wonder thinking » Business Planning

Link Love Friday: You’ve Got to Spend Big Money to Make Big Money

Tricia — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:00:20 +0000

Megan Auman of CraftMBA says “you’ve got to spend big money to make big money.”

“Having big goals for your business means you have to be willing to spend big money on your business.”

Go ahead. Go read the article. I’ll wait.

Do you have big goals for your business? Are you making big investments in your business?

Link Love Friday: Your Idea Sucks, Now Go Do It Anyway

Tricia — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:00:06 +0000

Love this: Your Idea Sucks, Now Go Do It Anyway. Required reading.

Getting your idea perfect before you start your project probably won’t happen. That’s okay. Get started. It will work itself out as you work on it, not as you think on it.

Your Renaissance Soul and Your Business Plan

Tricia — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:15:48 +0000

I hear you. You have a renaissance soul.

So many shiny things spark your interest. They mix and mingle into the the multi-faceted Thing that is your creative business.

So how does that work when you’re planning your business? How do you incorporate your renaissance soul into your business plan? Should you write one business plan to rule them all? Or a business plan for each venture?

It’s so tempting to write one business plan– after all, each of your Things is a part of who you are, a facet of your interests. But one business plan just won’t work.

For example, if you design wordpress blogs and sell knitted hats, neither activity is served well by a combined business plan. Your products and services are vastly different; your markets are different. By writing a plan for each, you get a clearer picture of the strength of each plan.

If you combine the blog design and knitted hats into one business plan, it might be easy to overlook weak areas and think the other venture will make up for the loss. If your knitted hats aren’t really making profit even though you’ve nailed your target hat market, and your blog design hasn’t really found its market even though your pricing is profitable, then neither venture is performing well. But on paper in a combined business plan, with something positive noted in each area, things might not look so bad.

Write a separate business plan for each venture.

For each area of your business plan:

1 Vision and Mission
2 Products and Services
3 Market Analysis
4 Marketing
5 Future Plans

Consider each of your ventures. Then after you’ve created a solid plan for each, look for synergy.

Maybe that mommy blog that you advertise your knitted hats on might be a good candidate for a blog design ad. Of course you’ll use separate ads, but maybe the mommy blog will offer you a discount for multiple ads.

Look for sticky bits.

Consider a photographer who sells fine art prints and photographs weddings. Some expensive camera gear could be shared between the ventures. But, depending on her location, the seasons for weekend art festivals (for fine art print sales) and weddings may overlap significantly. How will the photographer deal with competing interests for her time? Maybe she will decide to split her weekends between festivals and weddings. Maybe she will focus on one activity over the other. Maybe she will hire help. There’s not really a right answer here, the point is to use your written business plans to discover the path that works for you.

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Business Plan: Future Plans

Tricia — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 13:00:05 +0000

Operation Business Plan. What’s in your future?

This post is part of a series on writing your business plan. Subscribe to my mailing list to get instant access to download the free Wonder Thinking Business Plan-o-Rama workbook and get working on your business plan!

What is your vision for 5 and 10 years down the road? What will your day to day life be like? What accomplishments will you have achieved?

What are your goals for this year? What are you going to do to accomplish them? What will you leave behind?

I’m working on my business plan along with you. How’s it going? Let me know in the comments.

If this series is helpful to you, please share on twitter or facebook. Thank you!

Business Plan: Marketing

Tricia — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:00:48 +0000

Operation Business Plan. Let’s get started on your marketing plan!

Your marketing plan is your message and your plan for getting the word out. What is it that you want to communicate to potential buyers? How will you tell them?

1. Your Message

We’ve looked at your markets, your products’ features and benefits, your ideal customer, and your competition. Now let’s pull all of that information together and figure out your message, your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

Your message is your response to your potential buyer’s question: What’s in it for me?

Why should they buy your product? Why should they buy it from you? Answer this in a couple of sentences.

Your business plan is something of a survey– touching on many important aspects of your business. Your marketing message and your USP are subjects that could invite long discussions and textbooks of information. With this business plan, feel free dive as deeply as you please in any subject, but try to avoid overwhelm. The point is to think a bit on each area, get something written down, and move on. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

2. Getting the Word Out

How will you get the word out to your customers?

Are you blogging about your products?

Do you have a mailing list?

