Create a Business Plan with 4 Sticky-Notes

You’re listening to Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. And today we’re talking about how to start a business. And the business plan can take less than 30 minutes to create. And by doing it, you can actually increase your chances of success dramatically.

Ready, fire, aim, no, ready, aim, fire. We do this at the incubator at the Allen Levan Center, and we spend about 30 minutes preparing a full business plan. And we call it the four sticky note business plan. And Mimi has posted that at the top of the room. And if you’re listening to this, In podcast, you would not know that we actually do this as a live show.

So we’re live on clubhouse on startup club, and you can join us and you sometimes get a little bit more interactivity when you join us live. Like for instance, today we’re actually posting. The, um, the workbook, the start workbook, which is based on the Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, the number one bestseller on Amazon.

And actually, Mimi, it’s interesting because we hit number one again this, uh, Wednesday on Amazon for a new category. So we now can say that we have been number one. On 14 categories on Amazon, which is pretty interesting, pretty exciting. All right. So today we’re going to talk about how do we create a business plan in 30 minutes?

Michelle, Mimi, Kyle. I’m curious about what you think about the whole workbook and your thoughts on that, because it’s interesting that we were able to take the book, this document, this theoretical document. And we were able to expand upon it dramatically and go into concepts that we touched upon in the book, but we deliver a lot more detail in the workbook.

For instance, I really, really like the startup checklist. We have the ultimate startup checklist. Everything you need to know to get your business started. And that is the very last exercise in the book. Um, and it starts at the very beginning, you know, write down your idea, your purpose, identify the space you want to own.

You know, determine what will get you on the first page of Google, name your idea, check the trademark database, register the domain, create a logo, join an incubator, write the elevator pitch, apply for a score mentor, write my personal value statements, and it goes on and on and on with all of the things you need to do to get your business started.

And this book today, we’re selling it now on Amazon for 6. 99. That’s it. It’s a 72 page book. We’re selling for 6. 99. I think our profit on this one, Mimi, if I remember correct, is 0. 17. Uh, but we’re only going to do that as an introductory offer. Today is sort of our official launch day, and we will be increasing the price to 14.

99. But if you are listening to this in podcast, uh, you’ll have until August 1st to be able to, uh, get the, get the, uh, workbook. If you’re, if you’re listening to this after August 1st, You know, there’s so much value that’s been put into this workbook. Mimi and Olivia and Michelle and team have worked very, very hard on putting together all of these exercises and really trying to design it so that all you need to do is just go through the workbook so you can launch your startup.

We’ve made it that simple. Now, nothing in life is simple. It still requires the genius of the entrepreneur, the ingenuity, That you will bring to that book, but it can be a basis for getting your startup going. Michelle, I’m curious from your perspective, uh, you know, you’ve seen the workbook, you’ve seen what we put together in it.

I’m just curious what your thoughts are on the workbook before we, we, we, um, start talking about the four sticky note plan.

Michelle, are you there or Mimi? I can. Ping you and get your thoughts on it. Um, maybe you can talk a little bit Mimi about what went into it. You know, we think we spent about 6 months working on it, developing it, um, getting the rights from Forbes. Uh, be happy to hear from you, Mimi. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. I think Michelle’s sound is back in if you want to go first.

All right, Michelle. Go ahead.

Oh, no. Now she’s on mute. Okay. Oh, yeah. I’m going off of just let you guys know there’s outages all around the world right now. And I’m having some internet issues, but I just went over to just Wi Fi. So sorry about that. So the question for me is what sorry, say that again. Yeah, we’re talking about the workbook.

And you know how it’s different. From the actual book, uh, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. And this is the start section of the, of the workbook. But what are your thoughts on all the exercises? And you, you’ve had a chance to go over it. You’ve seen what the team’s put together here. And, um, it’s much more, I find it much more comprehensive than the actual book, but I wanted to get your thoughts on it first, Michelle, and then Mimi.

Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, for me and my learning style, I don’t have a lot of time generally. To spend trying to figure out like reading self help books or whatnot. Even yours is not that, but I love the idea of the structured learning and it’s not that the questions and there’s an exact answer. It really, I, I find the way that the workbook was structured, the exercises, cause they are exercises really cause you, um, To think about it.

Right. And when you’re thinking about these kind of things and going through like a guided process of articulating whatever your value proposition is, or or I think, um, you know, what the competitive landscape is, it helps you to, you know, eliminate. Or at least mitigate a lot of blind spots so that you can really go through things and really think about it.

And I, you know, at the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want? We just kind of want to like, figure it out. And I think that the way that this is done helps you. And I would even suggest to people, Colin, that, um, maybe they show it to, you know, uh, friends or mentors or employees are working at and go through it together.

