It all begins with an Idea; What do today's businesses need to grow and thrive from an idea to success!
As President and CEO of Primeau Productions, Inc. and Our AfterCare, LLC.I have learned about business success from many mentors I have had as friends throughout the years. Some of the world's greatest contributors like Floyd Wickman who taught me how to sell. Terry Brock who taught me how to use technology to build relationships; and Steve Rizzo who taught me how to develop my sense of humor to get me through the tough times.
I now know what it takes to build a business on a solid foundation. I know how to run that business with the right team players who have the skill to watch my back. I can laugh at my mistakes and enjoy all the success that comes my way because of the people I have surrounded myself with.
If you have a great support team of mentors who are your friends and worker bee's that like and respect you-and will go to war for you, all you need is a plan. That is what most of this article is about; how to design a plan for success in business.
If your dream is to own a successful business, take the time to read this article and put these words into action and design your blueprint for success. I do not take credit for these action steps, as a video producer, I have learned them from great people who I have had the privilege to work with over my near 30 years as president and CEO of Primeau Productions Inc.
One of the biggest mistakes my coaching students made when starting their business is not have a vision of where they want their business to go and what they want their business to be. I ask them to describe their business in a year, two years and five years, they remain silent. I ask about their exit strategy, I have to explain what an exit strategy is (in many cases) and why they have to one.
Many businesses have made bad decisions and attracted financial hardship because they didn't know what to do or not to do. Business failure is nothing more than several mistakes and bad decisions repeated over time. I urge businesses to design a blueprint for success and know exactly what they want and what they need to grow and thrive in today's business climate.
I decided to write this article after turning 50 last year in 08. It occurred to me all of the collective knowledge I have learned from hundreds of professional speakers and businesses I have worked for and the dozens of National Speakers Association meetings I have attended. My hope is that the following article will help you become aware of the tools it takes to build that solid foundation and own a successful business.
The first step when starting any business is an idea, a thought or spark that gets you excited about goods or services that people will love and pay you money! Remember, even though you may have a great idea, you have to have a plan to make your idea work. This is why a blueprint to success has the ability to guide you to success. Something magical happens when you put pen to paper.
A blueprint for success is important because:
- You have to design a road map that guides your idea into action while day to day activity distracts you.
- You have to realize how to be prepared to reinvent yourself when something isn't working.
- You have to realize that technology and the Internet are your friends and will provide marketing tools and information at the snap of a finger.
- It's important to research your idea and competition to discover what market share is available for your idea.
Once you have your idea formulated and a process or system in place, begin your blueprint process by reading this article completely.
Take notes and write down ideas as they formulate because the first reading will provoke thoughts and stimulate additional ideas.
Keep in mind, the purpose of a blueprint to success is to give you direction. Almost like a GPS (Global Positioning System) in some respects. You have a destination or address where you want to go. Perhaps is financial independence? You enter the address or destination into your GPS. What if the GPS works but the car breaks down even though the GPS is still functioning? Do you buy another car or fix the one you have?
Do you lift the hood up, open the manual, adjust or replace a part or two yourself and you keep moving or do you hire a trained, skilled mechanic and save yourself time and in most cases money? Remember, time is money!
I find many Entrepreneurs often spend their time on the wrong activity.
Direction
You have to love the business owner who does it all them self. The make the widget, answer the phone, sell the widget and take out the trash. No wonder they have no personal life and are grouchy whey they come home to their family. Worse yet, they recruit their family to help they with their business! Talk about resentment!
You have to realize that you can't earn $500,000 a year doing $8 per hour work! Mathematically, it is not possible! There are not enough hours in a day to fill your business bucket let alone your personal bucket!
You have to start your direction or journey with the right team. No successful business ever made it alone. People helping people are the luckiest people in the world!
Imagine if I put a blindfold on you, handed you a hand full of darts, spun you around several times then asked you to throw the darts at the target. The people in the room with you would be apprehensive wouldn't they? The situation would have more promise if you were not blindfolded and could see the dart board or target. You would have a much better chance of hitting the target if you could see it right? You would see what you were aiming for and have direction. What if you had an experienced dart player teach you how to throw the dart and increase your odds hitting the target?
What really blows my mind is the person who opens a restaurant without a chef. They believe that because they can make a five course dinner for their family they will learn how to repeat that process for dozens of customers. What they didn't realize are the many differences like inventory, ordering, spoilage and serving during busy times.
This part of the blueprint is direction; without direction in your blueprint, you might as well wear a blindfold. Determining your direction is the foundation of your business and not as simple as throwing darts at a dart board. It is ok to have several iterations and time invested massaging your direction. Create your appropriate direction categories as you begin your blueprint. As you write, you will get additional ideas so go back and revise as many times as you want to laser focus your direction.
