Shake your moneymaker

I'm writing my business plan!

On our last post, we analyzed the views of Stanford professor Jim Ellis and legendary Virgin founder Richard Branson on business plans. For Ellis, the business plan helps you to understand internal dynamics, as well as provides an external look over your business so that you are in tune with stakeholders. Branson agrees with that and goes forward: the business plan should explain what the company is for. I know, it sounds obvious, but it is easy to find entrepreneurs leading businesses that do not have a clear purpose.

During this last month I had the chance to start writing my own business plan, as part of the Entertainment Business Masters Degree Program I am currently pursuing at Full Sail University. It was my first attempt in doing so, and Ellis and Branson helped me to narrow down my activities and understand how I would have to relate to the communities I serve.

Narrowing down sounds like a bad thing to do, but believe me, in business, it is essential. As an entertainer that provides a myriad of services that include music, video, performance, and creative writing, I found myself having to choose one or the other, and I had a couple of panic attacks. But, there there, it passed. I got it.

It’s not that I will have to just stop doing one of these services. I can’t. I live to create and my head is all over the place, and that is what makes my work special. It is diverse, it is different. Also, having experience in all of those disciplines puts me in a special position in any team or project, because if I’m composing music, I have a better understanding on how that piece of music is going to work on a video or in a performance. The thing is that now I know that I have to find a way to pack all of these abilities into one label. Not just any label, it’s got to be one that makes sense to my customer, the production company. Honestly, I still don’t know what that label is, but I’m working on it, and as I acquire more and more experience in the entertainment industry working for other companies (by the way, check out my LinkedIn profile) I know it will come, and now that is my north.

Writing my business plan was also a great opportunity to pay extra attention to finance matters. It was great to break down the “money comes, money goes” process into sequences of spreadsheets that gave me a comprehensive view on how I am actually going to make money, instead of wasting it while I have fun making art. When I have the chance to invest on other people’s businesses, I will surely start by looking at their finances (and their mission), and this is how I expect my investors to behave. That’s it, folks. I think I’m a businessman now. Let's network.