Building your War Chest (Step 2): 365 days to 100K - Understanding your landscape, creating your business plan
Building a business is not for the weak, it will impact your mental health, you will lose friends, people will become enemies & 'success' in itself is a bitch.
Like I explained in the Intro post ‘here’: Being a man is easy, it is actually very simple. All one has to do to build strong foundations is to: hit things, push things, pull things, observe things, break things, fix things, write things, read things, love things, and delay gratification. This is, what is needed, to build a strong foundation.
But, what the next stage is… Is ‘your personal discovery’ stage, the pillars you put in place for when you are out on the hunt, 90% of the battle you will face, is yourself, your reflection - who you truly are - you will be going into Dante inferno’s nine circles of hell. You will battle your insecurities, your indulgences, things that seduce you to be weak. Are you weak?
You will begin to question yourself, your sanity, and some nights you will want to just give up and leave but that’s the trick… This is the thing that nobody warns you about… They want you to go through, what they went or go through, and feel the pain, and you're oblivious to it all because all you see are the treats - The money, the cars, the women - not knowing that most people do not want you to succeed.
I, for one, am writing this for my son, he will see this essence of me in the years to come - Inshallah... What you do with it doesn’t truly matter to me… If anything, I am creating ‘new competition’, increasing my difficulty of the hunt but, then again, doesn’t that make life more fun?
The hunt is fun but it WILL break you before it makes you, please remember this one.
Three things to understand:
Before one can truly go out to hunt like a man, one must understand three things they MUST be willing to do, and these things sound ‘easy’ but they are not for the weak:
1: One must be willing to ‘Try’ - Be BRAVE!
Being brave is about having fear or being in fear, and pushing yourself to do it anyways. Be brave. Be brave enough to go out in the wild alone, knowing that there is a strong chance that you will fail… and the best thing about it is, is that, you will fail. You will fail and fail fast, get back up and go again, and again, and again. Go again until you catch your prey. Your sweat, your grit, your focus will allow you to achieve. I am not here to sell you no dreams… What you are aiming for is the ‘impossible’… Well, the impossible for many people. They don’t truly hunt or believe. They think they hunt but, in reality, they are just a part of an intelligent hunting process - a cog - to receive a fraction of the killing of a whale.
The average person is indoctrinated into a culture of thinking, in a ‘free range’ controlled way, so they will never truly comprehend, what it is, that you are hunting for when there are technically ‘simpler’ ways - applying for jobs/ get a ‘career’ and salary. These are simple things, simple things with a false safety net. The truth is, building solely upon another man’s hunt can swiftly be ripped away - ask Covid - but we can save this thought for another day.
What I NEED from you, is for you to TRY! I need you to break away from being the average, every day, ‘life is hard’ joe, “woe is me” and sculpture yourself into the extraordinary… and becoming extraordinary, starts today!
2: One must be willing to do, observe, repeat - Develop GRIT & CONCENTRATE!
Grit is the secret weapon to ‘any’ extraordinary man, their greatness was and will always be determined on their mental focus, their concentration, and their mind state - the GAMMA wave. One must be willing to get hit, go to war and come back and do it all again. Grit is understanding that ‘pain’ is temporary and on the other side of pain you develop something that is great. But, if you want an average life, the easy life, the simple life, this post isn’t for you, please just stop reading here.
Grit is understanding delayed gratification. Grit is understanding your fear, what hurt is and creating perseverance - and passion - to achieve a long–term mission. You will only make it there, if you make a promise, deep down, to yourself that you will succeed. Just please don’t stop…
Observe the effects of what you doing, why you did it, and what yield did it make? What were your results? Can you do it again? This time faster and better? The insurance industry is trillions of dollars market place and the main underwriting technique - simplified - is just ‘testing and learning’. They create a framework of how they qualify their policies, the level of ‘risk’ they are willing to take and then tweak their prices to attract their customers - in comparison to their competitors - test, learn and go again. It’s literally a ‘guessing game’, a game that each provider tweaks offering until they catch their prey - you. Everything else, in insurance, from that point, is to make sure that they have (some form of) ‘integrity’ - keep their customer safe - and protect themselves from the competition, and of course, the rules and regulations of the game - so they don’t get fined and/or penalties.
3: Repeat process - Understand your landscape
Like I said in point one “most people do not want you to succeed”, this statement also includes some of your friends and family. They will want to see you do good - the majority - and/or be safe but the reality is, most people do not want you to do better than them… and I’m NOT sorry to say.
Some of your friends and family, will, therefore, become a ‘challenge’ for you to escape. Not convince. Escape. It is not your job to prove anything to anyone apart from yourself and this is the beginning of understanding your landscape. The sad thing is, most people do not even realise that they are doing these things - they are contently conditioned - they will question you, make you doubt yourself or say things like “how’s your little business going?” - which will slowly impact your mental health. They will tell you what your business ‘should’ be doing, highlighting all your mistakes - but they won’t do it for themselves though - AND, you will feel the shift and energy change.