I don’t even think it has to be just, you know, I’m doing it. I’m the reader. I think you could use them as exercises for your team or exercises or things that you show people to get feedback for. I agree. It has so many great resources to Michelle. Um, everything from hiring your first important hires to, um, thinking ahead to how you’re going to distribute your product and things like that and how you’re going to build a team and good business resources.

So I think it would be great to do with a team. There’s a lot of, Like you said, really interactive, um, activities that I think just help you kind of visualize and see and get all of the, they might feel smaller details, but they’re still the important details. So I think it comes together really well, and I think it’s a good complement to the book.

But what I love about it is you don’t necessarily need to own the hardcover or have read the hardcover even to go through it. It’s really Really an approachable resource for people starting a business, whether it’s their first business or They’re really experienced and just want to organize their thoughts and get a better plan.

I think yeah I think it truly is a masterclass you can on Joining courses and whatnot and here we have one for 99 cents But don’t look at the price and think this isn’t this isn’t uh quality material Uh, it does, first of all, come directly from the book, a book that took over 10 years to write, a book that had over 200 people interviewed, a book that had 30 illustrations, uh, and 200 call outs as well.

It is a, it was an incredible, uh, project, six full time people. Uh, over the last two years finalizing the book and then from that the team has put together a workbook which can help you build your business plan. It can really help solidify that. It breaks everything down from the story, the people, the money, and the systems.

Everything you need. So, you know, I’m just looking at it right now and you can actually click on the Google Drive above there. And have a look at it. Um, again, it’s probably better to buy the actual book from Amazon. Um, you know, this is a digital copy, but it’s nice to be able to touch and feel it. Um, but the first activity is ideas begin with why.

And, you know, set up a timer for five minutes and answer five questions. You can come up with an additional question to help clarify. Goal, understand, What moves you, what will help you find ideas that will truly, you truly believe in that will help you keep pushing forward. Even during those tough times and the first question is what, you know, what motivates your life?

What motivates your work? Second question, what, what, what are your passions about? What do you care deeply about? What problem would you like to solve? And so, yeah, these questions are relatively elementary. It gets a lot more complicated. Complex as we go through the booklet, but it begins to allow you to form thoughts in your head about what are the best practices that startups use?

What is what is it that I can do to increase my chances of success when I launch a startup? And let me tell you, it really does go into a lot of very cool exercises. The next exercise is ideas are everywhere and then ideas to action. Name your idea. Um, uh, cool exercise around that 1, uh, the right idea at the right time, you know, so we talk about the technology adoption curve and ask you to sort of position your idea within that industry and where it is on the curve.

You know, how much do you love your idea? There’s a question to that. Does it reflect your values, create your personal value statements, rate the scalability of the idea, rate the defensibility, create a smart stage gate. You know, stage gates are those things that, remember that computer game that we’d be in a car driving and you’d get to it through a gate and you’d say extended time?

That’s what stage gates are. And in the book we talk about stage gates, picking a specific smart goal, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. And pick that goal and apply it. Once you hit it, then you move to, you pick the next goal. If you don’t hit it, then you need to pivot or quit it.

Alright? You know, you need to pivot or quit it. Um, that’s the, uh, that’s called the stage gates. That’s a concept in the book. And so, the exercise there is to really help you come up with that. And I’m telling you when you set a stage gate for yourself, you know, starting a business can be very stressful.

There’s a lot of people around you who just don’t support your vision of what you’re doing. And you can begin to say, Hey guys, just wait, just hold off a second. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to set a stage gate this particular point in time. If I haven’t delivered on, on, on 10, uh, sales or. You know, MVP or whatever it is, by this date, then you can, then you can, then you can shoot me then.

But until then, I’m taking the Um, opportunity, the time to do what I need to do to get this startup off the ground, and that’s what the stage gets all about. The next 1 is how to design people friendly policies, hire compliments, not clones. You know, there’s a fun graphic there of on page, uh, 23, you know, pick your identify your personality profile as an entrepreneur.

You know, are you bold, friendly, creative? Are you goal driven, steady team player? Are you driven, detailed, analytical planner? And you sort of pick one of those. And then you have partnership and consultants. You know, who are your partnership partners? You got a funding options sheet. You got a customer funded checklist.

You got the four sticky note plan, which we’re going to talk about a little more detail. Um, and then you’ve got the ultimate startup checklist all in the workbook. The original material comes from the book. Our team worked on this. Olivia, who’s actually getting her PhD in. Psychology, um, was critical in helping put together a lot of these exercises.

So it takes it from a sort of theoretical level and makes it more interactive. I think that’s what the workbook does. If you get a chance, go to Amazon at 6 and 99 cents. We’re making 17 cents a profit. Uh, but we’re doing it not because we’re trying to make a profit. It’s all about creating a community of a hundred thousand actively engaged.