Keep in mind that a blueprint for success is a work in process and is never completely done. Instead, you will arrive at a place where your blueprint is ready and you start your business. It is ok and a must to adjust and modify as you go. Your blueprint for success is like the dance of greatness, three steps forward and two steps backward.
Mission
Your mission should be a general statement of what it is that you want to accomplish with your business. What is your passion? How many people should eventually be on your team? Where will your business be located? Will you operate virtually or have a brick and mortar community presence?
What is it about your business that really makes your chimes ring? Use that excitement and create your companies mission.
Below, I have provided you with some examples of existing company's mission statements.
Primeau Productions Mission is: to service companies and entertainers with multimedia production that is second to none while providing the absolute best customer service in the industry.
Google's mission statement is: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
International Red Cross -- "To serve the most vulnerable" -- they come right out and say something. In their brevity and simplicity is power.
The Drucker Foundation says this about a company's mission: Why you do what you do; the organization's reason for being, its purpose. Says what, in the end, you want to
be remembered for.
Now that is powerful!
If you are not sure of your mission, how do you discover it? Start out by asking yourself what is it that you want to accomplish in the next 5 years. Write it down on paper as a general statement; what do you want to accomplish over a period of time? Think about one year as well as the life of your business. You can go online and do some research to help stimulate ideas.
When I had the idea to start Primeau Productions Inc, I had a passion to make inexpensive audio and video marketing and products businesses could use to create visibility for their business as well as sell as for passive income-which also promotes their business and increases their perceived value and expertise. Think about it, when you meet somebody who "wrote the book", doesn't it increase their perceived value in your mind?
My friend and client Ralph Roberts has written several books on mortgage fraud and foreclosure over the last several years and is now sought out by the media and business professionals as the foreclosure expert.
[1] I am a contributing author for one of Ralph's books; Advance Selling for Dummy's published by Wiley and sons.
When I decided to start Primeau Productions, there were advertising agencies that designed ideas and wrote scripts for radio and TV and print ads. There were also recording studios that recorded audio and video, edited what the ad agency created. But there were few facilities that could be a one stop that were called production companies. I wanted to develop a business that could combine all these talents, skills and abilities under one roof.
I did my research and discovered there was a need in the market place for a full service one stop shop production company that did it all. My initial target market was Professional Speakers, entertainers and the meetings industry for in studio and meeting room recording and product development.
If your mission isn't to start a business and rather increase your percentage of the market you serve, you better find out what percentage of the market you currently have. Then, determine how much market share is actually available. That's a mission too!
I have seen so many businesses start without a clue of how much market share is available for them. They open an office, spend their available money advertising and sending out a few letters, then sit and pray business comes their way. They forgot one very important thing, their mission for their business.
Doesn't it make sense to determine your mission as part of your company start up? If your company is already up and running, it is never too late to redirect your company into a successful direction by designing your blueprint for success and determining your mission. Consider it corporate restructuring.
Your mission could be as simple as to have "X" amount of your market know that your company exists over the next 5 years. This is a very broad statement. You would then zoom in on an objective to support that mission. Your objective is to determine the different activities that have to be done to support your mission. (We will get to objectives in the next section). Another example of your mission might be to open another location in the next 5 years.
If you are an existing business, you may want to have a leadership sit down to brainstorm your mission. There is a great technique I learned from one of my mentors Floyd Wickman called fishboneing.
On a sheet of paper, draw the skeleton of a fish. With all your team players present, you go around the table and each person contributes an idea. The first person writes down their idea at the end of one of the bones. Write small and general at first. Have discussion along the way and explain your idea briefly until the fish is completed with ideas for your group's consideration. This is a magical formula to stimulate synergy and repair problems.
You can also discuss your mission with a friend or mentor. Ask a current client to tell you want your company does best and perhaps your mission statement will be somewhere in their reply.
Once you complete your mission, you are ready to move onto the next component of your business plan, your objective.
Objective
The next section in your blueprint for success is your objectives. Make a list of your company goals so that they support your mission statement. These are very specific goals that your company wants to achieve within a specific period of time. These goals could be one month, one year, three years or longer. It could be all the above. Remember to be very specific.
Have fun with this section as you creatively determine what you want to accomplish. Write down what it is that your company wants. How much money you want to make. Do you want your leaders to have a company car so you can increase your benefits package? Do you want to trim money off your operating budget?
Another objective might be to increase the visibility of your website. Yet another may be to expand your market outside your home city or state to a national playground.
One of your objectives could be to capture an additional 30% of your market. What if the first year you only capture an additional 10%?
Either your objective was too lofty or you didn't have the proper plan in place to realize your objective. This is the redesigning phase and you have to keep your ego out of it!
