Page 21 - Business Plans that Work A Guide for Small Business
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12   •   Business Plans that Work

                    If the aforementioned motivators ring true for you, then entrepreneur-
                ship may be the way to achieve your goals. It may be hard to envision how
                an entrepreneurial endeavor helps you achieve your goals unless you have
                been involved in previous start-ups. Business planning can help you visual-
                ize how entrepreneurship may help you achieve your goals. Business plan-
                ning is nothing more than sophisticated scenario analysis to identify an
                opportunity, the customer, and how to reach the customer. Furthermore,
                you will also identify what is possible. If you succeed in implementing your
                vision, business planning helps you imagine the future. You will get a sense
                of  how  the  business  might  grow.  Specifically,  your  financial  pro  forma
                statements will suggest the upside potential of a successful venture. 15
                    Finally,  business  planning  will  help  you  identify  the  skills  that  are
                necessary to successfully implement the business. You will likely not pos-
                sess all those skills yourself. As stated earlier, most successful ventures are
                launched by teams, meaning that others fill the gaps where you are lack-
                ing. However, you need enough skills to be credible as a lead entrepre-
                neur. You need to have something special, whether it is technical wizardry
                or business acumen, which can draw others to join you in your quest.
                One of the first market tests that all entrepreneurs confront is whether
                they can attract other core team members to join them. Again, the busi-
                ness plan will help you define what attributes those core team members
                should possess.
                    As we have worked with entrepreneurs over the years, we have no-
                ticed an internal drive that successful entrepreneurs possess. In fact, it
                seems that people who are successful in any context possess certain attri-
                butes. One of the authors has identified five key attributes, called Zach’s
                Star of Success, that he shares with all his students and the entrepreneurs
                he works with.



                Zach’s Star of Success

                Zach’s Star of Success captures many of the attributes that we believe lead
                to entrepreneurial success (Fig. 1.0). Whether one is pursuing an entre-



                15 We will cover financial projections in great detail later in the book. It is important
                to note that projections are best guesses and become less accurate the farther out
                one goes, but they can give a sense of what is possible if you successfully identify an
                opportunity and execute on it.
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