MBA2514 How To Create Your Business Plan in 15 Minutes

0:05Hey everyone, welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zinhome and in today's lesson you'll learn how to create a business plan in just 15 minutes. Yep, you heard that right, 15 minutes. The reason for 15 minutes is because I want you to get it done. I don't want you to think this business plan has to be 90 pages and take you months of work. No, you want to create a business plan that gives you just enough information so you can get started and start creating. Today, we're going to be using the one-page business planner to get it done quickly and effectively. This was adopted from the business model canvas that was created over a decade ago.

0:42In fact, we used it when we got started and I'll show you the example in today's episode. But we just gave it our own spin simplified and made it easier for you. Now, if you want to download this one page business planner, you could do so by clicking the link in the description. Or if you're listening to the podcast and you want to download it later and walk through it again, no problem. Just go to one zero zero MBA dot net slash worksheet. But before we jump into the worksheet, did you know that having a clear business plan can increase your chances for success by 30 percent? Yes, please. I'll take that.

1:18That's amazing. That's according to a study by Palo Alto Software. A business plan doesn't have to be this long winded thing like we mentioned. It could be simple. It could be one page. And that's what we're going to do today. So make sure you have downloaded the worksheet if you're watching so that you can go ahead and follow along and do your business plan right now in 15 minutes. Or if you're listening to this podcast, you can dedicate 15 minutes later to do that and head on over to 100mba.net slash worksheet to download it. All right, let's dive into the one page business planner. I'm going to be filling it out along with you on my iPad right now.

1:54All right, so here it is. Let's take a look at how to get started. So don't get overwhelmed by all these different boxes and different categories. I'm going to explain everything, give you examples so that it's super simple. Let's start with problem. Now, I love starting with problem because as entrepreneurs, we are problem solvers. That's why we're valuable. OK, our product or service solves problems for our customers. That's why people are willing to pay. So whenever you feel like you've got a lot of problems to solve in your business, say, yes, that's great. That means I have value. That means I have a purpose.

2:26Okay, so don't get bogged down. This is a good thing. So we want to talk about what problems your business will solve, right? List the top three problems you think that your customers are going through or facing that your business can help them with. So let's zoom in here and let's go through it. Okay, so I'm going to just give you all the answers that we gave to this one page business planner when we got started over 10 years ago. So let's list the top three problems. First problem is there's a lack of, mind my bad handwriting here, practical education, right? There's a lot of business education there, but there's not a practical business education.

3:08I should put practical, you know, biz education here. So there's business school that's going to take you, you know, a long time and it's not very practical. It's very theoretical. Okay. There are a lot of books out there, but a lot of it's just like biographies and it doesn't actually tell you what to do. So we wanted to solve this problem, give practical business education, right? Or give practical business lessons. The second problem we solve is high costs, right? High costs. A lot of material out there 10 years ago was super expensive. It was like three, four,$5 ,000 for a course that just talks about marketing, just one part of business.

3:47Okay. You would have to get an MBA and that would cost you 50, 60, 70, 100 ,000,$150 ,000. So that's a problem that we want to solve. $100 sounds pretty good. Next problem we solve is time. People have a limited amount of time. So they have a limited amount of time. They don't have a lot of time to go to business school if they have a full-time job and a family to take care of. So these are the three problems that we set out to solve. Now, you want to move on now to solution. What are the solutions you offer to these three problems? So our solution to a lack of practical business education, a good one is that it's actionable.

4:34Actionable, and it's no fluff. Pride ourselves that we have no fluff content, it's just straight action as you could see, right? What's the next problem that we had here? High cost. So let's talk about affordability, right? Everything that we do is either free or very affordable. So the podcast is free. Our blog is free. Our YouTube channel is free. You know, the only thing we actually charge for is the$100 MBA, which is very affordable,$100 a year. And the only reason why we charge for it is so that people actually take action and feel like they have skin in the game. The next solution here is we have limited time is a problem.

5:13And what's the solution to that is? It's flexible, right? Flexible time. It's on demand. You can listen to the podcast episodes whenever you like or watch the videos or take the courses when you like. It's very flexible so that it could fit in people's busy schedules. So those are the solutions that we come up with. Cool. So far, so good, right? All right. Let's move on to unique selling proposition. Okay. You want to get super clear about this. It's a single, clear, compelling proposition that turns an unaware visitor into a prospect, right? When somebody sees your work for the first time, stumbles upon your Instagram page, sees your website, sees you speak on stage, right?

5:52What's compelling about what you do? What's unique about what you do? So for example, the 100 MBA offers the best business education without the BS at a fraction of the cost. So great business education, crazy low cost. Okay. So this is what we do. A hundred dollar MBA sounds very compelling. A hundred dollars versus like a hundred thousand dollars. That was our compelling, uh, USP, right? Unique selling proposition. Let's get into unfair advantage. I love this one because this one makes you bulletproof? Something that can't be easily copied. What is something that you offer as a business, as a product, as a service that can't be copied by others?

