National Clothesline

Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001.

In 1999, Fortune Magazine named Mr. Welch “Manager of the Century.”

One of my favorite Welch quotes is, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Having a vision or dream about where you want to go is wonderful. That dream is in your head and that is where the initial stages of any vision occur. The next step is to “articulate the vision.”

In your mind, the vision you have created has a plan and a goal. It is very interesting that two four-letter words — plan and goal — are hardly ever articulated.

Two other words adding up to four letters — do it — are also not expressed, particularly when you think about how to achieve your vision, your plan, and your goals.

How and when do you articulate your plan? First you must be willing to put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard of your word processor. Keeping your plan in your head does not allow you to create goals with timelines. No timelines means that you are not accountable for completing the vision you have established for yourself and your company.

When you create a business plan and have that plan in place, you will be provided with a competitive advantage. How many of your competitors have a plan?

Most small business owners are too busy working. These owners, typically, do not give themselves the time to think about short or long-term goals. If they do create goals, they don’t take the time to achieve them. Their goal is to see how much money they can take out of the business today, and let tomorrow take care of itself.

It is a fact that 97 percent of all startup businesses fail within the first three years. In my opinion, the vast majority of that 97 percent fail due to a lack of planning. They do not prepare properly for a number of reasons.

Some of those reasons might include poor research regarding location, company name, target market or potential customer’s demographics, product differentiation (how you are unique), and, most important, what kind of a financial investment is needed to succeed.

Money is always important. The problem of under capitalization will always pop up its ugly head when you are starting your business. Hidden costs can be a killer. Where is the money coming from? Will you refinance your home or borrow from your children’s college fund? Will a bank see your vision, as you see it, and provide the money?

Your business plan can provide the bank with the necessary information for a loan. In that case, the business plan will have two uses, one to get money, and the second to give you a guideline.

You cannot build a house without an architect. How do you plan to grow your business without guidelines? Why do you think people call me? When you sit down and put your pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, will you input the correct information?

There is an old Chinese proverb, “To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art.” Let’s talk about creating a business plan, strategic planning, and articulating your vision.

Your business or strategic plan does not have to be complicated. We are going to put your vision to paper step by step. There are certain elements that are common to most plans.

Create a mission statement. Make it short and to the point. It should explain the company’s reason for being in business and the goals you wish to achieve. The statement can be a simple one-liner, such as Walt Disney’s “To make people happy.”

You could have multiple mission statements. Ben and Jerry’s have three statements, Product, Economic, and Social, and they all are tied to a common mission statement. When I was in business, my company had departmental mission statements and a company mission statement.

North Pacific, a building supply company, besides having a two-paragraph mission statement has an excellent company slogan, “Taking care of you and your business.” Their two-paragraph mission statement goes on to tell how that will happen.

Visit the North Pacific website and read those two paragraphs and you will see a well thought out plan for the company to live by.

Their mission statement can be reached by going to www.northpacific.com, clicking on “company overview,” and then clicking on “mission statement.”

You can bring in upper level management to contribute to the creation of your mission statement. Starting with a company slogan emulating North Pacific would be great. “Taking care of you and your clothing,” sounds like a winning drycleaning slogan to me. When you bring in employees, they will gain a sense of ownership. Furthermore, there will be buy-in for the next step.

That next step will be organizational goals that will allow you to fulfill your mission statement. Potential goals or plans are a marketing growth plan, a customer growth plan, an innovation plan, management growth, financial growth and, finally, sales growth.

A tool you can use to develop your goals is a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats analysis). After you look at those four aspects of your business, you will have a better understanding regarding your business, your competition, and the industry.

Here comes the fun: creation of the strategies needed to achieve your vision and the goals it contains. How are you going to complete those goals that are part of your vision?

This part of your strategic plan will have a list of the goals, the means of achieving the goals, the expected completion date of the goal, and the actual completion date. You can create a spreadsheet in Excel. Column 1 is the goal, column 2 is how you are going to achieve it, column 3 is the planned completion date, and column 4 is the actual completion date.

Remember those four-letter words “goal” and “plan?”. Now comes the “do it” part. What steps are you going to take to become the drycleaner with the largest market share in your community? Having a written plan is much better than just thinking about your plan and keeping it in your head. Knowing the direction, you are going in, and how you are going to get there, will be a road map for your ultimate success.

Remember this plan is a living document. As conditions change, you might want to take a slightly different road to reach your goal. The key is taking your vision out of your head and putting it on paper. If you need help doing that, do not hesitate to contact me. Building your business is a challenging process, but ultimately it is the most rewarding thing you can do for yourself, your family, and your company.