If you seek external validation, this will be a crazy time for you, because you’re not going to be valued or treated the same… The fake care and the fake interest you will sharpen your mind to see - the real environment you are in… During these moments, the development of your self-awareness becomes key. Take your learnings and conditioning from points one and two, and plan it all the way to the end.
Before we get started with the next step and last but not least…
Three Things to ask yourself:
1: “What do I want to achieve here?” - If it’s money that drives you, you will make some but you will be constantly pulled away. People will ‘dangle’ a carrot over your head - opportunity - or leverage their ‘clout’ - fame -, brand power - by name dropping - or family gains. But don’t worry, the closer you get to your ‘purpose’ if you have a higher calling - one can’t just assume lol - you will meet allies along the way.
2: “What is my purpose?” - Your purpose is your true intentions. Example: My purpose is to help increase social equity and I have this ‘thing’ inside me that compels me to want to help everyone - I had to accept that - but my ‘self-interest’ and main narrative/focus is to make sure, that, if I die, I leave something behind to help guide my son - for then he will be an orphan. Luckily for me - or unlucky lol depends on your perspective - by leaving a guide/ essence of me behind for my son, it may directly or indirectly help support someone else who also reads - well, I hope it does. This is why I write and publish my intimate letters to my son, in a public setting - this platform - knowing that it WILL do me harm. People can read, judge, make up random context from things written -which was not aimed at them - take offence, act as nothing has happened and weaponise anything - therefore creating ‘enemies’. But I have to accept that, I can not control the thought process or the emotions of anyone.
Anyways... I digress… There are people in this world that trust their intuitions and with their emotional intelligence, the battles they have faced - on the hunt - developed the ability to see if one’s intentions are pure. They then may want to support you in making waves… But, this is only if you see life beyond ‘money’ - and it aligns with their intentions.
These are a few of the challenges in your landscape - on an emotional level, enjoy it.
3: “How am I going to get there?” - Fail to plan, plan to fail, without a good plan you will lack, self-discipline, you will become confused as to what tasks to prioritise and where to target first/next - you will flap in the wind - and these things will result in poor timekeeping. TIME IS MONEY… But, let me switch this saying around… “Money can buy anything, apart from LOST time”. You will never get your time back and the more you ‘wing it’, the longer it will take you to complete your mission.
Welcome to Jumaji lol - A business plan acts as your guide, to the new landscape you will battle on. It will help you to establish what path you will first take, to get to new land (checkpoint) - Your go-to-market strategy; It will give you foresight of potential future pains you may come across like ‘demand & capacity’ (in-game hints); It will help you understand environmental dangers, legal dangers, asset dangers (for your health bar); and it helps you prepare for you to study and learn your ‘known’ competition, and your personal weaknesses (XP Points).
A business plan is magical and holds a life far beyond just applying for finance. It, in itself, is the REAL world view to your dreamlike one.
A business plan doesn’t have to be detailed, in fact, an over-detailed business plan wastes not only time, it can be too rigid - restricting your movements - hinder you and it can also put potential partners off. You will need to be concise, covering these 4 main areas:
The problem – what is the problem you are trying to address.
The solution – how will you solve this problem and meet the needs of those with this problem? - customers.
Competitor analysis – what other businesses are also solving and/or trying to solve this problem.
SWOT Analysis – What are your strengths, your weaknesses, what potential opportunities does this presents and who and what are the key threats – you will need to know these things.
These areas will be further explored in other parts of the War Chest series - please see the list below.
Your Ideas
Any good entrepreneur will have 100s of good ideas. Exhausted with ideas. Ideas to a ‘problem solver’ are like seeds in a fertilised garden. The main thing you will have to do is lock into is ONE!, make that choice. Be intentional, for an idea is only as good as the dedication to its execution. Assess your strong points, things you enjoy doing and/or can do well and build up your idea around this one.
My first company was a digital design and branding agency. I studied fine art for years, I was good at it - A* gang, bang bang. I created artwork all the time and it was natural to the environment I was in - I went to Uni to learn 3D design. I was not aware of all the government-backed funding, etc, back then, so I hustled and bootstrapped myself into making a good bit of coin.
Bootstrapped: Building a company from scratch with nothing but personal savings and/or a job and using the money from the sales from the product/service to scale your business from zero, up.
My second venture was developed off the back of the learning from my first venture but, in between, I decided to get a ‘real’ job. I became an employee and worked for some brands and to be fair, whilst I did earn a ‘decent’ salary and had more of a ‘peace of mind’ - I could clock out at 5:30 pm sharp - or rundown company time doing the ‘bare minimum’ I personally was not ‘happy’ using only ‘some’ of my skillset - I felt restricted, plus, the learning was not fast enough for me and I got bored playing the Identity game. Check this post here “Who am I? No… Who are You?”…
With my second venture, I got into consulting. I hustled for projects and chose what I wanted to do, learnt tons on the way and increased the type of money I earned by A LOT - what I earned ‘gross’ in a year, as an employee, for some bluechip company, I collected in a 4-6 weeks ‘net’, on projects I led on.
