What Happens After Reading An Expert's View on Business Plans

New business; it all starts with an idea.  Theoretically, the idea is tested—on paper.  This paper experiment is better known as a business plan.  A business plan should be inclusive of the warm and fuzzy industry, marketing, and money-making opportunity details.

We’ve been taught that new business ideas cannot grow without a formally written business plan.  Steve Blank, a business plan connoisseur, has drawn some much needed attention to the functionality of a business plan.  After I read Blank’s article titled, No One Wins in Business Plan Competitions, the business plan game changed for me.  Instead of creating a glorified new-idea-for-the-industry how-to pamphlet, I will approach a business script like Steve Blank does.  Steve writes business models.  Not new business initiative story books.

Blank taught me that business models speak to the needs of the customer—not the market.  So, with my new approach to a business plan, I will first consider the real audience: the customer.  Although investors may be the reviewing audience of the formal plan, they are not who the product was created for.  There is a chance that investors will better appreciate a business plan written and illustrated for the consuming audience.  

The most important part of a business model is the bottom line; the way the product will make money.  USA Today supports this perspective in an article that explains the simplicity of the money-making concept.  An investor’s final decision to advance money is based on the believability of the product and the reality that the product will make money and sustain profit and growth.  Investors do not approach new business plans (or models) with a charitable attitude.  Eventually, the investor is going to want their money back.  It is essential that the business plan clearly details how the investment will be repaid.  

So, here are some immediate changes that I’ve considered: (1) illustrate the business model with the consumer in mind.  Don’t submit a storybook; submit a plan that answers the big money question.  (2) Make the needs of the customer crystal clear.   

Understanding the perspectives of business plan gurus and incorporating some of their approaches will identify my business plan as something new and different.  Differentiating my product form the rest will give me a competitive advantage.  Investors like competitive advantages.