Beth Haselhorst: So your company is up and running. Do you still need a business plan? To answer that question for us is the man known as the business plan’s coach. Tim Berry is not only a successful business author but also a founder of Palo Alto Software which produces the nation’s leading business planning software. Tim has given seminars on business planning for entrepreneurs in 15 countries on four continents and he’s here with us today. Welcome to SBTV.com, Tim.
Tim Berry: Thank you, Beth.
Beth Haselhorst: So you hear about creating business plans to start a business but doesn’t established business need a business plan?
Tim Berry: That’s such a damaging myth. The idea and God help them. The people that all business plans yet but I’m not going to start up. That’s damaging. It’s like why in the world because you’re operating a business. Wouldn’t you want the benefit of business planning? I mean you don’t want to control your destiny, you know but it’s all out there. People think that business plans start up and I just get emotional because there is loss. People miss the opportunity to manage better and I know a lot of it. I mean I have a small business. We have 40 employees. Who wants to miss out to manage better? It’s just crazy.
Of course, you want a business plan. Of course, you want to manage better.
Beth Haselhorst: How do you keep your business plan from just becoming a shelf warmer?
Tim Berry: And that’s really the key to it, isn’t it because when they say, “Oh but I don’t need a business plan.” They’re imagining the wrong thing. It’s a myth. It’s like a straw man that people who say, I don’t need a plan. Well, they’re right in the way of the shelf warmer. They’re right and if you just don’t write a business plan, it doesn’t do you much good. It’s about managing your company by doing not just a plan but a planning process. So you need to plan to start a planning process but then every month, you kind of review your assumptions, where did we think we were going? Where are we? Why is it different? How is it changed and that will then become management and ultimately why does a business that’s establish plan because they want to control their destiny. They want to look up at the horizon and see what’s coming and at the same time, look down and see the details and that’s planning.
Beth Haselhorst: Are there different pieces or sections in business plan that are only pertinent to establish businesses?
Tim Berry: Well, I think for established business, it’s not that—let’s put it this way. Established businesses are the most likely to underestimate or pooh-pooh their market that I know my market and that’s where people have to realize, take a fresh look.
For established businesses often when I’m working with them, I’ll emphasize the fresh look, the new look at your market because the danger is as we’re running the business day by day, we start to assume we know and things are changing. But we’re busy and we don’t stop and we don’t think about it so for that established business, I do emphasize for them to take a step away, squint like the artist looking at the landscape and take a fresh look at your business. Look again at why people are buying from you? What are they getting? Why do they really need? What are you giving them?
And take a good look at your competition and if you say, you don’t have competition, do not cross. Go and start over. Do not collect $200.00. You do have a competition if your business is so good, and so fast that it doesn’t have competition, and then it’s going to have in three months. And then you look at what’s coming. So that all brought together, that’s what I call the fresh look and that’s particularly important for growing established businesses.
Beth Haselhorst: Tim, thanks a lot for joining us today. Be sure to visit www.timberry.com. To learn more about Tim’s books, his work and his blog and you can find more segments with Tim Berry in the small business globe series here on SBTV.com, where small business is our only business.
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