| Your Destination – A Business MAP
Credits: Donald J. Sauder, CPA Twenty years ago a man walked up to me at church and inquired point blank, “If you get where you are going, where will you be?” It’s clearly important; destination matters. You don’t get lost driving to a local venue for the tenth time. The danger is when you step outside your comfort zone into a new responsibility, new product, or new service area in your business. The Chinese Admiral Zheng didn’t make seven successful voyages to Arabia, East Africa, India, Indonesia, and Thailand in the 1400’s A.D. without planning. The important fact is that he had a destination in mind, then planned appropriately. He also had a very high quality map, or he wouldn’t have gotten back to China too. Entrepreneurism is very similar. You need to map out a plan to reach your destination. Few entrepreneurs invest the appropriate time to think through their business endeavors. Why? Do they think they’re too busy? Do they think it’s time and money wasted? Would a plan require too much energy? Do they already know in their mind where they want their business to be in three years or five years? Maybe they’re simply satisfied with the status quo. A Business MAP, a Marketplace Assessment Profile, is a good tool to help you reach your business destination. A Business MAP is a business planning tool that helps you make sense of your business: the services and products viability in the marketplace, your business’s competitive advantages, industry risk, resource risks, opportunities, and value drivers. A Business MAP looks at your business on both a macro and micro scale and provides a guide for your businesses future. A Business MAP helps you plan your business destination, whether it’s organic expansion, a gear-up for sale, etc. Studies show that people forget 50-80% of what they’ve learned after one day, and 97-98% after a month. You must map your plan on paper for it to be of any value. Those who do, and follow it with a single purpose, (there are lots of distractions) often harvest, not double, more like 30-, 60-, or 100- fold, of the initial investment. There is often a reason for a chosen destination. If the destination for your business is $5 million of revenue, $50 million or $500 million, remember this: you won’t get there alone. You will need a articulate plan and vision to convince others to join you and help achieve that plan. You either have a plan with a vision, or you become part of someone else’s. If you don’t have the time to plan and map in detail the vision of your business, you will never have time to reach the destination of your vision or to recognize when you get there. If you’ve built one or more successful entrepreneurial businesses, then it will be easier to build on prior successes; but if you’re just entering the entrepreneurial world, or experiencing only mediocre developments, or experiencing pain points on the current path, you’re best advised to retain advisors who can help you map a plan to arrive at your destination successfully. Chance favors the smartest decision as getting the right advice early with mapping and working toward your business destination, even if you’re surprised at the cost upfront. |