Start Of The New Financial Year – Time To Write Your Business Plan!

Jul 16 2019

In the blink of an eye, we are more than halfway through the calendar year and already two weeks after the start of the new financial year!

If you’re not careful, another year will slip by you where you haven’t really done much to make your business the success you want it to be. Now I’m not saying you’re not working hard, in fact, I’m saying exactly that: “you’re working too hard in your business, but not hard enough on your business!”

Don’t you think it’s time that you really did something other than work hard for no real progress toward your ultimate goal of a successful business that fulfils your passion and your dreams, gives you a great income and a balanced lifestyle?

The start of a new financial year is just the time to do something different.

You can start by writing your own business plan and getting organised toward moving along your much-needed strategic direction, so that every day, day on day, you know what are your priorities, what you need to do to get a big return on investment on your time and effort.

Just this week I have opened my new online workshop “Your One Day Business Plan” where you can follow my directions online and write your business plan in one day.

I have written about why you need to write a business plan. You can find it on my blog or go and watch a video explaining why you need to write a business plan to grow your business on YouTube here.

In this video right here, I explain how you do it, using your own knowledge of your business in 5 simple steps that get your thinking organised and create strategies to get you where you want to be.

This week, however, since I opened “Your One Day Business Plan” with the release of a free Business Planning Checklist and a free short-course 4-part video training series I thought I would stay away from video in this post and explain how I came up with the concept and contents of Your One Day Business Plan.

In my 30+ years’ of learning and experience in helping small business owners grow successful businesses, I have found very common pressure-points that all small business owners feel.

We are all short on time!

We get caught up in the day to day running of the business so that we spend our days elbow-deep in detail rather than being able to see – and steer – our way through the muck and toward a comprehensive strategic goal. We need the formula to get us organised, not so much in our time-management, but in our time prioritisation. We need to find sales, improve our services, make sure our employees know what to do and can do it, all while following a direct path to where you want to end up.

I have been using my business planning formula with clients over the last 10 or 15 years, honing down on the steps so that each step is effective and efficient, so that now, my 5 step process is quick and efficient, and you can follow it yourself without spending lots of money with a consultant in front of you. This is what makes Your One Day Business Plan so different. It is not online training. It is not a series of templates you have to fill out on your own. It is not an academic exercise that leaves you struggling to implement.

Your One Day Business Plan is a timed, online workshop where I put all the experience and techniques I have learned into a recorded step by step instructional workshop.

Here’s how it works.

Once you subscribe to the program, you get instant access to an 11 module workshop program that will take you through defining your vision so that you establish exactly where you want to end up; analysing your current situation by recognising each of your current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; establishing clearly defined gaps between where you are now and where you want to be; defining your long-term, medium-term and short-term goals; then setting out clear strategies that will clarify for you what you have to do and your most important priorities over the next 12 months.

The program also leads you to write out detailed action plans for each strategy so that on a day-to-day basis you know what are the most important things you have to do.

The real clincher is that the program ends with an accountability module, where you are shown how to set up a monitoring and evaluation system that makes you accountable to achieve each of your goals through the implementation of your strategies and action plans.

This is what makes the difference – Your One Day Business Plan goes beyond “training” and is a self-timed workshop program recorded in real time. You don’t just learn “how to” write your business plan, you are walked through the entire process so that it becomes achievable.

I had to think about how I gave you this value and effectiveness.

Using the leverage of the internet was obviously crucial. If I sat in front of you for a day, asking you pointed questions and leading you through the process, it would cost you about $8,000 once I have completed my consultancy and written it up for you. Using the internet, I am able to use my experience n the process and offer a pre-recorded program for a fraction of the cost at a stunning $197!

So that’s the value. Now, how do I make sure I give you effectiveness?

Well, firstly, I know the 5-step formula works. Get prepared, know where you want to go, understand your current situation, bridge the gaps with the right strategies, and then create monitoring and evaluation systems so that you keep on track. I have used this formula for the last 10 to 15 years, guiding small businesses all over Australia to define, and then achieve their business success.

Now I had to think of a way to deliver it in an online program.