Startup club members who help each other out. And that’s what we’re doing here. And this booklet is a good start. If you, if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, but even if you started your business, it’s okay to sort of put your business through a business plan. So identify all the components of a business plan.

And, um, and we’re going to do that today. And we’re actually, We’re doing a live show, um, on Entree after this show and we’re gonna, it’s like a workshop type thing. So if you want to actually participate, you want to create your own business plan, download the Entree app and join us on stage as well. And we’d love to hear about your business and your business plan.

And we’d love to give you some feedback on your business. Um, that’s where we’re going with this today. I know you run a number of companies and setting a business plan, doing your strategic planning is part of that process. I’m curious from you, Michelle, how much time do you spend on planning versus executing?

Well, that’s a really good question. Um, we do our planning, um, every quarter. Okay? Actually, we do an annual planning, and in the annual planning, we do an overview of what each quarter should look like. Then each quarter we redo not redo. We refresh and look at and go into more detail for our quarterly planning.

But how much time do we spend? I would say, I would say about one day a week. Why do I say that? Because we are very deliberate. And in terms of our goal setting, which is, you know, that’s the most critical thing. And in my opinion, is, you know, a lot of people make these strategic plans and these KPIs and their goals, but then they don’t, you know, really put it down on paper and have weekly measurable.

You know, task and goals that they have. So, for me, I spend about 1 day a week on the actual planning and that includes following up and seeing how things are tracking and following up with team members that might be falling behind or having some kind of an issue. Um, but traditionally, I would say we take about a week, a quarter.

To really set up the goals, and then we’re constantly checking in with each other, and also reporting out to the team in terms of how the goals are progressing. And then, of course, if corrective measures need to be taken because we’re falling behind on something, or maybe we found a new opportunity and we want to change things.

Well, that’s, that’s a whole other conversation. Because, you know, just depending on how bad or how good it is, you could spend quite a lot of time. But I’m going to say one week a quarter, Colin. And then, um, one day a week for me, um, as I’m managing the team. Yeah. I think, I mean, we often as entrepreneurs, especially in startups, we’re just, we’re, we are very ad hoc.

You know, we just go with the, you know, our instincts, our instincts tell us what to do. Our instincts say, Oh, let’s just do that. Let’s do that. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. We don’t sit back and think, okay, what are the things we need to do to build a plan here for this business? And in the book Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, we have what’s called the Four Sticky Note Plan.

I wrote an article for Forbes that came out about a month ago. It was on the Four Sticky Note Business Plan and I was absolutely shocked at the response to it. We had 16, 000 people look at that article and our other articles, don’t get me wrong, they’ve been popular, especially the AI ones, you know, 8, 000, 9, 000, but this turned out to be our most popular article, just decoding the formula to start a business, what it takes, but it’s also not necessarily something that everybody knows how to do.

With just a few things in place, a few strategic thoughts put on a sticky notes You can actually create that plan. Now, why sticky notes? People are like, why is a sticky note thing? Yeah, the reality is sticky notes are sticky. Post it notes are sticky. You can stick them up on the board So that keeps you focused.

What I also love about the sticky notes is they’re small They’re very, they’re very small. They don’t have a lot of room. So that means you got to put your plan. It’s like a Twitter. It’s like doing a tweet. It’s like a tweet business plan, right? A Twitter business plan. And you got to put it all on sticky notes.

And so if you look at on page, if you’re, if you, if you, if you’re actually looking at the document right now, uh, page 38 is the four sticky note plan. First thing we want to do is, you know, what is our big idea? You know, what is your story? Make the heading of your sticky note, your idea. Okay. Just give me a second here.

Let’s go with paw. com as my example for now. The big idea at paw. com is to create products that are design forward and comfortable for the dogs. Okay? Then underneath that, you’ll want to, you know, lay out your purpose. Why did you do that? Well, the reality is my dogs were aging. The other founder’s dog, the other founder had a dog.

And a lot of dogs, they have arthritis in their older years. So we wanted to create really comfortable. Um, um, products for our dogs, but at the same time. We also recognize that we want these products to be designed forward, that they would be in your home. They’re don’t, they’re not the ugly dog bed.

They’re very, I don’t know, Michelle, what do you think? Like they’re very, um, you’re the CEO now of paw. com, but they’re very designed forward. Is that the purpose we use for paw. com? Yeah. I say they’re, um, they’re, they’re made for dogs with you, with their humans in mind, so they. They are beautiful to look at absolutely stunning, uh, very home decor friendly, but yet they’re very functional and awesome for the dogs to be relaxed and, uh, who doesn’t want to look at their beautiful dog or cat?

I’m going to say cats too on a beautiful dog bed. I know you don’t like cats call them, but there it is cats. And I know you got me. I can. Um, so the, the, uh, the next thing is to, you know, what are the words you want to own? So think about this in terms of your customers are on, on Google. They’re typing in a, in a, in a, um, in Google.

