I’ve been saying this for years. All of a sudden, everybody online is now proposing this same thought.
Screw the Business Plan. It’s about the Business Model.
In presenting this idea to an amazing group of Social Entrepreneurs recently in Ireland, someone came up at the break and said, “All Business Plans now look the same. There’s a template for the Business Plan. You can buy a Business Plan online and simply fill in the blanks.”
UGH!
A BUSINESS MODEL is a framework and a visual (ideally) guide to achieve organizational goals.
A BUSINESS PLAN rarely, rarely (if ever) is an Action Plan. Business Plans are a lot like Strategic Plans… totally useless as an actionable guide to what needs to get done!
Business Plans and Strategic Plans are an exercise in fiction, mostly incomprehensible gobblygook and always end up ‘sitting on the shelf’ or ‘used as a doorstop’. (I know. It’s an old joke. But it’s actually not a joke. It’s true.)
What does your BUSINESS MODEL look like? Your ACTION PLAN?
Can you share with your team, your board or your investors a simple BUSINESS MODEL and a legitimate ACTION PLAN (30 days, 90 days and 1,000 days)?
Here’s For Impact | The Suddes Group’s simple BUSINESS MODEL.
It’s a ‘funnel’. Three big, easily understood pieces. We have an Action Plan for the ‘blue’, the ‘red’ and the ‘green’.
Revenue/Income is inversely proportionate to the ‘Funnel’. The more RESOURCES we provide… the more EXPERIENCES we can share with audiences and attendees… the more opportunity there is to provide SOLUTIONS, value and return on investment.
***This did not just ‘appear’ one day on a piece of toast. It’s been a (almost) 40-year iteration… with at least 63 versions since Nick and I drew it out for the first time 9 or 10 years ago. FWIW.
