On the Write Road

What is it?
No, it’s not your 5th grade California report. Or, in my case, my 5th grade report on Yugoslavia, which dates me somewhat. (Starting in 1991, Yugoslavia disintegrated into Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Macedonia. If you’re interested in whatever happened toYugoslavia, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia.)

It’s a business plan.
Adrienne, my business partner, wrote our first business plan, which looked just fine to me. She found a format on the Internet, a wealth of samples at http://www.bplans.com/, and ran with it. I thought ah… that’s that, and for a while that was.

Meanwhile, I started the Women’s Initiative Simple Steps to Business Success course. I saw this as an opportunity to network with a large group of small business owners in the Bay Area. What I did not know and it took me a number of classes to discover is that we would end up writing a business plan. Yes, once again, the infamous business plan.

I thought ah, no problem, I have Adrienne’s to look at and being a writer it won’t take me long at all. What I didn’t know is that I would have to put in our financial information. No problem, our business was just getting off the ground. We didn’t have much. But, no, I had to create financials, such as our break-even point, pricing strategy, sales forecast and cash flow projection. We did a lot of working together in class, using templates from the Small Business Administration http://www.sba.gov/ and I did it, financials!

Oh my, we even learned how to read a profit and loss statement, which would be useful for our Wall Street friends. I had to get that in. By the way, in talking with friends from my Women’s Intiative course (soon to be graduates on October 13th) all saw this financial unrest as an opportunity for us to get our businesses rolling. While people may not have money for a new home, they may enjoy gift baskets, a personal coaching session, or maybe a ghost writer (yes, Write on Time Solutions – that’s us!) for their personal memoirs.

So, there it is – it’s done our business plan. Or, should I say the latest iteration of it. If you’d like to read it – oops, didn’t I say nobody wants to read it? – e-mail me at mbrumis@writeontimesolutions.com. Or, better yet, you send me yours and I’ll send you mine.