Making your business plan a more practical guide

   

     If you've written your business plan for investors, that's pretty serious business and you might not want to monkey with it. But if, as I have suggested elsewhere, you have prepared a business plan for your own use, you very much want to monkey with it, to fine tune it, to keep it current with the realities of how your business is developing.

    And so, for you, I want to make a suggestion, based on personal experience: Don't go nuts over the format.

    What I am suggesting is that you keep your business plan in a format in which it is easy to make notes, corrections, and adjustments. Don't type up your business plan with careful formatting on the computer which will be a pain to edit. A loose leaf notebook works fine. Loose sheets stapled together with a cover work fine.

    Handwritten works fine. I do a lot of typing but very little fancy formatting. When I first wrote up a business plan (for myself) I thought it would be more impressive, more "official," if I typed it nicely with headings and subheadings and check marks for bullets. My word processing program offered all these options.

    Less than three days had gone by before I wanted to make changes. Oh, the time it had taken to do that nice formatting! So I wrote my new material by hand and just stuck it in at the back, telling myself I would type it up late.

    But I never did.

    In fact, more and more I regard this plan as a living document. I refer to it regularly, make additions and corrections regularly, and now keep the stapled together pages in a simple folder.

    A business plan is only useful when it really is a plan and in the real world plans need to be updated regularly, adjusted regularly, and continually refocused on the goal. The goal alone can remain unchanged.

What to do when your business progress fails to keep up with your business plan schedule

    When a highway journey deviated from what our old GPS had laid out, we would get this message: "Recalculating ..." On some trips we heard the message frequently.

    When you prepare a business plan and your progress doesn't match the schedule you've laid out for yourself, you can (1) ignore your business plan, or (2) "recalculate" your time frames.

    Ignoring your business plan is not a good strategy. It's like trying to get somewhere in your car but not bothering to note the address you're trying to find or the route that will take you there.

    On the other hand, simply adjusting your time schedule has its own dangers. If you are working with money from investors, they will contact you over your non-compliance and may pressure you for an explanation.

    The big danger comes when you're completely on your own and there's nobody to push you, hassle you, goad you into understanding the problem and how it might be corrected. This is a danger because either you recognize there is a problem and deal with it or you let your project drift, with the goal becoming more hazy daily.

    Sometimes projects run behind schedule because the schedule itself is unrealistic. That which must be done to get from point "A" to point "B" cannot be done in the time allocated for the work. The current Obamacare software fiasco is an example of this. In time it will get worked out (probably) but first there must be some serious study of what went wrong, what is needed to correct it, and how much time -- realistically -- this might take.

    Likewise with any business plan.

    I'm thinking here of one of my own.

    In this plan I have not reached the goals I set by the dates I set to reach them. So do I adjust the dates or do I examine the way I'm working to see if I could or should become more efficient?

    Once I've dealt with these issues realistically I can adjust my business plan, realistically, all the while keeping my goal in sharp focus, even though it might now take longer to reach.


   

The top note dilemma

    Aside from all the other strategies that might be used to market a perfume, the "top note strategy," as I'll call it, is of major importance. The top note is what the customer first smells when he or she samples the fragrance. These are the strongest but most volatile notes. Upon the impression these notes make, a sale can be made -- or unmade.

    We speak of a perfume pyramid with top notes at the top, "heart" notes the middle layers, and base notes providing the foundation. If a fragrance is created with this structure, the top notes evaporate first, the heart notes next, and the base notes -- the drydown as it is called when most evaporation ends -- might retain their presence for a long while.

    The top notes, thanks to their volatility, reach our nose first. But what we are really smelling at this moment is a blend of ALL the notes. The heart and base notes are muted to our senses but they are there. In their turn they will get greater play.

    The initial rush of the top notes tends to be the decision maker for the customer. Either he or she approves or disapproves, and disapproval generally means "no sale."

    A problem the retailer faces in this situation, particularly when the perfumes are quite expensive and the buyers wealthy but unsophisticated in the ways of perfume, is that once the top notes evaporate and the perfume "changes," the customer thinks the fragrance has "gone bad" and may even return it to the shop where he or she purchased it.

    One way around this has been to create fragrances that barely change scent during the evaporation process as all the materials used have similar evaporation curves. Generally this involves using what traditionally would be base notes to create the entire perfume.

    But let's set aside the creative dilemma for today and look at the marketer's dilemma, particularly the marketer of low distribution fragrances, elite specialties intended for those who want more than what I'll call "mall fragrances." Must the marketer of an elite fragrance -- a quite original fragrance -- fall victim to the "top note strategy?"

    After conceptualizing a beautiful fragrance that unfolds hour by hour, must this marketer add a perky top note to his or her formula to make the sale? Or can the buyer be trusted to "understand" how the fragrance "works."

    I offer this question without an answer.

    Think of it this way. The top notes make the immediate impression but the perfumer's real work of art lies in the heart notes of the fragrance and, it may be that the perfumer feels that any top note rush should be suppressed or eliminated so that the real message of the fragrance can be better appreciated.

    But what if the real business of the fragrance is subtle? What if it doesn't bonk you over the skull? What if it grows on you pleasantly?