6:41This is super important because if it's something that somebody can just copy you like a feature, and we've seen this before with our software company, Webinar Ninja, you want to make sure that it's not so easy for people to compete with you because it's hard to copy or be like you. So what is your unfair advantage? For example, our unfair advantage at the$100 MBA is that my partner, Nicole, and myself were both former educators, former teachers. We taught English as a second language for over a decade. We taught five classes a day, five days a week. I wrote curriculum. I was a head of department.

7:16So this is my world. Education is my world, right? So I'm actually somebody on the internet that knows how to teach, not to put together a curriculum, knows how to put together a worksheet, knows how to teach to make sure that people actually learn and can grow and, and, and implant what we're teaching. Okay. Plus we have the experience as entrepreneurs. You know, we built multiple seven figure businesses, this business, the Hunter LB, as well as our software company, Webinar Ninja, which grew for 10 years and had over 30 ,000 customers and were able to be acquired by pro profs after 10 years.

7:49So we have the experience as entrepreneurs, but we also are able to teach from that experience because we are trained teachers with degrees and certifications, right? So that's a very hard thing to copy. You would have to spend 10 years in teaching in order for you to copy me. So that's really hard. So unfair advantage, right? Experience students, teachers, plus entrepreneurs, right? Guys, my handwriting is horrible. I know it, but you're gonna have to live with it. Okay. Forgive me. All right. So unfair advantage, next customer segments, right? List your target customers, right? List who you're going after.

8:31Now this goes hand in hand with your unfair advantage. My unfair advantage again, is that I'm a trained educator, experienced educator, as well as an experienced entrepreneur. So my superpower is to be able to take complex ideas and simplify it for somebody who's just getting started and is not really aware of what they don't know. Okay. Now I would not be really valuable, uniquely valuable to somebody whose experience has been doing business for 10 years. They know the complex, they know the jargon. Okay. So we focus on new entrepreneurs. Okay. OK, and what else? Small business owners. What else?

9:09We also freelancers and creators, right? Freelancers and creators. These people would benefit from our unique selling proposition, our unfair advantage the most. So these are the people that we go after. All right, let's zoom back out. Let's take a look at the next box here that says existing alternatives. Important. You want to list how these problems are being solved today already, right? So what are some solutions that your customers are currently using to solve this problem? It doesn't have to be a perfect solution, but it is a solution. OK, so, for example, for us, how are they doing this?

9:47They're spending a lot of money, right, on an MBA, right? That's one solution that they're going for, right? Another solution that they're going after is wasting money on fake gurus. They're wasting money on fake gurus, OK? What else? Maybe they are reading books, but it's not a complete solution. They don't know how to take action. They just get a general idea of how somebody else did it. Books are a great resource, but it doesn't solve the whole problem. This is what our customers are going after to solve this problem. This is important because it allows me to know how to market and who to go after.

10:25Okay. What are the key metrics, key metrics that will tell you how your business is doing, right? How do you know if you're winning, how you're growing, all that kind of stuff. So our example for us is subscribers, right? YouTube or podcast subscribers, subs, right? What else? Another metric would be money, right? Revenue. What is another metric that we can go by? OK, also results, right? Or case studies for you might be reviews on Google. The point here is, is that how do you know you're winning? What show me some scoreboards, right? For us, one of the scoreboards are subscribers or downloads on our podcast revenue numbers, right?

11:08How much money we're making and then results or case studies or showing that, hey, we're actually making an impact and helping people with what we're doing. okay high level pitch we're almost done guys pretty pretty simple so far right high level pitch right what's your one line your elevator pitch if somebody says tell me about your business what do you do right you want to concisely describe what you do an example here is tiktok what is tiktok so an example here is x for y analogy so what's tiktok it's you know instagram but just reels right? That's what TikTok is. So for us, the$100 MBA is Netflix for new biz owners, right?

11:51So Netflix for new business owners, this is maybe pretty, pretty clear to somebody. Yes, there's more to it. Yeah, we do more than just videos and we do podcasts and we provide worksheets and we help people on all these different ways. And we do events and speak on stages, you know, in a nutshell, basically we're Netflix for new business owners. It's easy for somebody to conceive what we're doing. Okay. Next, how are you going to find your customers? List your paths, your channels to your customers. Okay. So is it social media? Is it paid ads? Is it through content marketing? So for us, it was content marketing.

12:31This means creating content like podcasts and blog posts so that people find us and then they learn about us and then they want to learn more and subscribe or buy our products, content marketing, right? What else? For us, it was paid ads. We did paid ads and we still do. Okay. Well, other channels, how else am I going to get our customers? Well, you know, in the content marketing section here, we have podcasts and videos and that's kind of how we market, but we also do email. So we make an effort to increase our email list, to get emails, capture emails so that we can market to them via email.

13:04So these are our channels, okay? Your perfect customer. Who are your perfect customers? List the characteristics of your ideal customer, right? So when we say perfect customers, we're talking about one person here, right? We want a lot of that one person, okay? List the traits of this perfect person. So here are the traits of our perfect customers, right? Somebody who is in the second season of their life, right? Second season. So this is somebody who is maybe a college graduate, and is in a job right now. They're in a career, not super satisfied, wants to start a business. They want to make a transition.

