Inside Out!: Success

One of the buzz words you hear often in small business circles is "business plan." Those words are akin to "making a budget" in my book! If you want to turn me off quickly, ask me to put together a business plan. But reality dictates some things in life are necessary. You don't get in the car to go somewhere if you don't know where you are going, do you? Well, you can't get very far with your business either if you don't know where you want to end up.

My departure from SoCal last summer was an orchestrated madness that demonstrates what business plans are meant to do. For more on my trip planning, check out my Squidoo Lens on the right. I planned and replanned that trip. Nothing seemed to work. Finally it hit me --- the problem was I was starting in the wrong place. I was starting in San Diego and working forward. What I really needed to do was START WITH MY DESTINATION and work backwards. Once I did that, things fell in place --- granted it scared me to death when I realized how tight the planning needed to be and what was really involved with getting from Point A to Point B by the target date, but in the end it gave me the roadmap I needed to successfully acquire the coach and tow it back to Missouri, where all my personal things were waiting for me.

You Can't Succeed If You Don't Know What You Want!

Reality Check: What do you really want from your business? If you don't know what you want, how will you know when you are successful? You can't get there from here if you don't know where you are going.

It's easy to lose our direction when we are slogging in the trenches everyday. We work and work and work --- we work so hard that surely we must be succeeding, right? WRONG! If you are working at the wrong things, YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED.

Time for another list:

How much income do you need each month in order to survive?

What market do you want to be serving in 6 months?

What product do you want to be providing in 6 months?

What is your ultimate DREAM for this business? One year from today, what do you want to be able to say about your business?

Now take each item on your list and work backwards.

Divide the monthly amount by 30 to find out how much income you need to bring in each day of each month. Granted, you will have days where you will bring in nothing and days when you will bring in the equivalent of one week's work. But if you break it down into days, it will seem more manageable in terms of planning.
1. What must you do each day to accomplish this? Make phone calls; drop off brochures; make product to sell?
2. Based on your hourly rate (if you sell product vs. services, you should know your hourly rate based on the price of your product and how long it takes you to produce it) how much time must you devote to this endeavor each day? Block that time on your calendar as your first job each day. Once you have done what you MUST do each day, you may move on to other projects.
This requires a bit more thought. Your current market may not be your desired market. It may not be your BEST market. Perhaps you could do better in a market nobody has currently approached with your products or services. Think outside the box.
1. How are you going to approach that market? What/who is the key to unlocking that avenue?
2. Who do you know who can help you become more visible to prospective clients in arena?
3. What groups could you join which might give you access to that market?
4. Working backwards on your calendar, plot out time slots for appropriate meetings and events which will help you make this transition
Are you a one trick pony? Are there additional services/products you could add which would open new avenues of revenue?
1. Do you need more training? Where will you get that training? How soon is that training available? How long will it take? When can you reasonably foresee being qualified in that new arena? Plug that training into your calendar and highlight the completion date.
2. Do you need to make a product prototype? Who will make the prototype? How long will it take? What equipment/materials/skills are necessary. Are they readily available or must you order them? Plug these dates and time-frames into your calendar.
And finally, your DREAM. A dream is a star you reach for. Think big --- aim for something that seems beyond reach. If you miss, you are still ahead of the game. If you could wave a magic wand and turn your business into anything --- what would that be?
1. What separates your business today from your business in that dream?
2. What will it take to accomplish that dream? Break it down in baby steps --- we have to walk before we can run.
  1. If your dream involves a move, start by researching the new location on the web; send for information and brochures; make contact with a related professional group in that area and see if you can open lines of communication.
  2. If your dream involves expansion of your current situation or working less time and delegating more work to others, figure out what manpower will be necessary to support that dream. Start planning to build your current business to the point where it will sustain the necessary manpower.
3. If your dream involves adding products to your line, how will you get those products?
  1. Will you make them? Will someone else make them?
  2. Are you or others skilled enough to provide the necessary product stream on a consistent basis?
  3. Build time into your calendar to research any of these applicable issues and the time/moves necessary to accomplish each goal.

Look At That Calendar!

Once you have gone through the above steps, stand back and look at your calendar for the next year. That is your business plan. You may need to flesh out the entries a bit. But at the very least, you have an idea where you are headed. You have a road map. Without such a map, you are headed nowhere fast. You can't get where you are going if you don't know where that is!

Planning backwards is truly the key to moving forward.

A new year lays before us. All bright and shiny. Full of promise and hope. A chance to re-assess our lives and, perhaps, set off in a new direction.

If we are to move forward with assurance, we must first evaluate what has passed before. I find small business owners are often extremely hard on themselves. As a Virtual Assistant, I have a tendency to feel I've not done enough. I think this is a problem common to most solo entrepreneurs. We grow restless in our self-evaluations and often focus on our mistakes rather then our successes.

How Do You Measure YOUR Success?

However, I feel a different problem is far more problematic. Most small business owners spent their formative years in a corporate environment. That environment set forth annually (and often even monthly) certain milestones which had to be met in order for the company to succeed. These measurements generally revolved around large numbers of billable hours, numbers of new clients and the monetary value of each of those clients, and perhaps even quantities of inventory sold. Goals and benchmarks were imposed. You either met (or exceeded) those stated milestones, or you found a different job.

As a solopreneur, those benchmarks hold little value. They are useless measurements in a business where the one and only commodity is you! Corporations measure in miles; solopreneurs measure in inches. To confuse the two is to set yourself up for failure.

This is not to say there is no value in the types of goals and numbers used by our corporate brothers and sisters. Whatever our product, if we do not put it in the hands of consumers, we have lost the battle. But we must recognize the differences in what we do and how we do it if we are to evaluate our efforts in a meaningful way.

What Is Unique About YOUR Business?

Most of our businesses are based on 1:1 relationships with our clients. For many of us, that is the very reason we left the corporate environment. As a small business, we provide clients a level of service and personal needs response which the corporate environment cannot offer. THIS is what we should be evaluating when we seek to determine our success in a prior year. Were we able to accommodate the needs of our clients in a reasonable amount of time? Were we able to meet their emergency requests? Were we available to trouble-shoot when they needed an answer right now?

Similarly, did we interact socially and professionally in a manner that produced positive new relationships? Did we follow-up earnestly on referrals. Did we exchange ideas with other solo professionals and willingly assist other struggling to succeed on their own?

It is so easy to view our success only in terms of the bottom line on a balance sheet. Dollars and cents success is always socially acceptable. However, for solopreneurs it is a false success and often leads to despair. I am convinced it is the largest reason many fail in their solo business attempts.

Granted, we must pay the bills --- which means earning money. I would be the last one to fault making money. But the true measure of our success as solopreneurs is not monetary. For each of us the benchmark of success will be different. Only you can determine what truly produces movement in your business. But until you make that determination, setting new goals is pointless. Just as wearing another's clothing often results in an ill fitting wardrobe, using a corporate measuring stick in evaluating the success of your business will result in inaccurate results.

Use The Right Measuring Stick!

Take time now to determine what is truly important to your business. Why did you start this business? What did you hope to accomplish when you headed down this path? Once you have those in front of you, you can establish a realistic game plan and goals for 2009. You will be more successful and far happier if you do your homework first. In the end, this is YOUR business. Run it on YOUR terms. And above all else --- use the right measuring stick!