The Business Plan 263and revising their business plan. Again, the importance of the business plan
isn’t the final product but the learning that is gleaned from going through the
process. The business plan is the story line of your vision. It articulates what
you see in your mind and crystallizes that vision for you and your team. It also
provides a history, a photo album, if you will, of the birth, growth, and matu-
rity of your business. Each major revision should be kept and filed and occa-
sionally looked back upon for the lessons you have learned. I find writing
a business plan, although daunting, exciting and creative, especially if I am
working on it with a founding team. Whether it is over a glass of wine, beer, or
coffee, talking about your business concept with your founding team is invigo-
rating, and the business plan is a critical outcome of these discussions. So now
let us dig in and examine how to write effective business plans.
THE STORY MODEL
One of the major goals for business plans is to attract and convince various
stakeholders of the potential of your business. You have to keep in mind, there-
fore, how these stakeholders will interpret your plan. The guiding principal is
that you are writing a story. All good stories have a plot line, a unifying thread
that ties the characters and events together. If you think about the most suc-
cessful businesses in America, they all have well-publicized plot lines, more
appropriately called taglines. When you hear these taglines, you immediately
connect them to the business. For example, when you hear “absolutely, posi-
tively has to be there overnight,” you probably connect that tagline to Federal
Express and package delivery. Similarly, “Just do it” is intricately linked to
Nike and the image of athletic proficiency (see Exhibit 9.1). A tagline is a sen-
tence or fragment of a sentence that summarizes the pure essence of your busi-
ness. It is the plot line that every sentence, paragraph, page, diagram, and other
part of your business plan should correlate to. One useful tip that I share with
every entrepreneur I work with is to put that tagline in a footer that runs on the
bottom of every page. Most word-processing packages, such as Microsoft Word,
enable you to insert a footer that you can see as you type. As you are writing, if
the section doesn’t build on, explain, or other wise directly relate to the tagline,
it most likely isn’t a necessary component to the business plan. Rigorous adher-
ence to the tagline facilitates writing a concise business plan.
EXHIBIT 9.1 Taglines.
Nike Just do it!
Federal Express Absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
McDonalds We love to see you smile.
Cisco Systems Discover all that's possible on the Internet.
Microsoft Where do you want to go today.