13:42Second season. What else? Somebody who is willing to invest in themselves is a learner. Okay. Invest in themselves. Right. And there's ways to find this out. You know, have they invested before? Have they bought courses before? Have they, you know, invested in their degree? You know, somebody who's willing to learn and invest in themselves. Okay. These are generalities, but this is something that's important to us in terms of the perfect customer. And then lastly, somebody who is actually frustrated. Okay. Frustrated. Why is frustrated important? Because I need somebody with drive to actually do the things that we teach.

14:19Okay. I know this because I didn't really make a huge leap in my career until I was frustrated. My frustration outgrew my fear and I really took a leap and became a full-time entrepreneur. Okay. Zooming back out. Okay. Last two cost structure. Okay. We're going to list all your fixed and variable costs. What are some things that you're going to have to pay once, maybe, or once a year, or depending on what you're supplying or what you're selling and what are some things that are variable? Okay. So things that are reoccurring and things that maybe is one-off. So for example, for us, we'll start with like first fixed cost and then we can do variable here.

15:02OK, so fixed costs, you know, server costs, staff, right? Going to need we're going to need team members to help us build this community. You know, at some point we're going to need to pay for marketing or advertising ads. So these are some fixed costs that are going to happen over and over and over. OK, variable costs. Well, I might need to invest in a new computer. Right. Right. That's one of, uh, you know, it's not happening all the time. It's a one-off kind of thing, or maybe every few years, right. I need to invest maybe in a camera if I'm shooting videos, right. You get the point, right.

15:37What else? A mic, right. These are some things I need to invest in to podcast, right. So this gives me a good understanding of what these costs are. And then I would cost out how much these things are. I would write a dollar amount for each of these, you know, whether, you know, this is going to cost me, you know, for us is$400 a month because we have dedicated server. So this is what we have to do. Now, revenue streams, how are you going to make money? How's money going to come in, right? List your sources of revenue, right? So at the start, when we were starting with, with the hundred dollar MBA, we really just said, okay, this is how we would like to make money.

16:11And then we just listed them down. So we said, we want to make money with sponsorships, right? Or sponsors, right? We want to make money with with memberships, right? $100 BA, where our courses live, right? We want to make money with maybe events, right? We want to make money doing maybe affiliate marketing, right? So we just listed all this stuff down. And then what happened was after we started trying some of these things, we started realizing, oh, some of these are making more money than others. We should double, triple down on these. And then eventually what we learned is that, okay, actually we make most of our revenue because we create so much content for free through sponsorships, right?

16:52Through our podcast sponsorships. And then we realize, okay, we don't really want to endorse all these different products to make money and be swayed by this idea of affiliate marketing. So maybe we'll do some affiliate marketing, but it's not going to be our main focus. So maybe affiliate marketing is not going to be as strong as sponsorships. And then we realize, oh, our memberships are growing because people love our content and memberships become a stronger kind of part of the puzzle. So you will find out, you know, the percentage of how much money you're going to make from each of these later on.

17:23But right now, just write down what are the possible revenue streams where you can make money in your business. There you have it, guys. 15 minutes later, you have yourself a great business plan here. OK, in 15 minutes, one pager, all done. So save this. You got it in your hands now. And it's going to be a reference as you move forward. You know exactly what problems you're solving. You know how to come up with solutions to these problems. You have a unique selling proposition. You have an unfair advantage. You have your customer segments. You know exactly who are you actually targeting. OK, existing alternatives.

18:01You know, what are some alternatives that people are looking for right now? Because your solution is going to be the solution instead of these, right? What are the key metrics you're going to be tracking to know if you're winning high level pitch, one liner that you're able to kind of describe what your business does. What are the channels you're going to go after so that you can be able to grow your business, your marketing channels? What is your perfect customer look like? What are those attributes? And then cost structure, important, what are your money going to be spent on? And then how are you going to make your money revenue streams?

18:29Love it. So there you have it. Your one page business planner is completed. This is a tool that allows you to focus on what's truly important and give you a clear roadmap for your business. Remember, a business plan doesn't have to be long to be effective. This one pager is enough for you. Okay. The key is to be clear and concise and be able to use it as a living document that evolves with your business because your business will change over time a little bit here, a little bit there as a market changes, as you change, as the demand changes. So keep being flexible. Thanks for tuning into the$100 MBA show.

19:06I hope you found this episode valuable. If you haven't done your 15 minute plan with me right now, go ahead and do it. Get serious. Prove to yourself that you're serious by filling this out. It's super simple. As you saw, if you're listening to this podcast, no worries. Go to 100mba.net slash worksheet, and you can download the worksheet and do it along with you can print it out or you can use your iPad like I did. Thanks so much again for listening. If you love this podcast, if you love the value that we're giving, go ahead and subscribe. Subscribe if you're listening to the podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel or check me out on Instagram or any of our socials, which we'll display on the video below.

19:45Or if you're listening, just go to my Instagrams at Omar's in home. Very simple. O-M-A-R-Z-E-N-H-O-M. Until next time, keep taking action. Okay. These are the action steps that are going to get you closer and closer to your goal to financial independence and building a business you love. Thanks again. I'll check you in the next episode.