You can also list some personal as well as team goals in your objective portion of your blueprint for success. Maybe one of your objectives is to take paid vacations. Maybe you would like to have a better company image by dressing better than you have been. So this objective would be to improve career apparel. Maybe incorporate golf shirts or uniforms for your team.
Remember to make changes regularly to your objectives section just like the rest of your blueprint. As you continue, analyze, fishbone, research and ask questions, your blueprint will evolve to the perfect business model and be the perfect blueprint for success!
Job Descriptions
There are so many entrepreneurs who decide to start a business without a plan and understanding of exactly what it is they have to do to be successful. The "who is doing what" part of the business plan is Job Descriptions. The definition of a job description is your responsibilities in detail of what it is that you do. You can't do everything yourself! Not only will you have no family life, you will eventually burn out.
Ask several people how they see what it is that you do. How can you divide your daily activities into other activity for additional team players? Get opinions on these activities from your mentors and customers and decide how you can remove some of your responsibilities and delegate them to another person. Remember you can not make $500,000 a year doing $8 per hour activity.
Incorporate some proven time management techniques into your thinking as you create a list of all the business activity you do for your business. On that list, write an "A" next to all the main activity you must do yourself every day. Then place an "X" next to the activity you must do yourself and do not have to do every day. Next, place a "D" next to all the other activity that you can learn how to delegate to another person so you will have more time to do what you do best and take time off to regenerate.
In essence what you are doing is creating job descriptions. Part of your job description is to design and implement a business plan for the company. Write that down under your job description. Here are a few suggestions of job descriptions:
Finding leads and making sales; organizing the accounting; setting up customer retention systems and customer service procedures. Waiting on customers, cleaning up at the end of the day and preparing your taxes at the end of the year are others.
Take time to list all your business activity and place the appropriate letters beside it so you can begin thinking in compartments of activity or job descriptions.
Measures of accomplishments
This is your businesses check and balance system. Knowing and acknowledging what it is that you have accomplished as well as what still needs to be accomplished is vital to your successful growth.
You could list as: Measures of accomplishment have been met when: Our sales hit $2 million; successfully report to me on a weekly basis from each team player; when I have created and completed a blueprint for success and given to everyone on my team; when I have followed up on all sales leads and increase sales by a certain percentage; when our business website is complete and viral marketing is making the phone ring.
The measures of accomplishments have to equal your responsibilities. It is your check and balance to insure that you are doing what you said you would be doing and the fees you are paying your staff have provided a return on your investment.
ROI (return on investment)
Every business deserves to make a profit. If you pay an employee $8 per hour, you should be able to analyze your ROI as at lease $12 per hour. How much time does having that employee save you if you were doing their activity? What is your ROI on your business activity? Are you earning your income based on your time invested?
Team Players
Who are the people who will be involved in your business and what are their job descriptions? A successful business is built with a team of experts and like minded individuals who strategize the activities involved to take the business where the team members want it to go.
Exit Strategy
Part of your business value to you and a prospective buyer is a clearly defined exit strategy. This is how you plan to leave your business. Part of your exit strategy includes a plan to be able to hand your business off to a potential buyer.
Keep in mind as your business grows that it has to be designed and developed so you are not always the decision maker. Your company will have more value if it is organized to have other people running a majority of the business and doing most of the activities. You as the president and CEO guide your team.
Companies with owners that can be defined as having an Incorporated Career, they basically have to have their hand in everything, will have difficulty developing their exit strategy and have less value when the sales time comes.
www.VideoProductionPrimeau.com
Conclusion
By now you have the outline of what it takes to develop a business plan. This plan can be used to raise venture capital, attract partners or simply serve as a guide to grow your business successfully.
You know what it takes to build a business on a solid foundation. Remember that this plan can and will be revised from time to time as your goals change and the market expands and contracts.
You should know how to run your business with the right team players who have the skill to watch your back. You have learned from your mistakes and enjoy all the success that will come your way because of the people on your team.
Remember, trust is vital to the success of your company. Trust in your employees as well as your customers will be the single most important factor in your business success. Closely followed by the level of customer service you provide and the quality of your goods and service.
About the Author
Ed is CEO of Primeau Productions, Inc. a full-service video production, digital publishing and Internet marketing company located in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
Ed is also an audio visual forensics expert engaged in many law cases and has testified in various courts around the United States.
Ed is the author of "The Art of Production" and is a contributing author for "Advance Selling for Dummies". Ed has also been published in many newspapers and magazines including the Wall Street Journal, Inside Homeland Security and Speaker magazine.
Ed@PrimeauProductions.com
800-647-4281
AutoCAD 2006 for Dummies (ebook)
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