Workin’ on the Business Plan

Workin’ on the Business Plan:
I’m going to try to enroll our business, The Copyeditor’s Desk, in a really interesting-sounding program that comes out of a partnership between the Small Business Administration and Arizona Public Service, a large utility. Called AAME, it’s a two-year program of workshops, training, and mentoring designed for small minority- and women-owned businesses.
Yeah, I know: it’s a 90-degree turn from the real estate scheme. However, there’s some reason to think building the editorial business, which is something I know well and in which I have a talented business partner, might be smarter than leaping into an entirely new enterprise in which I have no experience and for which I have no idea whether I have any aptitude.
The main reason is that we’ve started getting work from people who don’t blanch at our hourly rate.

• The community college district hired our company to help compile what amounted to a very large application. Pay was good and there was no caviling about it.

• A scholar in Tucson wants us to help edit her latest book; an arcane study of Japanese sociolinguistics.

• A large nonprofit asked if we would edit an employee manual.

• And an old client reappeared at the door with a new book in hand—and news that the work we helped her with has found an excellent publisher.

 And IMHO the other reason is that we’re not getting the kind of work we want for the kind of pay we expect is because we’re not working hard enough at it. And for that the main reason is that Tina and I are each trying to do too many things at once. Her life is as gestalt as mine, maybe more so: in addition to working three jobs, she’s also trying to bring up a little girl, cope with a crazy ex-, and build a life with her fiancé. Because we’re both trying to do too much, neither of us is fully focused on any one of our several endeavors. The result is…we’re not giving our all to any of these enterprises.
What if instead of running off after some new money-making scheme, I worked a little harder at getting the one we have to fly? We need to focus more on one thing and less on three or four things.
This AAAME program looks like just the thing to jump-start that:

• Mentoring

• Workshops

• Training in business management and marketing

• And opportunities to network with just the kind of business owners who can use our services!

To say nothing of schmoozing with some of the biggest movers & shakers in the state…

Part of the application process entails writing a business plan. Naturally, we have a business plan, of sorts. But it’s vague.

That right there may be part of our problem!

To create the plan for the AAAME application, I’m following the SBA’s business plan template. It’s pretty simple to do, and very clear. Rather than fill it in online, I simply hit “continue” all the way through, copying the instructions into a Word file. Now I’m following the SBA’s steps to create a business plan tailored for the AAAME application’s needs. I’m about half-way through it.

It’s pretty useful because it forces you to re-articulate your ideas in terms of a specific structure and asks you to identify exactly who you think is going to buy your services and why on earth they would want to. It also asks you not only to describe what you think you want to sell, but more to the point, why your product or service is competitive.

These are things that we just sort of know, but that we’ve never really put into words. And they should be put into words, outlined in very specific detail. No question: this is the platform for a new business’s marketing plan.

Marketing is our weakest point. But just putting the requested business plan together is spurring some ideas that should make a difference. I’ve started to build a database of past and present clients and intend to emit a quarterly newsletter. The first one will talk about our effort to reposition ourselves toward businesses and professional practices, and that will give us a nice opportunity to articulate some of these very topics to our customer base: what can we do for you and why?

The business plan is a valuable exercise as well as a potential tool if you need to apply for grants or loans. It’s something you can apply to just about any enterprise you want to pursue, including blogging.

If you’re thinking of monetizing your blog, or if you’ve already monetized it but are more or less flying by the seat of your pants, you might want to consider writing out a business plan. If you don’t want to follow the SBA template, there are several others on the Web, or some versions of Word have a template. It really clarifies your ideas… Try it. You’ll like it.

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• Shiny New Business!