And they’re typing in a certain words. So, you know, in the case of pod. com, it would like to be like memory foam, dog bed rug, you know, I’m just throwing that out there cause we pioneered the rug,

you know, and, and those are the words you want to own and they’ll actually will act as your title tags. As well, when you put that on your website, so, um, I think I was thinking of a school that my wife and I own and what the words that we wanted to own where best Fort Lauderdale Montessori school and the reason why it’s best Fort Lauderdale Montessori school.

Is that this school is located in Fort Lauderdale and it’s also the number one rated school at great schools. org. Okay. So we’re actually telling the truth, but when somebody types in best Montessori school, if you have the geo as well, which is nice, you can get on the first page of Google, see being on the second page, don’t cut it.

It’s useless. The statistics show that. Yes, Sam, we’re going to jump to you in one minute. Just 60 seconds from now. I just wanted to sort of finish the first sticky note. Uh, and so we’re talking about first idea at the top. The second is your purpose. The third is your space you want to own. The fourth is, who is your customer?

What’s your customer persona? You know, we’re looking at the book Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. And. Quite frankly, it’s, it’s a little bit of a younger persona that I’d realized, you know, on Google tracks, all the clicks and we’re seeing, uh, 18 to really 18 to 34 year olds as being sort of the ideal target for the book.

Start, scale, exit, repeat. Uh, and you know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody’s 35 isn’t going to buy your book or 40, but we just want to identify who that person is. And that, that can make a difference. Often if you’re doing a B2B2, your customer is not the company. You’re selling to never make that mistake.

Your customer are human beings that you’re selling to. They’re, they’re buying managers in a particular group. Like I know you’re pitching a Costco, Michelle for paw. com. And so it’s not, Costco is not a customer. It’s a particular individual who’s at Costco, who’s buying your products and you want them to fall in love.

With that product, the next thing you’re going to want to look at or put on your post it note, this was a bit controversial is the X factor. This is something that makes you unique and different that none of your competitors have. And when I say controversial, I talked a lot about, you know, this is being Scaling concepts and really when we get into the scale aspect of the book, start scale, exit, repeat, uh, this particular concept, the X factor can help you scale your company more than any other concept.

If you can figure it out, think Domino’s pizza, 30 minutes are free. Think national car rental. Just show up, get in the car and go. These companies identify bottlenecks in the industries. They solve that. They made it their expertise to solve that problem. They did it better than anybody else in the world.

And then they created a nearly unbearable brand promise. So they followed up with that. And these are the things that you need to do. The workbook, by the way, takes you through all this. The workbook, you’re gonna, it’s gonna help you with your X Factor. It’s gonna help you with your nearly unbearable brand promise as well.

And the last thing we want to put on that sticky note, it’s the busiest, it’s the, it’s a pretty, pretty crowded sticky note. The last thing we’re gonna want to put on it is the smart stage gate. Is it a minimum viable product? Is it a revenue target, sales target? So what I talked about earlier is it, it’s a particular point in time.

You hit a specific measurable goal and you’re able to put that on there. And this is going to be critical for post it note two, which is, uh, people, three is money and four is, uh, systems. We’re going to want to make certain that we know what our stage gate is because the other three sticky notes are going to fall from that.

All right. I know we’ve had a couple of people on stage and Soria, please be patient with us. We’re trying to, We’re really trying to cover a lot of material here. Uh, if you, if you get a chance, uh, you want to join us on stage, please raise your hands, join us, we’re opening it up now to conversation. And I know a number have come on stage and wanted to jump in right away, but we just wanted to sort of get through the theory, uh, after this show, we’re going to lead into an entree actual workshop on creating your business plan.

And if you want, uh, to, to, uh, join us for that, if you are launching a business, you want to work on your four sticky note business plan, we’re going to do that live on entree. It’s free to do so it won’t be free after on the recordings. The recordings are required that you have a pro membership, but it’s absolutely free.

We’re doing that at three o’clock Eastern today on entree. As a few of you might know, clubhouse has been going through a lot of issues and we’re trying to go multi platform. Here on this club. Uh, in fact, we’ve made a, uh, a lot of progress on chatter if you haven’t already done. So you should join check that one out.

It’s called chatter and there’s a lot of, uh, people joining this one. It’s a, it’s based, it’s a meta platform, uh, and the founder of chatter has been reaching out to startup club. And asking us to, you know, seeing if we’d work with them to help, uh, to help do some shows over there. So we’re, we’re looking at potentially doing that, but we, we still love clubhouse.

We still want to make this work. Uh, it’s just been a challenging platform to really, you know, you know, get things going. Maybe if they had done Michelle on clubhouse, if they had done a four sticky note, Business plan and stuck with that plan on audio chat and we’re focused on audio chat. They might have done a little better.

