The Building Block Approach™

You Can Get There From Here – The Plan

Part 1:

The Building Block Approach™ to start, is extended to save or enhance an existing business which is really no different than the building of a Lincoln Log™ house of your youth. If you do not start with a solid foundation it will all come tumbling down the first time Fido comes running through your room. So let’s look at the first Building Block of any task worth doing – The Plan.

As we learned in reading The Way of Lao-tzu; “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Or as many of my clients have learned during my lectures, “You can’t get from Seattle to Miami without first having a road map.” After all, the road map helps you to plan the route, plan for key stops along the way you may like to visit, what kind of vehicle you are going to make the journey with and the expenses you need to complete the journey.

Pretty basic concept; however you would be surprised how many clients come to Navigator Business Solutions struggling with a business they have purchased or started that have no meaningful plan. They do not even know what they want their business to have accomplished by the end of the day let alone: End of the week, month, quarter or year. When asking about a three year plan the usual response is a ‘blank stare’.

To help our clients, I call upon my journalism major – The Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why? Just altered slightly as follows:

• What is the goal for your company (Day, week, month…)?
• Why do you want to accomplish this goal (Need)?
• When do you want to accomplish this by (Timeline)?
• Who is going to accomplish this plan with you (Employees, consultants, banks, etc.)?
• Where – Location (s)?

Now some of you aspiring journalists will ask, “you forgot about the How!” How are you going to accomplish this?” Well the how will be included in “what, where and when” during the planning period.

Over this series on the Building Blocks Approach™ articles, we will share some actual stories of clients that we have helped. Coming from similar yet different business backgrounds Charlie Petosa and I will each share our experiences using actual clients. Examples of how we helped them to build that plan then execute the plan in hopes that some of what we write may help you.

<u>What is the goal for your company?</u>

I received a call from a co-owner of a small Tavern in Pennsylvania. In short the co-owner (Let’s call him Bill), explained to me that he and his wife purchased this Tavern three years prior as a place to invest some of their saving’s, earn a modest return on their investment and have fun. As Bill told me on the phone, “owning a bar is fun – Right?”

Well in short after a few probing questions he shared with me that 2012 was his wife and his best year with a 5% net income. In subsequent two years that net income had dropped to 2% in 2013 and negative 2% in 2014. That year they were forced to dip into their cash reserves to keep the business going into 2015.

Although I had worked in many restaurants during my college days to make ends meet, I had not actually consulted for a restaurant business before. In short this consulting gig intrigued me as we all know “owning a bar is fun – Right?”

The Tavern, let’s call it The Town Tavern or TTT was pretty close to Navigator Business Solutions Northeast office. We made arrangements for me to drop by later in the week.

Upon my arrival I was introduced to Bill’s wife Stacy and was given the grand tour. Once that was accomplished we all sat down and I asked them, “What is your goal?” What I heard I had heard countless times before: “We want to sell the business…We want to keep the business BUT we have to make a profit so we can stop the hemorrhaging…We would like to own the business while leasing it out to a person or group of people who would run it”…Et cetera.

While this discussion was going on Bill and Stacy became more and more irritated with each others goals for the business. Bottom-line they both had different goals and each were working towards their individual goals often 180 degrees opposite each others.

By now you see the big problem that many partners or individual owners have – What is the goal for my company?

In short, I wrote down each of the goals that they shared with me. At which point I asked them if I could hang out for a week to observe their clientele, vendors, employees, expense structures – While doing this review their accounting books. I explained that once I had done this, I could better address the ‘why’ for each of their goals and help them to agree on one goal that everyone could work towards.

In Part two of this series, I will to discuss the goal Bill and Stacy decided on and why that goal was important.