The One-Hour Business Plan: The Simple and Practical Way to Start Anything New

Setting the Tone

In this writing, I want to have a conversation with you as if we are meeting at a coffee shop, pub, or airport. This is not another BS business book where the author dumps from head to paper without facts or replicable tools for the reader. This work was strategically planned after years of experience and observations of more than 1,000 business plans and their results. What are the patterns and most essential elements of any business plan foundation? I write to share some answers with you here. I give you everything I have to date to support you with a foundation for your innovative journey. I've been educating innovators long enough to know that most of you will not write anything for myriad reasons, and I respect that. For those of you who do plan something in writing, welcome to the power of business planning and the benefits therein. At the end, if you share your written plan with us, we can collaborate on your journey and possibly make it safer and more enriching for you. The collective mind of our community is smarter and more experienced than I ever can or will be. Now, about our conversation…

Introduction

A One-Hour Business Plan foundation? Are you kidding me? Who can possibly write a business plan in one hour? It's impossible!

The are you kidding me I agree with. The impossible, I simply do not—because it is the wrong answer. No, you cannot write a complete business plan in one hour. In fact, you should not, particularly if you are innovating something. After you take your innovation to market, and get feedback from your early customers, you will have to rewrite your business plan anyway, and who wants to do that? I love strategic business planning and I sure don't! My hope is to enable you to write a business plan foundation in an hour of writing (not thinking) time. Then you can write a more complete business plan after your customers have substantiated the value of your innovative offering, which will manifest via customer payments. Does this make sense yet?

If you still don't want to spend one hour writing a foundation plan for your business model, then think about this. More than 50 percent of businesses fail three years after their incorporation date. Why? The reasons are many. Experts, even our government, cannot agree on the final statistics for the reasons why business innovations fail. In fairness to the researchers, the question is difficult to answer because the reasons are myriad and we entrepreneurs tend to hide ourselves and move on after we fail. However, the research definitively shows a correlation of success to those businesses that had a business plan.

I have served approximately 1,000 business owners, CEOs, start-up businesses, and student entrepreneurs over the course of my career, including my own. I began counting them, but stopped because it made me feel old. However, I can conclude that a business with a strong business plan foundation is more likely to succeed than a business with a typical business plan. I know this from experience, and it is a self-evident truth for me. From my experience, the success versus failure seesaw tips toward success with the right business plan foundation, to the point where more than 50 percent of start-ups are still operating after three years. This observation is based on the hundreds of business plans that I have reviewed.

What good does it do my fellow human beings if I take this knowledge to my grave? Nothing! In this book, you find a blueprint for building a business plan foundation that is simple, strong, and enabling rather than complex, weak, and stifling. It is harder for me to write about the simple rather than the complex because intellectually I enjoy the complex more. On a personal note, for whatever reason, I take greater pleasure in watching my clients, students, and readers succeed than I do in my own success. I take little pleasure in counting my money alone in a room. I am just not wired that way.

How do I write a business plan? What content should I include? The surgeon and the high-school dropout share this frustration. I know because I have taught them side by side. Their struggles are identical.

Therefore, my mission is to simplify what is clearly a daunting and complex task for most people (even actual rocket scientists), which is how to write a business plan. Not just any business plan, but a business plan foundation that can be written in one hour. This does not count the thinking time that you will need. You and I both know that you are thinking about your innovation frequently already, sometimes at very strange hours. We just have to focus together on the right thoughts. The right thoughts lead us to the right questions. The right thoughts and questions enable us to simplify a business planning process to its strongest foundation in the shortest amount of time.

I spent seven years searching for a method to help you write a business plan that will increase the likelihood of your success. Most of this time was spent arguing with myself about how to deliver this information. I started with the most complete business plan possible and ended with the most essential business plan components common to all. What a ride. I had to study my innovation failures more closely than my successes, as well as those of my clients, students, and friends.

The field-test results were embarrassing, in a good way. Nothing that I had ever done to date had been this good for so many people. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I know that my failure is coming in some form; I just don't know from where or when yet, my friend. Based on field-test results, the only failure that I see is the innovator's unwillingness to write anything. Some people prefer to stay in their dream state. The idea of converting their innovative thoughts to an actionable business plan evokes a fear, which stifles them and returns them to a more comfortable place (for them): their dream state of mind. I hope to help the dreamers get comfortable, and then realize their dream incrementally, iteratively, and with minimal risk.

As a side note, I have had the privilege of studying and teaching at arguably the finest and most innovative business school in the world. I did not write this book to impress my colleagues. I wrote it for you—to help you become more self-sufficient in earning money for yourself; to gently bring your great business idea down to earth and help you decide if you want to make that dream a reality.

I am not another rich guy writing a book about how I was successful and wanting to share it with you. I've seen that movie too many times. In fact, I publicly proclaim that I am a successful failure. These failures, while socially embarrassing and clinically depressing, I must admit, have strengthened me for innovative success with future innovations. Some of you may understand what I am talking about—and why I cherish failure.

One of the reasons I love strategic business planning so much is that I do not have to risk my life's savings anymore. I can experience that virtually—on paper, in simulation, and through dialogue with other people. Then I can do it again iteratively until I get it right on paper—and then and only then take it to market and make money. That is precisely what I show you how to do. I want to share a process, more than a format or a business plan structure. What you are about to see will appear oversimplified, but it is strong in its foundation. It is a business planning process that works. It is not 100 percent accurate; no business planning process can be. However, if you are willing to accept that we are only counting the writing time, not the thinking time, then you can write a business plan foundation in just one hour. (See Figure I.1.) Are you ready to get started?

It's been a ride

I guess I had to

Go to that place to get to this one

Now some of you

Might still be in that place

If you're tryin' to get out

Just follow me. I'll get you there.

—Eminem, American rapper, record producer, songwriter, and actor. Recovery, "Not Afraid"

Before beginning, plan carefully.

—Marcus T. Cicero, Roman Consul, senator, orator, philosopher, and constitutionalist. His work with European literature later initiated the fourteenth century Renaissance

Figure I.1 The One-Hour Business Plan™ Foundation—Five Essential Business Plan Cornerstones

Why These Cornerstones Build the Best Foundation for Any Business Plan

Critics of the One-Hour Business Plan™ foundation might argue that other content is more important in building a foundation for a business plan. Perhaps other essential business plan components are more important such as the executive summary, mission statement, management team, or operations, to name a few. They might be right. However, they are missing the goal of the One-Hour Business Plan foundation process, which is to put the innovator in a unique position to test his or her offering, refine it based on customer feedback, then go