Do you have a press kit? And a plan to contact bloggers and media outlets?

Can you align your product promotions to publications’ editorial calendars? (When are editors looking for St. Patrick’s Day products for features?)

Will you use paid ads on blogs or in print? What is your budget?

Will you use social media? Facebook? Twitter? Flickr?

What other methods will you use to get the word out about your business and products?

I’m working on my business plan along with you. How’s it going? Let me know in the comments.

If this series is helpful to you, please share on twitter or facebook. Thank you!

Business Plan: Market Analysis

Tricia — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:00:20 +0000

Operation Business Plan. Let’s get started on your market analysis!

Your market analysis is an assessment of the potential market for your products and services. Information on your market, your ideal customer, and your competition sets the stage for your marketing plan (how to get the word out about your awesome sauce).

Our market analysis will focus on four main topics: your market, your ideal customer, your products’ benefits, and your competition. Next week, we’ll get into your marketing plan and pimping your wares.

1. Your Market

Loosely speaking, a market is a group of people with shared characteristics. Your market is the people that may buy your product or service. What can you say about your market? Is it growing?

2. Your Ideal Customer

Let’s get specific and imagine your ideal customer. Is it a man or woman? What age? What is her profession? Income? Education? Hobbies? Is she online?

3. Your Products’ Benefits

You wrote about your products’ features in the Products and Services section of the business plan last week. Now think about your products’ benefits. What benefit does your customer get from your product? Your customer wants to know “What’s in in it for me?” How does your product solve a problem for her?

Translate your products’ features to benefits. For example, a feature of my photography prints is that they are made with archival ink and paper; the benefit to the buyer is that the photograph will provide a lifetime of enjoyment.

4. Your Competition

How does your product compare to the competition? Is it better quality? Higher price? Available in more colors? More customizable?

Getting a handle on how your product compares to its competitors will fuel your marketing efforts by helping you articulate your unique selling proposition (more on this later, for now know that this groundwork will be fertile soil for future sales efforts).

Who are your competitors? Who are the people that create similar products that you admire? List a few of your competitors. Let’s compare your products (or services) to two of your competitors.

See the handy Competition Analysis worksheet in the Wonder Thinking Business Plan-o-Rama workbook (subscribe to my mailing list to get instant access).

Compare your business to your competition on these factors:
Products
Price
Quality
Selection
Service
Reputation
Appearance
Image

What other factors should you compare?

Your market analysis is excellent groundwork for your marketing plan, which we’ll get into next week. I’m working on my business plan along with you. How’s it going? Let me know in the comments.

If this series is helpful to you, please share on twitter or facebook. Thank you!

Business Plan: Products & Services

Tricia — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:00:15 +0000

Operation Business Plan. Your mission today is to describe your products and services.

Describe your products and services in depth. What techniques do you use? What are your materials or components? Include photographs, technical drawings, your patterns, sales brochures.

What is unique to your product or service? What makes your product distinctive?

What is your pricing? Retail and wholesale. How did you determine your pricing?

This is probably the most straightforward section of your business plan, so the answers should be easy. What do you sell and for how much? So there’s no time like the present to get started writing it down! Do it now. I’m working on my business plan along with you. Subscribe to my mailing list to get instant access to download the free Wonder Thinking Business Plan-o-Rama workbook and get working on your business plan!

Image: Summer. Original photograph by Tricia McKellar. © All rights reserved.

Business Plan: Vision & Mission

Tricia — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:00:24 +0000

Operation Business Plan. Vision. Mission. This is the good stuff, the part where you summarize your business and talk about the things that make you tick.

You probably have ideas about your vision and mission already. The purpose of writing them down is threefold:
- to identify and clarify your ideas by writing them down;
- to serve as a road map for your business; and
- to give you some awesome, authentic fuel for your marketing efforts.

Let’s get started. For each section, write as much as you care to. If you’re feeling stuck, skip that section, let it simmer in your brain a bit, and come back to it later. This business plan is for you and should be considered a living document– your answers may change over time (and probably should).

1. Business Description – What kind of business are you in? What do you do? A short description will do.

2. Vision – What’s the big picture for you and your business? What do you see in your future? Where do you want to be in one year, five years, ten years? Short is okay, as long as your answer digs deep into the things that really turn you on. We’ll dive deeper and write more about future plans later.