    Should this be ruined by unwanted top notes for the purpose of making more sales? Must a perfume become a carnival act to sell itself?

    Perhaps these thoughts are extreme but the fragrance I'm currently working on is all in the heart notes. I'm asking myself,  "do I want to keep it that way or should I decorate it with some intense, attention grabbing, top notes?"

    My current answer is, I'll play around with it a bit more and perhaps a solution can be found that will give instant attention -- without spoiling the intended message of the fragrance.

    Wish me luck.

Done with Justin Bieber -- back to last summers perfume project

    I've finished my "story" about the strategies behind Justin Bieber's "Someday" fragrance launch and posted it for members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club. Even with all I know and have written about the deal, there's a lot more that I would like to know but will never find out as, no doubt, that information is highly confidential. Leave it to say that there are deals on top of deals, multiple parties and corporate entities, and lots of cash or credit lines from somewhere.

    Essentially the story is all about promoters from the music world busting their way into the perfume world -- quite successfully. This is the wave of the future and the keys are strategic thinking and "fearless" (a word used by the promoters) action.

    Now back to a simple perfume.

    Yesterday evening I was finally able to resume work on a fragrance I started last summer, thought I had finished, then, after a few weeks, realized that, whatever it was (it was a NICE fragrance), it wasn't a match for the fragrance of my mental image -- the fragrance I had been TRYING to create.

    It's easy to create a nice smelling fragrance. It's not so easy to mentally envision a fragrance theme and then create a fragrance that pays off that theme.

    So here I was, at it again.

    Being away from this particular fragrance -- which for now I'll just call "Tokyo" -- gave me a chance to think a bit about the notes I wanted to include and those I wanted to exclude. This is a non-floral fragrance, which means it's a bit more abstract. So yesterday evening I was doing experiments, trying to pick up the direction, mixing multiple (small) samples to see if I might get back on track.

    This morning, sniffing yesterday's samples, I felt that progress was being made -- an "outline" had been created. So now it may be a matter of "decorating" that outline to complete the job -- and this means more experiments and many small trials. Patience is required.

A strategy story that's almost ready for you

    I'm going to wrap up the Justin Bieber "Someday" story today. The basic strategy was simple -- you could outline it on the back of a napkin -- but all those little details! It's always the details that are so necessary to attend to, the make the strategy work.

    I once worked with a fellow who invented grand strategies for making a few dollars but he was not a detail person and didn't have the backup of a detail person. So he would come ever so close to pulling off his deals -- but they all would crumble at the last minute because small points had not been addressed. For him, it was never going to change.

    The Justin Bieber "Someday" promotion story is sprinkled with small details that WERE attended to. When you see how this promotion was carried out and compare it to any other celebrity fragrance launch you'll quickly understated why I have so much respect for this project and feel it it worth studying.

    These guys were coming out of NOWHERE and they outsold the biggest in the business! It's a story that offers hope and inspiration for anyone who thinks they are no one but would like very much to be SOMEONE . . . and is willing to put in the work and THINKING.

    My "Someday" report will be available to members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club tomorrow, by 2 PM, Eastern Time. That's a promise.

    Then I'll dive back into the two perfume projects I wrote about yesterday.

A Perfume Concept In Search of The Right Scent

    At the forefront today is the Justin Bieber "strategy" project for Perfume Makers & Marketers Club members.

    But there's more to the day than that.

    I have a left over project from last summer developing a perfume that came out "not quite right" and now I have to get back onto it and bring it to completion.

    But that's not all. I have a second perfume project that has been very much on my mind but for which I am stalled on visualizing the complex scent I want to create.

    This second perfume is a multi-media experiment. I won't even TRY to sell the fragrance but I will give away a few bottles to select friends and others.

    This second fragrance, which I'll call "Confusion II," is intended to "illustrate," in scent, a small but quite heavy metal garden sculpture -- a work of "art" if you care to call it that. (See photo above.)

    But sculpture and scent are only TWO parts of this multi-media presentation. There will also be music -- also to "illustrate" the sculpture -- and that simple tune is already in the works.

    Finally, there will be MOTION. This will require a bit of an investment but hopefully will be worth it -- for the THRILL of it if nothing more.

    When all this is achieved I'll do a very short video for here and YouTube. Short. Simple. Experimental.

    Why all this? Where is the strategy? "Show me the dollars!"

    Great strategies come from injecting great energy into your work. So, while this "Confusion II" project may not be for sale, I expect it will give me a few perfume profit strategy ideas -- which I'll share with members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club.

Focus on Strategy

    What perfumes make it into the market and what perfumes, regardless of how good they may be, will never have a chance to present themselves to the public? While money talks, its not all about money, or connections, or luck. Strategy plays a big role.

    I've been focused on studying and writing about perfume marketing strategies for our monthly Club Newsletter. For the last few days I've been intensely focused on the circumstances and strategies surrounding the 2011 launch of Justin Bieber's "Someday." This was NOT a typical celebrity fragrance deal. Rather, it was probably the most unusual launch in recent memory. And the results? $130 million worth of "Someday" was sold -- and a second Justin Beiber fragrance was launched.

    So I've been writing about this and, in a few days, when I'm finished, the "story" -- with details and analysis -- will be available to members of the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club. You'll find it there.