This is a guest post from Ellen Rohr, one of the wonderful experts on the Passport to Business Freedom Program that started on January 1st 2011.
STOP (losing money)
DROP (thinking and actions that are holding you down) and
ROLL (in the profits!)
With hope in your heart, you hang up your shingle and become a business owner. (Author Michael Gerber calls this an “entrepreneurial seizure.”) Then, the day-to-day burdens of running the business take over. Errands, bills, phone calls, and of course, the actual work. Inside each small business owner is the unspoken question, “What am I doing?”
Or, perhaps you long to start a business…and free yourself from the limitations of a corporate job that doesn’t match your needs, wants or shares your values. But you wonder, “Where do I start?”
It’s no wonder you are frustrated. Business basics are just not taught! Even in business school and by well meaning business book authors. Most business education focuses on theory instead of meat-and-potatoes answers to the question, “How do I make my business GROW?” You got the dream. You are smart enough. You are willing to do whatever it takes. You set out to create the business of your dreams.
However, if you are not profitable, you may find yourself trapped in a nightmare of debt and endless working hours. That’s why I wrote this e-book, The Bare Bones Biz Plan. Business planning basics consistently applied will help you get to where you want to go. It can help you avoid the traps that sink so many businesses…no profits and dried up cash flow.
I almost sank our family business. I assumed I knew enough about business to run a dinky little plumbing company. After all, I had spent about $100,000 of my parents’ money on my college degree in Business Administration.
In fact, I graduated at the top of my class. Still, I didn’t know how to balance a checkbook!
Fortunately, there are ways to reduce college expenses, such as enrolling in online MBA degree programs.
So I got involved in my husband’s company after his partner died unexpectedly. Boy was I humbled! It seemed like lots of money was moving through the company, but, at the end of the month, there was never any money left. Thankfully, I found a mentor, a savvy plumbing contractor.
Frank Blau wrote a column in Plumbing & Mechanical magazine. I wrote to him and asked for help. He took me under his wing, and taught me how to keep score in business. He taught me how to read and use financial reports. He taught me how to make money.
We turned our company around. We paid off our business loan. We doubled sales and tripled the amount of money we took out of the company. Very cool. We sold the company and bought a gentleman’s farm in the country. (Picture “Green Acres.”) At this point, I realized that I wanted to share what I’d learned. After all, if a smart, highly educated person like me didn’t know how to grow a small business, I figured business illiteracy must be rampant. I was right.
My experiences since then have included teaching and consulting with thousands of business owners. I was right about the business illiteracy problem. In my seminars, I rarely find a student who runs and reads financial statements on a regular basis, much less uses financial information to make management decisions. In fact, few know their assets from their elbows!
My consulting work led to a position as president of Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, a home service plumbing franchise company. We grew from 0 to $40 million in sales in two years. I learned a lot about what works to grow fast and profitably…and what doesn’t. Guess what! The basics never go out of style, no matter how big a company gets.
Here are business plan basics for building a successful, profitable, business…
- Get a 3-ring binder. This is where you will story your business plan workbook. A binder is “old school” cool. It’s a portable, practical way to get your ideas out of your head and onto the page. Sure, you can keep your plan on your computer as well. Still nothing beats the binder.
- Adopt a simple business plan system. The Bare Bones Biz Plan is a fun, flexible, work-able format for crafting your plan and holding you accountable for getting things DONE.
- Hold yourself to one hour a day, five days a week , to work on your plan. In six weeks, you will have a living, breathing plan and your life and business could be totally transformed. This is easy…this is something you can do.
- Fill your head with powerful, positive thoughts. Are you READY to drop the baggage that is holding you back? It takes changing the words in your head. One way to do that is to listen to positive, business building, life-enhancing words. Play self-help cd’s in your car. Listen to free podcasts and webinars on your computer. That which you think about comes about.
- Give it away to get it back. As you commit to your own success, commit to another’s as well. Find a business owner buddy and vow to help each other put your business plans together. Teach your kids business planning as they consider a summer job or lawn mowing business. Teach your employees business plan basics as you learn them. What goes around comes around.
Ready to make more money? Be more successful? Plan it! Clarify what you really want…in life and business. Then, set a course of action for making it happen. Keep score. Adjust course. Make money and have fun!
Ellen Rohr is a master at making business planning fun and showing you the few things that make all the difference to your business success. If anyone can take your business to the next level its Ellen, who took one franchise company from 0 to $40 million in sales, 47 locations, in less than 2 years. She now helps thousands of biz builders start, fix and grow their companies and makes the business planning process fun.
_Ellen is the featured expert in the Passport to Business Freedom program on:
_How to build a simple, solid, flexible, profitable business plan while having fun at the same time.