What are your thoughts? Michelle on that? Well, I’m going to tell you what my thoughts are on it. I feel like they didn’t do. I’m joking. I know. Yeah, they didn’t do a plan. And part of that, that Colin just mentioned was an MVP, a minimal viable product. It seems as though there was a lot of development, a lot of money spent without really like doing a minimum viable product.

What do I mean by that? It means a product that you can go out with and you can get feedback. Okay, a lot of people feel they were doing that and I think clubhouse is in that case, but then they don’t get the feedback or they don’t really think through the feedback. They don’t do the competitive map. So I would say, yeah, they, they should consider if they’re going to continue on, like, getting back to the basics and really understand the competitive landscape.

And talk to people, you know, like us and people in the audience and many of the other really cool clubs and find out what is really working. That’s what I would say. You cannot skip that step. You cannot just fall in love with, um, your product because you like it because, you know, nine times out of 10, right?

You’re not the one buying it and you’re not the one that’s going to make it successful, Colin. Yeah. It’s almost like they stumbled, they stumbled on success too fast. And they didn’t go through the normal stages of a startup, right? Which is, Hey, okay, I’m going to, I’m going to sell, get a thousand people in, uh, San Francisco to launch this product.

And then I’m going to go to Seattle and I’m going to go to Miami. I’m going to go to New York. And, you know, it’s just like, they just went through from zero to a hundred so fast. And then. But didn’t really build a basis, a foundation. Now let’s hope they can turn it around. Let’s hope they can, can make this a successful app.

You know, I’m obviously not trying to write the obituary, but it has been awfully frustrating to, uh, to see the way the app has treated startup club. And. And, and also the whole, you know, the whole, all the communities here, because this app’s all about the communities and it’s all about those in the communities.

Uh, but I don’t want to digress. I know a lot of you are listening to this on podcasts or YouTube, by the way, we have 52, 000 people now on YouTube. So we are going multi channel. Startup club is starting to break through. You know, every podcast now, every show that we do, we have a hundred to 200 people.

Listen to it just on YouTube. And we’ve got to put the same on podcast or audience on clubhouse. Now is our smallest component of the show. So just interesting. And again, if you’re at the audience, though, you want to raise your hand, raise your hand, come on stage and sorry, I’m just getting over cold, but come on stage and, and, and join us because we really appreciate all the advice that you can give the community.

But also if you have a question about your startup or your business plan. So today we, you know, we talked earlier about story and I said there are three other post it notes. Uh, there is the people and on the people post it note, or, or, or I, I’m not allowed to say post it. I think that’s a trademark. So on the sticky note, people sticky note, uh, we have what we want to put on there is what are, who are the people we need to get to our first stage gate?

Remember I talked to you about figuring out your stage gate. Okay. You know, a specific point in time. So let’s just say our stage gate is to get, okay, let’s, you know, you start up club as an example here. Uh, we want a hundred thousand actively engaged members. That’s our next stage. And on Clubhouse, but you know, and 50, 000 on YouTube and whatnot, but we want to get to 100, 000.

Let’s just say that’s our, I’m talking about actively engaged, you know, people who go to the website, who check out the articles, check out the shows, who listen to it weekly or from time to time, who sign up to the mailing list, by the way, mailing list is something you should definitely sign up to. We have eight speakers booked in September, October.

We’ve got an incredible lineup of authors. We’re going to join the show. Um, so we want to get 100, 000 actively engaged members and who are the people we need? Well, we know we have Mimi Mimi’s amazing. We don’t have Olivia who’s been working on, uh, on the, on the, on the, on the workbooks. Uh, we’ve got Michelle who helps us out.

We’ve got a number of. Other moderators, uh, and we’ve got some people are helping us out on promoting the book. See, we consider the book as part of Startup Club, so we’re going to actually include them. Uh, and if we want to get to the next level, um, and actually, we just did this. We brought in a podcaster, somebody who’s been working in podcasting.

For years, uh, a gentleman who worked with, um, Norm Farrar, uh, lunch with Norm. So he’s actually joining us now. So I think we’ve got our team to get us to that 100, 000 active members. You’re going to want to think about your stage gate and who you want on your team. The team doesn’t necessarily need to be full time employees.

They could be part time. They can be consultants. They can be friends. By the way, I also think, and I love this idea as part of this, is get a, um, a board, but not a board of directors. We don’t want that because they can be a lot of, um, legal liability associated with boards of directors. But we want an advisory board.

A board of individuals who can help us, not only on advice, but also in getting us deals, getting us access. Thank you. To potential funding, whatever that is, and on the note of funding, that’s our next sticky note money. So we’re going to want to put on the next sticky note. How much money do we want to raise to get to that stage gate?

