Business plan style: $10,000/kg

Hello. This is Irino, a strategy consultant.

I’ll explain about style in business plan.

Do’s & Don’ts for Beginners

■　Don’t paste spreadsheet

Some people assume business plan is a bunch of spreadsheets. But financial calculation is 1 in 18 of table of contents in business plan. Those who don’t have finance and accounting skills tend to have inferiority complex and try to appeal “I can calculate” by doing copy and paste Excel on PowerPoint. Financial statements are covenient tools to analyze both large enterprises and small business from a common viewpoint. But it’s like analyzing survival strategy by looking at X-ray pictures of panda bear and grizzly bear. Analyzing P/L and B/S is like autopsy. It’s more imporant to analyze advance indicators and narattive story before it becomes too late.

Do’s & Don’ts for Intermediate Entrepreneurs

■　Don’t sell paper by the kilogram

Consultants write tons of paper and charge thousands of dollars by the kilogram. The same goes for white-collar workers in general. The simpler business plan is, the more wisdom it requires. But the more pages, the more likely to appreciate hard work. Such a seemingly hard-worked document is hard to deny for reviewers. The document is heavy because writers think MECE but didn’t think hard to focus. Heavy documents are hard to change when hypothesis turns out to be false. Frameworks like Inception Deck and Business Model Canvas are good because you write less and spend more time testing your hypothesis on battlefield.

Do’s & Don’ts for the Master Class Entrepreneurs

■　Do stand-up

Business plan doesn’t have to be colorful. Too many colors often blur your message. Don’t waste 3 hours on drawing a chart that your audience read for only 3 seconds. You don’t have such a liverty in most of time-constraint projects. Business plan reaveals what it takes to be an enterepreneur. Colorful slides do not help covering you up. Masters don’t need colorful slides, or even a PC. They can talk narrative messages in stand-up style.

That’s it for today.

Contact