business plan is one letter away from business pain

i hear about it over and over and over, from all the businessy friends i have. hows your business plan? did you write your business plan? well lets take a look at your business plan. i cringe. it hurts my ears.

all the research i do about business plans make them seem so. . .involved. so. .. . detailed. . .so tedious. and i say, to heck with the plan, the plan is make money!!! ready . . .. GO! ok, next plan. . ..

but i have to say, though i hate to admit it, its time. time for the business plan. time for this little kitchen company to join the ranks of the real world, become an adult, make a plan.

so, here we go, we are about to embark on it, i made a deal with my business partner, i said, you do the numbers, ill do the creative and the goals and the big picture plan. you see, the thing that always stopped me from moving forward on this is, i have a million, no, a trillion ideas of where to take this punkster business. so how do i put those on paper? do i write them all out, do i write out the good ones?

i finally talked to my friend matt, he works for an investment company out in san fran who deals with big business, we are talking millions, in high numbers, but he gave me tons of advice on how to get started on this business plan. the big picture for punkster is to get ready for investors, and oh do we need them! its time!

so he said, when im writing the plan to go with the three year mark, where do i want this company to be in one to three years. so that helped already. i can do that. and he said write down, realistically what you need to get it there, employees, money for tradeshows, salaries, product, samples, etc. so thats what i have started doing. im starting to dream big, but in the three year kind of big.

because even though this business plan business sounds to me like a horrible pain, i have to remember the old ski poster my brother had up in his room,

"no pain, no gain"

no business pain, no financial gain.

so a girls gotta do, what a girls gotta do!

-leanne ford
the original punkster