And then lastly, we’re going to want systems. We’re going to identify what are the platforms we need to log in to use. You know, we might need QuickBooks for bookkeeping. We might need, you know, a few platforms. But the one that I really want you to focus on on this sticky note. It’s KPIs. Okay, KPIs, these key performance indicators, they’re leading indicators that help you get help.

You understand where you are in your business and where you need to go. It’s also critical to have these KPIs to gain funding from investors. That’s absolutely critical. So if you don’t have KPIs, you’re not going to understand the relationship between where you need to, um, where you need to spend your resources Or invest your resources so that you could drive those KPIs.

In addition, investors need to see that as well because one thing about investors, they really don’t want to invest in risky ventures and you de risk by showing them how you can apply money to a particular company. And when you do that, It accelerates the growth based on certain metrics. And if we can demonstrate that with KPIs, that’s the key.

So that’s the four sticky note business plan. We do it in 30 minutes at our incubators. They’re free to join. We have one coming up. I think it’s April 2nd or 3rd. You can apply for it at the Allen Levan Center. In South Florida, if you’re based there, but if you don’t, don’t panic if you’re not in South Florida, there are incubators, free incubator programmers, programs all over the United States and Canada, globally, they’re available and you just look in your local city and type in, you know, incubator or free incubator programs.

And see what you can join. Uh, it was actually, we actually did an interview. Do you remember, Michelle, with um, SCORE? With Bridget, um, I don’t remember the CEO’s name, but Uh, she gave us a statistic that said that you can increase your chances of success by three times simply by getting a mentor. And it’s free.

It’s absolutely free. So that’s the four sticky note business plan. If you’ve got the book, great, but if you get the workbook, it’s something you can work on and help adapt your business plan or develop a business plan for your startup. It all starts with a plan and when you ready, you Aim fire, your chances of success go up dramatically.

When you join the incubator, they go up dramatically. And like, I think it’s Bridget Weston was her name. When you get a mentor, you can increase your chances of success by three times. That’s it. It’s not hard 30 minutes of your time. That’s all I’m asking. Think about your business. Think about what you want to do.

Think about your startup. And when you begin to try to decode what it is, you’re going to That could make that sort of successful in that mini business plan. Then you can begin to increase your chances of success. Now I know you’re all saying, well, this looks too elementary, too simple. Like I can’t present this to investors.

Absolutely correct. Take your four sticky note business plan, pop it into ChatGPT, and ask it to write an investor plan. You might have to add a little extra to it, you know, you might have to add, do a little bit of prompt engineering. You do want a very sophisticated investor plan, uh, one that includes a SWOT analysis, you know, one that includes risk factors, you know, one that includes, um, uh, the different components that would be normally in a, in a, In a business plan written by an MBA and but that’s not what we’re talking about here We’re talking about increasing your chances of success helping you become successful And if you want to do that, you need to start with a forced, you know, business plan, Michelle, any other comments before we close it out here?

And if you’re in the audience, you want to just jump on stage, ask a question. We’d be happy to hear from you. Yeah, I mean, I think it also is a, you can think of it as an outline and it’s something, you know, a lot of people want to go right to the details. 1st, it’s a way to force yourself. I know constant because it’s sticky.

But I look at it as it’s a way to make you really think about what’s the most important thing. And it’s critical. And before you start just like going down, um, a rabbit hole. So that’s always, you know, a good way to work. Just start at the top and work your way down. Like you’re an entrepreneur. Obviously you’re thinking about doing a specific business because you believe there’s an opportunity there.

Uh, it will help you very quickly also eliminate ideas that are really not viable. So I encourage you to take that approach, go top level down, and bring other people into it too, into the discussion. Colin. Well, I like it. I like that you brought that up because, you know, we did that with, for Escape Club.

Escape Club’s a 19 vacation rental properties that we have in South Florida. And, um, when I brought in the team and we brainstormed different ideas around the X Factor, we were able to come up with some pretty good stuff. Kyle, I don’t remember if you were in that meeting, but we were able to come up with stuff around the island, for instance, about creating a miniature golf course that would be exclusive only to the members.

Who rent from our units and access to our dock and access to our boat that we have and putting up signs on the island. And it really became quite interesting how we were able to ideate as a team together and figure out how we can make our company unique and different. You know, what is it that we can be that others are not?

One of the things is we’ve put together a booklet and I know Kyle, this has been Kyle’s, one of his projects. He put together a booklet of all of our properties so that that book is now going to be. In all of the locations and you can see all the other locations and every location This is our secret sauce.

I’m opening it up here. Okay, every location is Identical from a standards perspective. For instance, we have the same mattress They’re all weston heavenly beds You ever go to an airbnb and go into a weston heavenly bed every single one of our locations have that Uh, every single location has pottery um Um, cookware, every location has been, uh, the design, we have a designer who worked for Disney, right?