3. Mission Statement – A mission statement is usually a couple of sentences explaining your business purpose and philosophy. A well crafted, authentic mission statement provides a strong foundation for your business plans and marketing efforts.

To get your creative juices stirring for your mission statement, consider these questions:

If you are an artist/crafter/thing-maker/designer, what inspires you? How did you get started doing the thing you do? What do you love about the things you make/design? What is important to you in your business? What do you hope your customers will find in your product/service?

4. Customer Profile – Who buys your stuff? Write a brief description, we’ll dive deeper into this topic later.

5. Strengths and Challenges – What are your strengths and weaknesses regarding your business? How will you use your strengths to your best advantage? What will you do to develop your areas of weakness?

6. Business Structure – What is the legal form of your business? Sole Proprietorship, Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), Partnership, Corporation? Why did you choose this form?

Again, this business plan is for you. Some questions may be hard to answer and that’s okay. The point is to get started thinking and writing.

If you enjoy this post, please share it with your twitter or facebook friends. Thank you!

Writing a Business Plan

Tricia — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:00:01 +0000

Do you have a business plan? Is it like mine? A collection of brilliant & amazing ideas. In. Your. Head.

Plans in my head are always awesome. Plans written down are subject to thoughtful inspection. Sigh.

I have no written business plan. It’s been easy to ignore. It’s been easy to have a vague idea of my creative business direction & try to do things that seem to help me along that path.

So why write a business plan at all?

Do you have the feeling it might be time for the next step but you’re not sure what that next step is? Are you getting comfortable with your art/craft/thing but a little part of you wonders if you’re missing the opportunity to stretch a little?

Maybe you get an email with a fabulous offer to join a selling website and it’s beautiful and it’s free and the offer expires soon. But you’re in the middle of another project and you’re not sure if this new, fabulous site is really for you, right now. Should you spend your time on the new site or your current project? Cloning technology isn’t widely available yet, so some choices must be made…

A good business plan is like a map– it shows you where you’ve been and where you’re going.

A glance at the map will tell you if that new site is a really out-of-way detour or if it’s on the route to your destination. Are you planning to increase your retail venues in the coming year? Or will you focus on wholesale? Both? Maybe something else entirely? Some time now thinking about and writing down your direction will keep you on course.

So why write a business plan now? Because it’s 2011 baby! Time to get specific about goals and direction. Something about the act of writing clarifies thoughts.

First, think about how your business plan will be used. Is this road map mainly for you? If your business plan is just for your use, the form and content can be creative.

(If you think you may want to get a loan or venture capital for your business, you might choose a more traditional business plan than we are creating here. The Small Business Administration has resources for writing a traditional business plan.)

The Wonder Thinking Business Plan-o-Rama will include topics:

1. Business Vision, Mission

2. Products/Services

3. Market Analysis, Competition

4. Marketing Plan

5. Future Plans

We’ll cover each of the topic areas weekly in a blog post. Zero to business plan in 5 weeks. Yeah baby. Tune in Wednesday, January 12 for Vision & Mission.

Looking Back on 2010

Tricia — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:00:26 +0000

Happy New Year! Before we start spreading the 2011 awesome sauce, let’s look back on 2010.

How was your 2010? Did you have goals for the year? Did you reach them?

My 2010 was great! In my etsy photography shop, my number of prints sold was down, but my total dollar sales were up. I had fewer number of sales but made more money. And I’m happy with that. I increased my average dollars per sale. I made more money on each package I shipped. How did I do it? I made a list of the 6 core areas of my business to target and came up with small, achievable tasks to do for each core area. Read about the 6 core areas of your business to build in The Secret to Etsy Sales series.

I also created new art in 2010. The work makes my heart sing. Selling it is icing on the cake.

Have your dug into your 2010 numbers? What did you sell the most? Which colors, sizes were the most popular? What were your best months? I think the numbers can surprise us. Sometimes I think I have a handle on what my business is doing, but concrete numbers are very satisfying.

I sell photography on etsy. From my 2010 numbers, I can see that four sizes of prints sell best for me. Some types of images sell better in certain sizes. That is pure gold for me to know about my business. What gold can you unearth from your numbers?

Leave a comment! Tell us about your 2010!