Why I wrote my business plan 15 years after I started my business...

It's now 2am and I can’t sleep - thats not a new thing - insomnia has been my best friend for the better part of my career.

So why on earth would I choose now to write a Business Plan?

I have been running my own bookkeeping business for the past 16 formal years since the introduction of the GST (and less formally since graduating from University).

It may shock you to know that I have never had a formal, written Business Plan. This goes against all my training in my Business Degree and all my personal attributes of being a ‘serial planning pest”

I’m the sort of person who plans her travel itineries to the absolute minute! Much to my family’s annoyance.

So why do it and why now ?

I, like so many business owners, started to get clients/customers, and just ‘got on with the business’. I opened the doors, clients came in, it paid the bills, it seemed to work and it was moving FAST.

I always felt in professional circles like a bit of an imposter. Like I just didn’t belong there when I was really just running with my gut.

But lately something has changed. My industry has been turned on its head. Technology has brought immense sweeping change to how I conduct my business and where my clients and indeed competitors are.

Here is a brief list of some of the ‘disruptors’

Technology automating what I do and taking away traditional data entry and compliance work.

Clients increasing their need to cut costs and self serve

This need to ‘have it now, do it now” - the immediacy affect

The 24/7 mentality - I want to contact you when it suits me

The marketing from software companies that reinforce the ‘its easy - do it yourself mentality’.

The increasing outsourcing overseas of bookkeeping work - YES I NEVER thought this would be a ‘thing’ -

yet incidentally I never thought that bottled water would take off either!

Oh and I could go on and on and on. We all have them in our businesses - whether it be cheap Chinese imports, or cash wages paid to workers on section 457 visas, outsourcing overseas - these industry disruptors are all about.

So I was beginning to become increasingly paranoid. I was reading blogs about the end of the bookkeeping industry. Here was an industry and profession I had developed all my attention to for over 15 years - it was my baby - my third child and I felt it slipping away from me. I felt out of control until I started to THINK…..

Where do I go ? Do I expand my services? Change what I am offering ? Sell and go do something else? Where was my passion ?

I toiled with this internally for a while until an accountant I highly respect recently asked me 1 little question...

“What’s your end game?”

Now usually I have no trouble with words (as most people know I never shut up) but I was all umm and err and really could not eloquently answer a very simple question.

What was my end game ? Why was I doing this ? and even more importantly - If I was so worried about my future and that of my business and my industry- what was I going to do about it ?

SO I did what I always do - I ran - I put on my running shoes and I ran and ran and ran - I was running like I was being chased - I was running away but also ‘to’.

I stopped at my favourite haunt near the famous Torquay Point and I looked out to sea - I put my hands to the sides of my face and blocked the peripheral view of the land, the beach goers, the surfers and looked right out into that blue ocean - that extended forever. Then I knew what i needed to do.

I needed to sit down and write my Business Plan - the thing that was inside me guiding me all these years that i had never put to paper.

So after another few hours tossing and turning that night - I got up - grabbed the laptop and began. What had been something I had ‘meant to get around to’ just ‘fell’ out of me.

Here is where it got really interesting …..

As I moved through the sections of my plan - all the time questioning whether i was even documenting this correctly….I began to see clearly a pattern. By writing down where my business had evolved from and analysing its market, its competitors, its trends, its threats and even its goals - I could see what i needed to do. I could see what I wanted and then how I was going to need to work to get it.

I often pull out the old phrase “If you fail to plan - you plan to fail “ and here I was -doing just that and being scared to admit to anyone let alone myself that all this time I had been relying on my gut.

Now clearly my gut had been ranking ok but in the future so uncertain and given my track record of not realising that ‘bottled water would be a thing’ - my gut was not going to cut it.

So the plan is written - spell checked - formatted with pretty fonts and laminated (hey I’m OCD so what do you expect!) but it is more than a Mission Statement and some fancy words about my business.

It is an analysis of the good, the bad and the ugly and more importantly it has a guide to what I need to do to get to that 'end game.'

And the Accountant - he is most likely sleeping soundly in his bed, blissfully unaware that 1 question stirred up all this angst and created all this flurry of activity. Will I tell him ? Maybe …Will he get to read this epic work of planning that is my Business Plan - most definitely NOT …to me this Business Plan is a personal journey of where I have come from in my business life complete with all my inadequacies and more importantly where I want to go .

And some secrets even I don’t need to share

Author Katrina Spinazzola (Who , while you read this, is really tired and off to bed now)

Inspired by 1 of the awesome Accountants in my life (you know who you are and by the way - thanks!)