Beam in collaboration with the Wakefield Business Support Programme presented a day-long creative and practical conversation exploring recent/current trends - in the UK and internationally - about how towns and cities are using the arts and creative businesses to develop, and how artists and creatives are responding to the opportunities. This powerpoint formed part of Philip Parramore's business planning workshop 'Your business planning toolkit'.

2. Your idea – max the opportunity
You love
being
creative!
You have a
great
business idea!
Go!
Go!
Go!
Wait!
Stop!
Who will you
sell this to?
You may need
investment
How will you
make money?
What about
other benefits
of doing this
business?
Is this a great
Public
Relations
opportunity?
Is there a
Community
Interest
angle?
Creativity
Practical
Planning

3. Will your creative idea be right for the market?
 Your creative passion is to be encouraged and applauded
 BUT!!!!
 Adapt your ideas to meet the demands of your customers
 What does your market research tell you?
 Customer is King!
 Who else apart from the direct customer needs to be convinced?
 They are your customers too!

4. Which Customers?
 A new Wakefield change consulting firm has identified its target customer
base, including:
 Education Sector – Academies and 16+
 Community Interest Companies / Social Enterprises
 Local Authorities
 Central Government / NHS / Other Public Sector
 Start Up Businesses
 Growth Businesses with Expansion Plans
 Small Businesses with limited capacity to do everything they need to, or that
recognises they don’t have the required skills
 And who else?................

5. Potential customers
 Other established organisations that already provide services to those target
customers
 It can deliver its services through Associations, Partnership, Collaborative Bids
 Best of all….this approach requires….
 So….
 HR consultancies with a client base
 Accountants and solicitors providing Business and HR advice
 Business coaches
 Education sector consultants
 ERDF and other grant funded business support programmes, e.g. Wakefield Business
Support Programme, New Enterprise Schemes, Growth Accelerator, Growth Vouchers,
Manufacturing Advisory Service, Skills Funding, Arts Council, Lottery Funded et al…….
OK!! –SO WHO WILL YOU SELL YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE TO?

6. Left Brain – Right Brain
 Research suggests we all have a dominant side of the brain - this shapes personality
 Which are you?
 What does it say about your personality?
 Right-brained tend to be creative, curious and intuitive
 Those ruled by the left tend to be logical, strategic and rational
 What are the implications of that for your team? Might you need left and right brain?
 Sommer+Sommer braintest
 This is just one example
 Consider other ways and tools to find out whether you have the right personality,
skills, experience, knowledge and capacity to get your concept to market

7. What sort of business plan?
 Consider what sort of business plan you need.
 Whilst there are some common principles the reasons why you need a
plan will determine what content you need in it
 Planning should be proportionate to your business need and customer
requirements
 Plans needed for internal progress checking are likely to be very
different for those where you are seeking investment, wanting to lease
premises, etc.
 You must put yourselves in the shoes of the customer
 Write your plan with influence so they can make an easy decision to
progress

8. Reasons to plan
 Get clarity from the start
 Know the fundamentals of the business
 Get off to the best possible start
 Document your direction at start up or if you’re at a standstill
 Think about areas not previously considered
 Consider issues in more depth
 Look at the business inside out
 Forward look with long term cashflow projections
 Goal / objective / target setting

9. Reasons to plan
 Internal Progress Monitoring, Measurement and Reporting (living document)
 Satisfy Business Stakeholders/ Shareholders of direction of travel
 Feasibility Studies
 Seeking investment / funding – attract them and provide confidence refer to
“WBSP sources of finance”
 To secure premises, e.g. on a lease
 Franchising / licensing
 Company Valuation, e.g. merger / acquisition
 Exit Strategy – e.g. effective and efficient plan for withdrawing products and
services that are no longer viable
 Whilst there are some common principles the reasons why you need a plan will
determine what content you need to include

10. In your plan…consider these
 Business Opportunity – value statement/mission; window of opportunity,
stage of development
 Marketing - market size and focus, customer positioning, products and
services, distribution, operational business model, inc.value proposition,
capabilities/resources, partnerships, activities, relationships, costs,
market channels, revenues, customers, summary
 Operations – executive capability, business development schedule /
vision (including milestones), GANNT chart/ project plan
 PESTLE Analysis
 SWOTM Analysis
 Governance and Ownership – owners, board, assets, e.g. patents
 Financials, including investment required, cash-flow projections and
assumptions, business valuation
 Base case (most likely), best case and worst case scenarios

11. And when that’s done…
don’t forget these at the front
 Well designed cover – first impressions count!
 Document Contact
 Disclaimer/ Intellectual Property/ Confidentiality Clause
 Business Snapshot
 Contents
 Executive Summary – overview, founders and team, business
objective, products and services, competitors, customers, the
market, financial forecasts, investment needs

12. Business Objectives
Make them SMART – Specific; Measurable; Achievable;
Realistic / Relevant; Timed
Agree them with your stakeholders
They are targets – so support them with performance
measures, monitoring and progress reporting

13. Can encompass both outcome and objective setting.
What do I want to achieve?
Why do I want to achieve it?
What will success look like? – write it, draw it – use
colour description and feelings
Break down the goal into mini goals / steps to achieve,
with mini successes and shorter timeframes
What barriers to success exist and what can I do to
prevent them happening?
Goal setting

14. Phillip Parramore MBA MInstLM
Performance Improvement and
People Development Specialist
T: 07766 543356
E: info@guidedotyou.co.uk
W: www.guidedotyou.co.uk