What Dead Fish Have To Do With Your Business

While on a recent trip, I got a call from my pet sitter. Apparently we had a bit of a tragedy in my salt water aquarium. All my fish died. Actually nearly everything in the tank died.

It all started with the death of one of my sea urchins. While sad as that was, what made it a tragedy was that sometimes sea urchins release a toxin when they die. And this toxin is toxic enough to kill everything in the tank.

My starfish. My crabs. My fish.

Everything, that is, except bristle worms. (For purposes of this article, it's enough to know bristle worms are terrible pests in salt water environments and they sneak in from other necessary items you add to the tank.)

My pet sitter worked for years at a pet store, and completely cleaned out the tank -- changed the water, cleaned the filter, etc.

And what she discovered was that my tank was basically a walking time bomb. My filter was about two steps away from failing completely. The bristle worm population was so bad it was about to take over my tank (and probably harass and kill the creatures I WANTED in the tank), plus the salt concentration was out of whack.

So, basically, my salt water aquarium would have crashed and burned whether that sea urchin died or not.

The worst part was there WERE signs. My starfish was coming out in the day more, which it doesn't typically do. My snail and other sea urchin had died a few weeks before. My fish were looking stressed. The ammonia in my tank had gone up.

But, even worse then that, I had been telling myself for MONTHS that I really needed to find someone to take care of the tank for me.

You see, there are 3 things I like to do with my aquarium -- buy fish, watch the fish and feed the fish. Notice what's NOT on my list -- check filter, change water, repair pieces of equipment that I'm not even sure what they do much less figure out if they're working properly, etc.

But my fish (and other critters) were fine. They had been fine for years. I fed them, bought a new friend every now and then, and watched them. So even though I KNEW I should be doing those "other, not-so-fun" tasks, the aquarium appeared to be fine on the surface. Therefore, I told myself I could wait to do those other tasks. No hurry, I said. I'll get around to it next month.

Well, next month never happened. And I paid a high price for that.

So what, I can hear you asking, does any of this have to do with your business? Well, let me explain.

Perhaps, for the most part, your business is doing okay. Maybe even better then okay. You're making money, enough to pay the bills and maybe a little more, plus you're building your reputation and your customer base little by little.

But there are a few glitches. Perhaps you still do your own books, so your invoices are always going out late and your cash flow is erratic. Perhaps you do all your own customer service, so you don't always contact your customers in a timely fashion (and have probably lost potential clients because of it). Perhaps you do your own product fulfillment, and find that you fall behind getting products out the door.

Or maybe you do have some help, maybe you've hired a virtual assistant. But it's not a good fit and each month feels like a struggle to get things done. (Plus you don't have any time to find a new assistant.)

Or maybe you know you need a more aggressive marketing strategy to get new clients in the door, but you can never find the time to actually start implementing.

But whatever it is (or, more likely than not, multiple small things) they're on your "next month's" to-do list.

After all, everything is running fine. You're making money, granted not as much as you could be, but you're paying the bills. You have clients coming in the door. You're getting things done.

Right?

Well, sure. Until all the fish die that is.

Now I'm not trying to overwhelm or panic you because you aren't doing enough, but, well, there ARE some things you need to be doing (or not be doing). You need to regularly market your business. You needn't be trying to do everything yourself. And when you do decide to hire someone, you need to get the right people on your team.

Because, if you don't, well, you know what could happen.

For instance, don't market your business regularly, and you'll never have a steady stream of clients coming in the door. Insist on doing everything yourself (such as your bookkeeping and product fulfillment) and what happens when you get busy? Things start falling through the cracks and when that starts to happen, money invariably falls through the cracks as well.

Hire the wrong people and not only can they screw up your business, but they can cost you both time AND money.

Let it go on long enough, and you could wake up one day with a business so in trouble you don't even know where to turn.

Or, worse yet, no business at all.

I'm not saying you have to tackle everything at once. But what I AM saying is those little things you keep ignoring (and you know the ones -- they nag you constantly because you know if you took care of them, they would make a huge difference in your business and/or life) you ignore at your own peril.

A better strategy would be to deal with one issue at a time. Starting TODAY. Then, move to the next issue. And the next.

Chances are, not only will you keep all your fish alive, but you'll probably find yourself making more money and growing your business faster then you ever thought possible.

(And, to finish my fish story, what am I doing differently? I'm hiring my pet sitter to come in once a month and do all those unpleasant maintenance tasks. My only regret is I didn't think to do this months ago. All my fish would probably still be alive.)

Michele Pw (Michele Pariza Wacek) Owns Creative Concepts And Copywriting Llc, A Copywriting, Marketing Communications And Creativity Agency. She Helps People Become More Successful At Attracting New Clients, Selling Products And Services And Boosting Business. To Find Out How She Can Help You Take Your Business To The Next Level, Visit Her Site http://www.Michelepw.Com Copyright 2006 Michele Pariza Wacek.

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Do You Really Need a Business Plan?

I stumbled onto an online donnybrook at one of those entrepreneurs’ online discussion boards yesterday. And I just had to smile. People were going just nuts about whether a business plan is needed, what a business plan even is, who should write the plan, and other assorted topics.

But before I repeat the comments I shared, let me just say that as a CPA with many business clients in the Seattle area I've done a bunch of business planning, have covered the subjects in the best-selling books I've written QuickBooks, and also covered the subject rather extensively in my book MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel (which was used at several big business schools.)

With that as background, let me share a handful of thoughts.

Not All Business Plans Are Equal

So here’s a first thought. People often mean different things when they use the phrase “business plan.” Sometimes they just mean a strategy (which could just as well be described in a sentence). Sometimes they mean a 20-25pp document that "sells" a business to new investors or lenders.

And sometimes they mean a long document--a sort of white paper--that describes in massive detail a new venture opportunity, an approach to exploiting that opportunity, and then detailed workplans for getting from “here” to “there”.

And that’s the first thing I told the people squabbling online. People use the phrase to mean different things—and that’s confusing. And part of the fight I witnessed stemmed from this miscommunication.

New Venture Plans Aren’t Necessarily Unless Funders Require It

Here was my next point for the flame warriors I encountered.

Obviously, if you're not raising money or you're raising money from people who aren't traditional new venture investors and orthodox lenders, you don't need a business plan that “sells” the business to funding sources—the sort of plan I’ve often called a “new venture plan.”

If your father or rich uncle is planning to invest in you business, for example, you may not need a business plan that “sells” the investment. Right or wrong, you dad or rich uncle Joe may write you a check just because you are who you are.

What about a White-paper Style Business Plan?

Does what I’ve just said mean that you don’t need a business plan at all? Well, sort of. Sort of not.

I have personally started, oh, let’s say 5 businesses over the last 25 years. Four succeeded rather nicely. One basically failed (ironically, the one profiled in a glowing Wall Street Journal feature!)

I didn’t really create a formal, white-paper-style business plan for any of these ventures.

But even though I didn’t have a formal written document, I truly had done all the research that feeds a white-paper-style business plan... I just hadn’t documented and “published” my research results.

So I guess I would say that you don’t necessarily need a formal, printed-and-bound white-paper business plan document. But you really should have done all the research that goes into such a document.

Enough said.

Limited Liability Company formation & LLC incorporation expert Stephen L. Nelson CPA has written more than 150 books. Formerly an adjunct tax professor at Golden Gate University, Nelson is also the author of several bestselling books about Quicken and QuickBooks. He also publishes and edits the popular LLCs explained web site.

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