This Business Planning for Successful Expediters series is following a business plan outline we introduced in part five. We will talk now about the Business Owners/Managers section, the sixth item in the outline.
This Business Planning for Successful Expediters series is following a business plan outline we introduced in part five. We will talk now about the Business Owners/Managers section, the sixth item in the outline.
Imagine yourself needing a truck loan and walking in to meet a banker for the first time. You would probably say something like, “Hello, My name is Joe (or Jane) Expediter. My business name is ABC Expedite. It is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by me. I have a set of business and personal goals that are written out in my business plan (which you hand to the banker as you are speaking). This plan includes my financials and other information you will need when you consider my loan application.”
This Business Planning for Successful Expediters series is following a business plan outline we introduced in part five. We will talk now about the Business Owners/Managers section, the sixth item in the outline.
Imagine yourself needing a truck loan and walking in to meet a banker for the first time. You would probably say something like, “Hello, My name is Joe (or Jane) Expediter. My business name is ABC Expedite. It is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by me. I have a set of business and personal goals that are written out in my business plan (which you hand to the banker as you are speaking). This plan includes my financials and other information you will need when you consider my loan application.”
Verbally, you have just given your banker an informal executive summary. The formal summary is the first item in your written business plan. Introducing yourself and your plan to your banker as described above will set you head and shoulders above 90% of the other people he or she will meet that day. It will also set you apart from most other expediters. Very few one-truck owner operators have business plans of the sort we describe in this series.
Your written plan will make it easy for the banker to answer the next question he or she has but may not ask you directly, because it would be impolite. The unasked question is, “Yeah, OK, so you are a truck driver with dreams of seeing the country and making it big out there on the road. But what I want to know is: how good are you really? Any fool can buy a truck, and many fools do. Before I lend the bank’s money to you I need to know you are good. I need to know the loan won’t go bad and make me look like a fool in my boss’ eyes for giving you the loan in the first place. So, how good are you really?”
Let’s talk about a restaurant business for a moment. Say someone with money to invest decides to open a new restaurant. Land is purchased, the building is built, the menu is developed, an advertising campaign is developed, and a pool of prospective cooks, servers and maintenance people are available for employment interviews. Everything is ready to go except one. You still need a manager to run the business. Someone must be present to actually run the business.
When you look in the want ads of any large-city newspaper, positions for restaurant managers are usually there. One thing they do not say is, “Idiot wanted to manage new community restaurant” or “Unskilled, uneducated, and inexperienced person wanted for exciting new management opportunity.” People who hire managers do exactly the opposite. They look for the best people to do the job, not the worst. For the applicants, the question is the same. How good are you really?
In your business plan, you answer the question in the Business Owners/Managers section. This is where you present yourself to your plan readers. In other sections of the plan you talk about your goals, cash flow, the industry, the competition and more. In this section, you talk about you. It is where you answer the question, “How good are you really?” by saying, in so many words, “I’m good enough and better than most.”
Better than most? That may strike you as one of the most arrogant statements you could ever make. If it does, get over it. Bankers don’t want to lend money to people who are average performers or just getting by.
Expediting is a business. Bankers, vendors and carriers prefer to deal with people who run their business like a business, not like some identity-quest adventure that makes you a trucker when you get the CB slang down right and talk an endless stream of it. If you are a trucker that runs your business like a business, you are indeed better than most, in a business sense.
One of the things that makes expediting a great career opportunity is its ease of entry. You need a license but studying and testing for it is doable for most people. You need a carrier or fleet owner to say yes to you. Those are easy to find if you can present yourself well. If you lack truck driving experience, there may be an additional hoop or two to jump through but the hoops can be jumped. You need to be able to read, write and do math at the seventh-grade level. You need to be able-bodied and able to stay out on the road for extended periods of time.
The above qualifications will get you in the door. How long you will stay and how profitable you will be depends on how good you are. If you know how to read but don’t read the manual your carrier gives you, how good are you really? If you know how to do math but don’t calculate your cost per mile, how good are you really? If you know how to write but don’t complete your paperwork, how good are you really? If you know you need to know how put on tire chains but don’t practice to learn once you get into a truck, how good are you really?
You do not need successful truck driving experience to answer the “How good are you really?” question in your business plan. If you have truck driving experience, that is all the better, but you do not need it to convince your banker that your business skills are good enough and better than most.
The “How good are you really?” question is answered at two levels. You talk about your credentials and the core of your being. If you graduated from high school in the top third of your class, you want your banker to know that, of course. If you have no successful truck driving experience to talk about, you also want your banker to know that you are the kind of person that is able to learn new tasks and see them through.
In part 14, we will provide examples, based on real-life expediters, of how people of various education and experience levels can present themselves in a business plan as good enough as and better than most.