My third venture now… This one is special to me and I enjoy every aspect of what it is creating me to be. But I’m going to let it speak for itself.
One of my favourite scenes from Hook, the movie starring Robin Williams, Is the imaginary feast scene - if you can think of it, you can eat whatever you want!
Anyways, here are a few ideas for areas for you:
Venture Creation - Create a mobile app, platform or technology to solve a problem.
eCommerce - Dropshipping, reselling, bespoke creation and sale of an item.
Design Agency - Selling your art, design, branding and concepts.
Music - Sell your recorded songs, song write for someone, produce a beat or sound engineering.
Catering - make foods and sell them and/or create an experience around the foods you are catering.
Consulting - sell a service, sell the skill and experience to solve a business problem and/or strategising ways on how to make a company make more money.
There are literally tons of business ideas, check this site for some: 100 business ideas you can start today
Assess your strong points and pick one!
Understanding your landscape.
Ok, So let’s get into it!
If you are starting from scratch, like how I did, you will be confused to know where and how to start. The aim here is to FAST TRACK you pass all of this and get you your first bit of coins to play with. If like me, you only had £100 to start your business then this bit is important.
What we are going to do here is hit all the points below at a high level, with usable links, but before we start, if you have joined from Step 2, please read Step 1: Be a man, Prepare your company and council, and learn how to HUNT
In this post we will be covering two points:
Creating a business plan (for funding)
Basic government ‘Start-up’ delivery.
In the next post we will be covering :
Your actual business plan, for bootstrapping to get to market quickly as you can without any government help and low income.
How to pivot your products and create a flexible business plan on the path to product/market fit.
For all transparency purposes as to what I said in Step One - my breakdown was £12 to register a business, £45 for host & domain name, £15 for business plan site, and £25 for the accountant’s first month.
Again, speed and efficiency are very important here, I literally put my whole life on hold to bang out the research and analysis. Using real-world data and make sure the financial projections were 100% correct. This is where a good accountant can come in handy - if you started to build a good relationship with them.
Business Plan Template - Instead of starting from ‘scratch’ with a business plan, you are able to find business plans that share the same business model as the company you are aiming to build.
You can find free example templates from www.bplans.com/downloads/business-plan-template/ I’d say look over existing templates to get an idea of how you would like to structure your business plan and please learn about your product - you will be questioned about it. And remember you are setting up a real business here.
Automate - Once you find the style you like, then sign up to www.liveplan.com this will give you a structure to work to, you can cut and change parts, add in product costs, resale value, etc to calculate profit and loss. This will help you to understand the real factor here ‘money’. If your projections are off, you’ll lose credibility when you’re pitching for ‘further’ funding - talk to your accountant.
Executive Summary - Once you’ve hit all the key points in your business plan, you should write your executive summary. The executive summary is a short overview of your business proposal and it needs to hit hard. It is an ‘elevator pitch’, it will quickly show the viability of your business and why they should give you funding for this, as well as, what value are you adding to the economy.
Start-up loans - Now your business plan is all sorted. Apply for a Government-backed ‘start up loan’. As far as I am aware there is only one incentive but multiple delivery partners and the main brands I know are:
Startup loan: https://www.startuploans.co.uk/
Virgin StartUp Loans: https://www.virginstartup.org
They share the same endpoint, Virgin Startups use Startup loans company but brands itself over it, but it supplies you with different business products, bespoke workshops on how to build and scale your business and gives you additional ‘council’ - business mentorship. It is also attached to Richard Branson’s name so there may be potential to meet him - who knows!
Submit Application: Once you have submitted your application to any of the startup loans companies, a business consultant will contact you within one to two weeks to go over your business and aims etc.
Utilise their council and expertise, it only benefits you more. Someone with visibility of a lot more, that can add to your worldview. They may even let you know about up and coming competitors.
Business Mentor: The business consultant/mentor will take you through to the end of the process, checking your credit report, affordability and the amount you asked for the loan. If it all makes sense. Don’t take too long here, this can be drawn out if you’re not responsive. 365 days to 100k remember?
All done: If all goes well, which it will you will gain access up to a £25,000 loan, at 6% APR, not credit score tested, over the period of 5 years.
Once you get the funding, here is where the actual fun begins.
The next post in the War Chest series will be covering your actual business plan for quickly getting into the market without any loan help and are on a low/no income.
If you like these posts and/or have further questions, please do let me know.
You can follow me on:
Twitter: @BnBeckford
Instagram: @B.eckford
I am always here to help!
Thanks for reading!
The ‘war chest’ series will be broken down into the following:
Registering a business, Business Banking & Accountants - Preparing your war chest and council.
Your idea & raising startup funding (A business plan) - Understanding your landscape.
Prototyping your product (MVP) - Your Weapon
Planning your go-to-market strategy & the power of your brand marketing - Drawing first blood in battle.
Personas, knowing your customers & converting leads - learning your opponents.
Creating a Loyal Customer base & scaling your business (additional funding/venture financing) - Building your kingdom.
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