First I experimented with a lecture and fill-in-the-downloaded-templates model. This is the model you see in plenty of online business courses today. You buy into a program where a talking head explains why you need a business plan (done, for free, in my blog) and what the different types do (done, for free, in my blog) what the steps of preparing one are (done, for free again, in my blog), what a vision and strategic direction means, how to analyse your current situation, how to write strategies, and what to include in your business plan (done, done, done, all done, for free, in my blog).

However what this model did – no matter how good my teaching content was, and it was good – is that it left you to do it yourself. If you didn’t quite follow an instruction, it got lost. So I had to do something different.

Then I was facilitating a one-on-one business planning workshop with a client when she said, joking as an aside, “I really should have taped this.” That was my “aha!” lightbulb moment.

So what Your One Day Business Plan gives you is a complete program to write your business plan, in one day if you want, as if I were standing in front of you facilitating your own business planning workshop.

First, you get a welcome message and a video introduction where I tell you how the program works, what you need to have ready, and how to organise your private workshop.

I then take you through 11 timed workshop modules.

In each, you will get a short video training of 5 to 20 minutes to introduce the topic and tell you how to approach the module. You can then download a worksheet for the topic, as well as a recorded, timed, audio where I walk you through the completion of the worksheet, prompting you for ideas, asking leading questions and pushing you to think using your knowledge of your business. I leave pauses from time to time so that you can think about and answer my prompts and write your ideas into the worksheets. These audios are recorded in real time as if I were directly in front of you for the day.

It will be a tough day, but you are capable of watching, listening to the guidance, and writing up your ideas, all in one day, by following the timed recordings. However, since you have the program forever, there’s nothing to stop you doing it in your own time. You can listen to the training videos, then pause to think and research, then you can listen to the audio and fill in your worksheets, then you can stop and pick up on another day – all up to you!

At the end of the program, modules 10 and 11, using the same approach, guides you on how to put your plan together in a document that you can follow on a day-to-day basis and shows you how to implement it so that it doesn’t get lost when you get “caught up”.

This is the most comprehensive workshop and training program on how to write your own business plan to get organised and head toward your vision that is possible to put together! That’s how I created the value and the effectiveness.

It was at this stage when I reviewed and tested the program with a few willing guinea-pigs that I realised I had more to offer you! From some of the questions and suggestions my “guinea-pigs” came up with, I realised it would be really beneficial to you if I included some free bonuses. You don’t really need these to prepare your business plan (that’s why they are bonuses!), but if you had these free tools your business plan could be prepared faster and more effectively.

I have included as a free bonus, the worksheets in editable format as some people like to type out their handwritten notes after the program. I have also included a templated spreadsheet to help you put together your budget to cost and quantify the effects of your strategies, extra reading on what to include in your business plan if the intention is to apply for a loan with yours, as well as further reading on what other long-term planning you need to do to grow your business and how Your One Day Business Plan fits into the overall planning and business organisation context.

I really need to tell you that if you do not have a business plan, not only will you not be able to grow the successful business of your dreams except by accident, you may even be putting the long-term survival of your business at risk. Businesses that fail don’t plan to fail – they fail to plan! Now, at the start of a new financial year, this is the best time for you to map your road ahead.

If you want to know more about the finished, polished product, read about Your One Day Business Plan here and then click on the link contained in it to subscribe for a value-driven investment of $197! If you want to try out the 5-step formula by checking through my Business Planning Checklist and watching the free 4-part video training on how to write your own business plan – but losing out on the timed facilitation of your private workshop – you can get these sent to you by following this link.

And did I tell you that my offer is backed by a 30-day money back guarantee? You bear no risk if you subscribe. If you buy Your One Day Business Plan, and after working through it find that it does not give you an effective, actionable business plan, send me an email with your completed worksheets to show you tried to do the work (sorry, no tyre-kickers) within 30 days of purchase, and I will give you your money back, no questions asked.

Go and read more about Your One Day Business Plan, and I’ll see you on the other side with an effective, actionable business plan to organise your roadmap to the business of your dreams!