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Thread: No more business plans please!

  1. #21
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    I've attended some really bad business plan workshops and I've see too many inexperienced new entrepreneurs believe that they have a winning formula, just because someone has written a business plan for them. I have also recently heard that consultants affiliated to SEDA charge up to R17K for a business plan! Somehow we need to teach entrepreneurs that while the business plan is a useful framework that can guide your planning, the process of planning needs to be ongoing. You should regularly go back and adapt/refine your plan to suit current circumstances and analyse what lies ahead. Read my review of Allon Raiz's new book, "Lose the Business Plan".

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  3. #22
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    A business plan when you don't have a clear goal of what you want to achieve or you lack basic business knowledge is a waste of time. I used to be one of those SEDA/UYF service providers. What I couldn't understand was the objective of both. They claimed to have the interest of the SME's at heart, but who really benefits when an entrepreneur is looking for a start up of R10,000 but you throw away R15,000 into a service provider to just do a business plan. My business plans were so bad... I'd use templates based for the US market and use them in KIMBERLEY... Kimberley? You can't even compare it to Joburg. But I used to be so convincing to get the client to buy into my product, I would even accompany them to the banks for the loans and present their cases. Whilst I knew, they stood 0 chance of being funded. It was my job after-all to draw up as many business plans I could in any given month... A waste of money.

    Then there was the UYF loans division. They could only consider your application if you had a Surety. I think both UYF and seda are really failing the sme's. And there's so mcu potential to do much more

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  5. #23
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    So I presume you have had a change of heart and are no longer ripping off the naive new entrepreneurs? Yes, there is so much that could be done. I daydream about a franchise model for start-up 'facilitators' who can take entrepreneurial support into their communities. Have you got any suggestions for what can be done or what government should be doing differently to give entrepreneurs the right support?

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    A prospective partner and I went through a the process of building a business plan for a potential purchase recently. I found that over the few intense days and nights it helped us to focus on the who's, how's and where's and set out our own level of involvement. It certainly helped us "clear the air" about our stakes as partners (or potential partners)

    The plan has been temporarily shelved because the deal wasn't right for us at the time, which I think may have taken us further down the road before realizing; but the process did open our eyes to identifying better route for us to take.

    As mentioned in earlier posts it turned out to be more of a planning for business exercise rather than just producing a business plan. This experience may not have merits for all entrepreneurs but putting all the facts down on paper, and honestly analyzing them is a definite must do.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dazfuzz View Post
    As mentioned in earlier posts it turned out to be more of a planning for business exercise rather than just producing a business plan. This experience may not have merits for all entrepreneurs but putting all the facts down on paper, and honestly analyzing them is a definite must do.
    If only up and coming entrepreneurs were all about planning for business, rather than planning for making money.

    Some people have great business ideas in theory but the lack of understanding of the market trends is a major downfall. That's where the SEDA's and UYF's should be focusing on. Teaching people about the markets and developing statistics in relevant areas so people can explore markets that are untainted if there's potential or expand the current trends by bringing in more creative and competitive strategies...

  8. #26
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    Hear! Hear! And the old Umsobomvo Fund (now the NYDA) was the worst culprit in driving this approach, by handing out vouchers to their clients (youth aged 18-35 yrs) to go and have a business plan done by a 'consultant'. Then Umsobomvu could report that it had spent Rx million of taxpayers' money on 'supporting' y number of start-up entrepreneurs.

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    One can understand why there is a need for some form of documentation supporting a request for funding. The problem with banks is that it quickly becomes a paper shuffling exercise exacerbated by the fact that often the individuals assessing the plan have minimal experience and go by the "numbers".
    VC's tend to be more experienced and are more interested in the people behind the plan.
    However, if you have not taken the time to put an assessment of your plan together with some projections and market assessments down on paper you are highly unlikely to get past first base.

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