cannot wait to get started and I know it's going to be so good. And I know that because I've had so many people book consultation calls with me since I've launched Bird Williams Consulting, and they all are missing this step. I shouldn't say all of them but a lot of them. They need to start here. This is really their true first step. 

So you can click the link in the show notes, which is the episode description wherever you're listening to this podcast, to sign up and let me know you're interested. And then from there, you'll receive an email once registration for the course goes live on January 15, 2020. So you might be asking. I don't know if I'm a good fit for this course. I don't know if I need a business plan. 

But let me give you three scenarios where you would need a business plan. One, maybe you have a business idea that you're not working on now, but you want to set a firm foundation so that once you're ready, you're already prepared. You need a business plan. Meaning, let's say you're working a nine to five, and you don't really have any plans to start your business, maybe for a year or so. Well, what you don't want to do is just, like, lollygag around and you know six months before you're ready to start it's hard to kind of just try to think of random stuff. It took us a whole year to launch The League. From thought to opening up the doors. So you want to start now. It's not gonna hurt you to get started on this process now. 

Second, you might be in the weeds of a launch. Let's say like, I know my launch date is March 2020 or it's August of 2020. And I'm kind of working through things, and I missed this very crucial step of developing a profitable business plan. So before I make a whole lot of mistakes, I want to nail down what I really am doing and how it's going to work. And this second part is most important. How is it going to work? A lot of people kind of missed that part. You need a business plan. 

And then thirdly, let's say your business has been around for a few years and you're faced with questions that are really hard to answer. Some things are not working in your business, or maybe you just want to grow to a second location or expand your business in some way and you're not really sure if your business can even handle that growth. It might be good for you to go back to the drawing board and clarify where you are and where you want to go. You need a business plan. 

So if you find yourself in any of these camps, this will be a great resource for you. I recently had a phone conversation with someone who said, I love the law part of what I'm doing. She's a lawyer, but she's like, I'm just so bad with the business stuff, I want to just do law. And it was funny. It was the same thing whenever we launched The League. Terry loved fitness and he just wanted to do that. He didn't want to have to worry about people's cards declining and having to do financial stuff and having to figure out HR. He just wanted to run a fitness business. He wanted to do the fitness part of it. But this course will give you some of that. I'm the Ashley to your Terry if that makes sense. 

So to recap, a solid business plan will give your business the strength it needs to last. There's never a reason to wait to do this. If you do this course, you will have explored all of the factors of your business and you will be able to move forward in confidence with me in the background cheering you on the entire way. So let's go. 

I hope this was helpful to you, and even if you don't decide to do the course, no worries. I want you to still prioritize doing a business plan yourself because it is a very very very important step in making your business a true success. But if you do decide to do the course, it’s going to be so fun and so good, and I look forward to working with you soon. 

Talk to you next week.