So a lot of them are, are in North Captiva and we, we really try to create these fun designs. We might have a nautical theme. We might have a, um, uh, we have one’s a seashell theme. One’s a nautical theme. So we’d like to theme out these concepts in these locations. Uh, but every when you go to any 1 of our locations, you’re going to know what your mattress is going to be like, you’re going to know what your cook where it’s going to be like, you’re going to know, you’re going to have a lot of activities.

A lot of games. It’s going to be complete. That’s part of the X Factor and this came about because we as a team got together and brainstormed it. You are not alone as an entrepreneur. And I think that’s, I did a post today on LinkedIn and I mentioned, no actually it was EO. So EO Global did a post today on an article that I had written for them that they posted on their blog and they posted it on LinkedIn.

And I commented on the post. So it was a post about my article, but then I did a comment. And I said, you are not alone. And it’s absolutely critical to understand that. You’re here at Clubhouse. There are people who want to help you out. This club alone, like, it’s all about helping each other out. If you’re not an incubator, you know, often we see this, you know, we’re sitting at the bar.

We have a coffee bar in our office. Sometimes we serve other things other than coffee. I admit that. That would be like after 4 o’clock. Um, but you’re sitting there and you’re chatting with other people who are in businesses, totally different businesses than you’re in. And they’re asking you a question.

And you’re asking them a question, and you’re helping each other out. The days of working in, uh, in your garage or at home, it’s over. This is all about a community. It’s all about connecting. It’s all about coming together. And take this book, book, take this booklet, and don’t just sit there by yourself and fill it out.

Michelle had a great point here. Take it. And fill it out together. Even if you have no business partners, even if you have no employees, find some friends that can help you ideate and come up with ideas. And, you know, even if you’re just doing it yourself, you want to vet that idea. You want to improve it.

You want to make it better. Surround yourself with good people. That’s what I do. That’s why I have Kyle and Mimi and Michelle here on stage because I surround myself, I know I’m not the smartest guy in the, in the room, but I’m smart enough to know I need Kyle, Mimi, and Michelle and the rest of our team and all of the other companies that we’re involved with.

So that’s it. Yeah. Any, any, you know, last thoughts Mimi on the booklet. You know, I, I just know that you and Olivia work so hard on putting this booklet together and, and really, really making it easy for people to fill out. I think that’s the, I think that’s probably the key thing, the key success or takeaway.

Is that you made it easy. I agree. It’s really approachable and almost like enjoyable. Like, I feel like it will be really an exciting way to plan and visualize the first steps of your business. I think it’s a great resource. Like you’ve said. Yeah. And so we’re going to do a live workshop on Entree and we’re doing it at three o’clock today.

If you’re listening to some podcasts, you cannot get access to Entree. Unless you go download the app and pay for the service. But again, I’m going to start, we’re going to really start encouraging people to show up to the live show. I know you love to listen to this on YouTube. I know you love to listen to this in podcast.

You know, we love to hear from people like Shadows and others in the community who contribute. But you can contribute as well. You can come to the show live and join us on stage. We are going to start doing some chatter shows. Uh, Shadows, I don’t know if you’re on chatter or not. Uh, that’s a, a new one that, that, um, that’s just come out.

I know they just announced they had 10, 000 users after four days of launch. Uh, we are going to try to use that application as well. Uh, and we’re gonna, we’re going multi channel. Startup Club is a movement. Start, scale, exit, repeat is a movement. And I know that we often talk about the book and we talk about Startup Club and they really are one and the same.

It’s the same team. Uh, the book is done. Actually, you’ll hear about the book sales, uh, after three o’clock and entree. Uh, we’re gonna be talking a little bit about, uh, as we do a live workshop, we’re gonna actually be doing one for startup club. But what, you know, it really is part and parcel the same, you know, a book that started 10 years ago, a club, everything we’re doing is here is to help entrepreneurs.

Help people succeed help people take their business to the next level. We started with the start guide Uh in the last month we’ve been or month or two months The team has been working on the scale guide a lot more complicated. Yeah I mean, I I even called in a lifeline for scale through my uh, Uh bit my ceo coach who runs a company called rhythm systems Who’s probably the best company in the world for helping you scale?

Your business. If you ever needed to get into goal setting and the systems you need to scale. And they’ve done that. And then we’re going to do the exit workbook and the repeat workbook. Uh, we really want this to be the masterclasses that you can get that everyone can get and not pay for. We really want it to be something that everyone can access for almost no money at all, not thousands of dollars.

We’re talking 14 and 99 cents per booklet. We’re talking. We want to make this as accessible and open as possible. And we want to decode as much as we can. And with all of these exercises, what we want to do is make it simple and easy for you to simply complete the exercise. Now here’s something very cool.

