ChApter 9 | EDITING AND FINALIzING YOUR BUSINESS PLAN | 169Antoinette’s Discouraging Moment
Antoinette was pleased with her plan after
putting it together, reviewing it, and polishing
it. She was convinced she had a winner.
Almost as an afterthought, she decided
to have a business consultant review her
business plan before taking it to the bank.
She was glad she did. In brief, here is what
the consultant told her. “Antoinette, you
have written a fi ne business plan and have a
good idea for a business, but your fi nancial
projections contain one serious error. I believe
that you have underestimated the amount of
inventory you will have to carry by $45,000
to $50,000. Unfortunately, changing this
number will infl uence all your other fi nancial
projections and will mean you have to rethink
your entire plan.”
Th e consultant then discussed the same
inventory turnover problem we discovered
in Chapter 7. Th e consultant suggested that
Antoinette take a few days to decide if she
wished to try and raise more money and
rework her entire plan or drop the idea.
Antoinette was stunned. She expected
to discover some minor fl aws, not a
possibly fatal one. Nevertheless, after much
soul-searching, she was relieved to have
uncovered the problem before, not after,
she began her business. She decided that
raising the extra money for inventory wasn’t
an insurmountable problem. Th e question
was whether she could reasonably increase
her sales projections enough to justify the
increased inventory. To make this decision, she
decided to again talk to a number of women
in the target audience to get a better idea of
how often they might patronize her store.
I shall leave the decision to you as to
whether Antoinette decides to proceed with
her plans or decides to go back to work for
a salary. After all, it’s much the same sort of
diffi cult choice you may have to make about
your own business.(^) ●