The Business Plan "Executive Summary".

The first thing when writing a business plan for a media type company would be(or any company for that matter) "what is the point". It may seem obvious but it's a crucial first step and it's harder than it may seem.

Take my company...
What is the point of my company that I have with my two friends? What is that the ACN Network is supposed to do, and how does it make money?

This is what I have had to ask myself and then clearly answer. I have to keep asking myself this question from time to time. Because believe it or not it evolves.

One of the ways that I was able to help myself work through the answer to this quesiton was by doing and Executive Summary which is the first step in my business plan.

My basic outline of my business plan is in the summary and it looks like this.

Executive Summary:

• Introduction (One sentence about who and what you are)

• Products and Services (One Sentence maybe two, no more than three about what you do(mine has one))

• Target Market (General Demographic target)

• Competitive Position (In your market, field how do you stack up against the competition? Is their a gap in the market for what you plan to do?(Two three sentences at most)

• Goals and objectives (Use bullets 3 goals 3 objectives. Give a time frame for each.)

• Management (The structure of your business, who is doing what. Give a little bit as to why, maybe how the word the description of "who".)

• Finaces (Overall day to day cost, overhead before day one and on day 1. Make a cash flow chart and projections. Projections should be monthly quarterly and yearly.)
  

This whole thing should be clear, to the point and no more than two pages. Most of the information up to "Management" will fit onto the first page.

The second page in my report is my financials. Keep in mind the details in the finacial section will be covered in much greater detail later in the plan and the nuts and bolts numbers covered in the Appendix at the end of the business plan. Keep it straight forward and simple, typically an investor won't look at anything else during the pitch. If he has not seen the plan before you pitch, then those are the only two pages the investors will likely look at during your meeting anyway. They should be able to get enough information from that and your pitch to know if they want to buy in.

That's all for now.

PS- Update

Will be putting up some video's of my adventures in Producer land soon, on a youtube page of the same name "TheCastleMuse".

The link to the video youtube deal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYFZqY7vNbQ

First Meeting of the New Year

Well it's 2012 and the production company that I started with two of my friends will be one year old at the end of this month. On that note I am about to go downtown to a new office and have a meeting with one of the partners and a Director that did some work with us last year.

We ACN Network had the opportunity to film the 1st ever Chicago Greek Film Fest, we had an amazing time. Michael J. Hauser took over the Director's chair for the show. Rob Rhodes, Bayley Pokorny, Dan Machut, Allisha Lillion, and of course Spiro Frentzas where all on hand for the show.

All of these wonderful people where able to donate their time and equipment to the show. We are still in post but hoping to get some final shots and have something up soon.

The really good news is that a Greek newspaper is doing a piece on Spiro and he of course mentioned the company! Now, Spiro, Rob and myself will all have our pictures in a newspaper in Greece!!

The possibility of having our work internationally distributed is amazing and I am really looking forward to seeing how far this project can take us. Will update more after the meeting. So excited, I didn't sleep last night.