I haven’t mentioned this yet. We created a custom GPT for most of these exercises. So for instance, on the exercise book, there is an exercise on your personality profile and it’s on page 32, 32, 33. I’m looking at it right now. And there’s a QR code on the bottom right for a domain name, personalityprofileai.

com. So you can go directly to that profile, answer questions, and it will tell you what your personality profile is. What’s interesting, it also gives you, it gives you a DISC profile. Um, DISC is Dominant, Influential, Stable, and Conscientiousness. And then it also gives you a Myers Briggs profile. And actually compares, just for fun, it compares your profile with other celebrities.

So we’ve created these custom GPTs for all the exercises as well. So not only if you’re stuck on a page, Remember, you’re not alone. You’ve got AI to help you as your friend too, right? If you’re stuck on a page, you can go to, um, you can go to that, uh, GPT. Just type in the domain name or scan the QR code, and it will help you complete that exercise as well.

So we’re using AI here. Probably the first. I think we’re the first book to ever include custom GPTs, and I know this is late breaking stuff, and if you listen to me on GPTs, and I did, we did a video, and YouTube views on custom GPTs, how to create one. It’s absolutely a game changer, and this is something that you can get from the booklet as well.

So not only do we have it so you can just fill out the boxes on the workbook, but you can go to the custom GPTs and complete the exercises, and that will help you launch your business. We’re going to list those GPTs eventually on Startup. Club as well. I will finish with this. If you’re not on the email list, please get on the email list.

We have eight speakers coming in September, October, authors, bestselling books, uh, authors with bestselling books. Uh, we have entrepreneurs coming on and we have one guy who does a hundred containers a month. It’s phenomenal. Like the kind of business that he’s been able to do and his personal story. You know, he’s, he’s just an incredible speaker.

We’re going to have him on. We get these speakers joining us for free, by the way, we don’t pay speakers to speak on startup club. You know, they get our, our, our readers, our viewership now is about probably 500 people an episode altogether, but we get these amazing speakers and just wouldn’t know that they’re there unless you sign up to that email list.

Go to startup. club, sign up to that email list, and we’re going to go multi platform. We’re going to go on Chatter. We’re going on Entree in four minutes. Uh, and we’re going to be doing a, a live workshop on Entree on how to build a business plan for your startup. So we’re gonna do that live. You can create your own business plan, come on stage and share with, share with us your business plan.

I’m looking forward to that. It’s be a fun session. It’s very intimate, by the way, Entrez, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s very much a personalized environment. Uh, and unless you’re listening to it and record on Entrez, which, you know, you have to be a pro membership, which costs hundreds of dollars, which, by the way, is great value.

I’m not saying not to do that. I think if you’re an entrepreneur, I think that’s a good opportunity for you to really level yourself up as an entrepreneur by getting that membership. But here, here it is. Entrez, it’s a free app. You can access this workshop for free, this masterclass. And again, it’s free.

All these materials are available for free. SCORE 10, 000 volunteers are available for free. The Alan Levin Center and dozens, even hundreds of incubators around North America are available for free. We want to help you. Thank you for listening to us. Any last thoughts, Michelle or Mimi or Kyle on. The booklet, you know, you know, round of applause for all the hard work y’all did silent applause here.

Cause the audience, you know, I can’t, I guess you can just, uh, how do we do applause? You know, the audience can’t really do applause. I could do emoticons, right? You know, the little, there we go.

Nice. Thank you. Shadows. Oh, here’s the applause. Found it. There it is. A round of applause for this team that just put together this booklet and worked so hard over the last two months or three months or whatever, putting this, this, the start booklet together. It’s truly a masterpiece to use to help you get your business started.

Michelle, any last thoughts before we close out? No, I hope people can join us over on Entrez next. Uh, we’re going to do a deep dive and we’re going to actually go through, um, a case study, right? Colin. Absolutely. I mean, you know, it’ll be more because we’re going to talk about, you know, a sample for sticky note plan for startup club, but you know, it’s interesting too, because sometimes you got to do this plan, not when you’re starting a business, but you know, we’ve been doing this for a couple of years, two, three years.

And, you know, with clubhouse sort of imploding, we got to come up with a new plan, a new strategy. So it’s actually a good idea to do if you need to pivot and, you know, obviously startup club is in that position where we’re looking at how to pivot and we’re looking at platforms that can really help and support entrepreneurs and startups as well.

All right. Thank you very much. We’ll see you all over there on entree and. Catch us next Friday, 2 o’clock Eastern. We do it every week. There’ll be the odd week where we, we might be, not be available because it is a live show set at a very particular time. And if that is the case on Clubhouse, we usually put cancelled and the date that we’re coming back, that we’ll be back on the air.

I know they did that with the Complete Entrepreneur. We’re not back until August 8th. On the complete entrepreneur. So there’ll be a few weeks where it’s offline, but we will be coming back. Um, cause the host there is on vacation for the next few weeks. We all need to take a break once in a while, even startups, even founders.

See y’all on entre.