Focus on the Target and the Big Problems
Volume 12, Number 38,
Issue 585
One of my particular specialties is working with people who are thinking about starting businesses. In application, however, I usually end up working with people who have jumped into running a business without thinking it through and are frantically trying to solve small and medium day-to-day problems without focusing on serious over-riding issues that are actually opportunities and not problems.
Once into owning and running a business, people often begin thinking about needing a business plan. This is truly backward thinking. The business plan should ALWAYS come first. The writing, editing, reading, re-editing, re-reading and the overall networking of a written business plan is the cornerstone facilitation exercise to success in business and this lets the owner start thinking through the small and medium problems IN ADVANCE that will surely come. By being ready for them, you can focus on the big problems (opportunities) that make or break a company and not on minutia.
In my professional opinion, if you jump into starting a business without a written business plan that has been written and re-written over a period of several months by sharing it with professionals and people with experience in running businesses, your chances of failure are much greater.
With regard to the business plans that are shown to me for professional advice, one of the key elements that is almost always missing is an “out” plan. Small business people spend so much time thinking about starting their business and then about how they will or are running it that they forget about the out plan. Specifically, what will ultimately happen to the business? An owner isn’t going to own it forever! I think that they forget to focus on the “out” plan because they are burdened with solving the day-to-day fires.
At what point will the business that you started be sold or liquidated? Will it be sold intact or broken-up and who will be the ideal buyer? Will it be sold to an employee or a third party? Will the company merge with another? Will it “go public?” Will the business be “of value” when it’s sold, or, more likely, will the doors be simply closed and the assets disbursed and the customers cut loose? These are the things that need to be planned for, in advance and are truly the “big picture” things about owing a business. Thinking about and discussing these things in a business plan makes the crème de la crème of business plans rise to the top. The best business plans and models spend just as much time talking about getting the founding owners “out” as they do “in,” but most business plans simply ignore the “out.”
I remember being the resident film projector geek at Byrd Middle School in Henrico County back in the 1970s. When the projector was first turned on and the film threaded, the image that showed-up on the screen was just simply out of focus. It took me fiddling with getting the lens moved in just the right direction to get a “clearer” image. Often, the image changed and went back out of focus. Rarely did it always stay “in focus.”
The best entrepreneurs constantly focus and refocus on the long-term “out” plan as the ultimate goal of owning the business.
The best entrepreneurs that I know start their focusing at the beginning of the idea for a business, continue focusing through the facilitation exercise of mapping out the written business plan and never stop focusing from the first day of public service to the day the “out” plan culminates. An entrepreneur must always keep their eye on the assigned (within the business plan about target market and the success of operations (among other things)) “target” with an ability to constantly adjust the focus on the final “out” plan. In the business world, there is no such thing as “auto focus.”
What may have been thought to be “the plan” rarely turns about to be the final plan. The best plans get you into it and then the plan is immediately obsolete. The best plans are ones that lead you to the general vicinity of where you want to go and then give you a general outline of what you think is going to happen. Once whatever is at-hand starts, your plan generally stops being applicable and you must adapt it on the spot through constant refocusing. Though the “focus” was planned for in the business plan, the best entrepreneurs know that owning your own company is a constant, ever-changing journey of re-focusing on targets that constantly change.
Though most people want to follow a business plan, they end up becoming frustrated with the process because “everything keeps changing.” That’s really, in my opinion, what makes entrepreneurialism so very exciting and really does weed out the people who shouldn’t run their own companies by working for themselves. People who are not cut out for owning their own enterprises keep getting bogged down with having their attention diverted because of the need to solve day-to-day, immaterial problems that are not part of the overall “big picture.”
The little problems that pop-up on a moment-to-moment basis are what makes owing a business exciting. The medium-sized problems are opportunities for re-focusing. Solving and preventing the big problems is the rewarding part of owing a business. Most businesses never get to work on the big problems because they go out of business after doing a bad job solving and anticipating the little and medium ones. If your business can stay focused on solving and preventing the big problems by maintaining focus on them as a sign of moving forward towards the eventual goal of building a company with value rather than one that simply liquidates, your company will be the true winner in your target market when you deliver the right product at the right place at the right time and for the right price.
David B. Robinson, CPA
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