By making up your mind to have a written business plan and proceeding this far, you are making sure that you and you alone run your business; not your banker, truck dealer, carrier, accountant, creditors, friends, family or anyone else. Your business is exactly that — your business. With a good business plan in hand, you set the goals, you call the shots.
If you have been following this Business Planning For Successful Expediters series from the beginning, you are well on your way to having a written business plan of your own.
You accepted that while writing a business plan is not easy, doing so produces a valuable business tool that is well worth the effort (part one). You then put some thought into your goals and the kind of expediter you want to be. Specifically, you answered the question, “Who do you think you are and what do you think you are doing?” (part two).
You learned what the Small Business Administration says a business plan is and applied that definition to yourself. You also learned that writing a business plan is similar to putting together a puzzle. It is not something you do it all at once. You begin knowing what it will look like when you are done. Then you start with the easy pieces, knowing the hard pieces will get easier after the easy pieces are done (part three).
You learned that your business plan will include a business description; and that you already know how to describe your business in casual conversation . You started writing down the words you use to describe your business for later use, when we will translate those words into formal business plan language (part four).
Having made it that far, you read our proposed business plan outline for a one-truck expediting business. The outline probably presented several unfamiliar items but you know from part three to be patient and start with the easy pieces. You learned that one of the easy pieces is your business plan’s executive summary. You also learned how your executive summary can distinguish your document from the others sitting on your banker’s desk and motivate your banker to say yes to you (part five).
Before moving on to the next outline item, you started a project that you can do in your truck or at home. You gathered a couple months’ worth of old receipts and statements to begin the process of writing a budget. You learned that a budget is the most important part of your business plan and that a willpower decision must be made. Either you are going to control your paperwork, or your paperwork is going to control you. If you are still with us, we presume that you made the decision to control your paperwork and you have begun to list your business and personal budget items (part six).
Before we move on to talk about your business plan’s table of contents, take a moment to give yourself a pat on the back. While it may seem like we are just getting started, you have already completed important business planning work. More importantly, you have overcome a challenge that many do not.
By making up your mind to have a written business plan and proceeding this far, you are making sure that you and you alone run your business; not your banker, truck dealer, carrier, accountant, creditors, friends, family or anyone else. Your business is exactly that — your business. With a good business plan in hand, you set the goals, you call the shots.
If you have not been following this series but would like to catch up, the previous parts are online at www.ExpediteNow.com.
After the executive summary, the next item in your business plan is the table of contents. There is not much to it. Like your executive summary, it will be written after most other items in your business plan are complete. Like the table of contents in a book, your business plan table of contents lists the plan’s sections and page numbers.
The different people who will read your plan, or portions of it, will have different interests. Your banker will be interested in your pro forma profit and loss statement. We will talk about that later. Your insurance agents will be interested in the assets you wish to insure and the goals you are trying to achieve. Your family members may be most interested in the disaster recovery information your plan will contain. Your table of contents enables your people to quickly and easily find the information they need.
Notice the words, “your people.” You have probably seen it on TV comedy shows. A character will say, “Have your people call my people.” It usually gets a laugh because the person saying it is not important enough to have people like Donald Trump or Oprah have people. The Donald’s and Oprah’s people bring skills to the table, provide advice, perform designated tasks and work in their boss’s best interests. In contrast, the comedy character is hopelessly lost.
Do one-truck expediters have people? The ones with business plans do. Where celebrity billionaires have people that are full time employees, the people expediters have serve other clients too. Still, they are your people. They bring skills to the table, provide advice, perform designated tasks and work in your best interests.
We are getting a little bit off the table of contents topic, but let’s explore this for just a moment. As a one-truck owner-operator, you have people that bring skills to the table, provide advice, perform designated tasks and work in your best interests — that is, if you make it so.
You may know some truck drivers who wanted to be owner-operators but failed soon after they started. You certainly know the type. Without clearly defined goals and a plan to achieve them, they wander into a dealership to buy a truck. The dealer happily provides a truck, accessories and probably financing too. Truck insurance of some sort is somehow provided so the “businessman” can drive the truck off the lot and on to bankruptcy and having the truck repossessed.
That kind of owner-operator does not have people. He or she has predators. The vendors and service providers have seen it again and again. An unprepared truck driver walks in who will almost certainly fail. They may try to help or coach the driver, but when the driver does not listen, they provide products structured such that when the driver fails, they will still make money.
They do that because they know that if they do not sell this driver their goods and services, the driver will simply go down the street and their competitors will. Non-refundable application fees, front-end charges, down payments, above-market interest rates and more all come into play, so the vendors will come out whole even if the driver fails.
Contrast that to a first-time truck buyer who approaches the very same people with a business plan in hand and a business owner’s attitude in his or her heart. That would-be owner-operator is not looking for a truck. He or she is looking for people that bring skills to the table, provide advice, perform designated tasks and work in the business owner’s best interests. The business owner knows exactly what kind of goods and services he or she needs because it is spelled out in a written business plan.
If you have a written business plan, you are not going in, hat in hand, begging people to put you in a truck. You are going in looking for people to serve on your team. If vendors meet your standards and rise to the task, they get to play.
Having a written business plan helps you know what kind of team you need to put together to achieve your goals (banker, dealer, accountant, insurance agents, other vendors, family members, etc.). Your business plan spells things out for your people. Your table of contents helps them move quickly to the information they need.
With the executive summary and table contents now discussed, we can move on to the next item of your business plan outline; your business description. This is a major section in your plan that includes several smaller sections. We will discuss each in turn.
Following the outline presented in part five, the sections are: business name, business form, business owners/managers, business type, business location, business history, mission statement, current situation and goals. There is nothing special about the order in which these appear in your plan but it is important to include them all.
We are out of space here so will pick this up in part eight. In the meantime, keep working on your budget as described in part six. Also go back to part three, review your notes and think again about your business description. Your notes will be helpful in part eight.
Finally, if you have not already done so, it would be a good idea to create a place for your business planning papers (these articles, your notes, statements, receipts, etc.). Office supply stores sell something called an accordion file. They work great in a truck and cost little. As you continue your business planning work, you will assemble many more pieces of paper. An accordion file will help you keep them well organized and all in one place.
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Phil Madsen is the senior field editor with ExpeditersOnline and Expedite NOW. He and his wife Diane are a straight-truck expediting team. In 2003 they left their white collar careers and became expediters to increase their income, simplify their lives, spend more time together, share a business project, and see the country. They are pleased to say, “It’s working!” Phil can be reached at [email protected].
