Step-by-Step Online Video on Business Planning

The business.gov site has posted my business plan tutorials, a collection of 13 videos covering business planning for real businesses. We’ve been working on this since last Spring, and I’m very happy to see it done and available now. I’m grateful to the team that put it together for me.

And I’m also happy to say it covers both the formal business plan and the more practical modular business planning as a management tool. This support is not just for businesses that need to show somebody a business plan document, but for all businesses. It’s planning as management, like steering.

Sections discuss on how planning is modular, and form follows function, and planning is management, it points to the more practical everyday management use of business planning. There’s also a section on the Heart of the Plan, which is strategy; and another on Flesh and Bones, which is the core elements of dates, deadlines, task responsibilities, and basic numbers.

I’m very pleased to be included in the business.gov site, which seems to me to be a very timely new effort to consolidate the government’s offerings to small business into a single site that also operates as a community.

If you’re at all interested in business planning, whether or not you need a business plan document to show to outsiders, I hope you’ll drop by the tutorials page at business.gov/start/business-plan-tutorials.html. It was a lot of work, for me and the team at business.gov that put it together, and I’d like to think it’s very useful. You don’t have to go start to finish in order, either. If you have just four minutes to spend, click on the “Form Follows Function” link. That’s my personal favorite.

Comments

  • themadpeacock says:

    This is a great set of videos, thanks for creating and sharing them.

    The concept of displacement that you mention early on in the series is one of the primary messages I like to take to startups. All to often young businesses hunger to please all their customers and investors and adopt a knee-jerk “yes we can do that” culture.

    Deliberately acknowledging what will get dropped if you take on this new task is a sobering way to prioritize and focus your evolving business.

  • kare anderson says:

    Tim
    To make your helpful videos more widely available look at dotSUB which enables crowdsourced, volunteer translators to add subtitles so non-english speakers can learn from you.

    Recently dotSub partnered with the TED conference folks to do that with their 20-minute talks.

    Have a friend who is working at the start-up (now seeking funding) and like how Lee Lefer has used it for his adept tutorials …..

  • Strategic Growth Advisors says:

    Thanks, Tim. This is one useful resource for all entrepreneurial enthusiasts who are planning to establish a business. Keep on sharing your wonderful ideas!

  • Dennis says:

    Excellent article- good job on covering the whole business plan route.

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