Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Sherry Auble, Founder of Savvy Women & Wealth – The Importance of Having A Business Plan

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Grew up in a struggling blue-collar family where money was scarce and at times, nonexistent. But I was determined to create a better and more fulfilling life for myself and I’ve been able to do that with the gift of perseverance and resilience.I’ve had my share of knocks, but I always get up and push on. I think it’s that kind of determination that enabled me to work for premier Wall Street firms and Fortune 500 companies in business development. In fact, one of my greatest accomplishments was growing a financial advisory practice from the ground up to a $25 million portfolio of high-net-worth clients. I learned a lot about the fundamentals of building a successful online business and that’s what I want to do for today’s women entrepreneurs through my new Savvy Women’s Business Academy.Today, my mission is to take all my training, experience, talents, and gifts to help women professionals to escape their 9-5 and start their dream business and grow it to 6 figures and beyond!Learn More: https://savvywomenandwealth.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-sherry-auble-founder-of-savvy-women-wealth-the-importance-of-having-a-business-plan

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with Asheri Abel, who's the founder of Savvy Women in Wealth, and we'll be talking about the importance of having a business plan. Sherry, welcome to the program. Thank you, Mike. Hey, I know that having a business plan is important.

I want to dive into that, but before we do that, give us a little bit of your background and what's your story? How did you get into the business of working with women and helping them formulate their business and business plans? Well, I had a little bit of a rocky journey myself. I come from a very small town, a blue collar family where money was scarce, if not sometimes non-existent. But I had this big dream of making a better life for myself. And I was blessed with the characteristics of perseverance, determination, and resilience. And so I pushed my way through life, learning as much as I could, and made it all the way to

Wall Street in New York City and also have worked for some of the top Fortune 500 companies. And then I also built a business from the ground up as a financial advisor, building a financial advisory practice up to a $25 million portfolio. But that, it wasn't always an easy ride. There were rough patches along the way and I learned a lot from them. and that's what I'm trying to pass along now to women entrepreneurs. Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting point that you make there,

which is if you had said, I hit the ball out of the park and everything I touched turned to gold, and now I'm going to teach people the same thing. That would make people feel suspect because it's like people learn from mistakes. People learn from having harder times. And when you can learn and pick yourself up and improve and improved processes, that's who I want to learn from. Exactly.

And that's actually how I learned. I learned from teachers and not every teacher did everything right. And they had setbacks. I learned from their setbacks. I learned from my setbacks. And now I'm trying to put together a good program that actually helps women entrepreneurs to get through some of those and so they can avoid them all together. Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. So let's talk about the business plan. You know, the importance of having a business plan is what we want to focus on. But I like to kind of take a step back and say, why don't we go ahead and define what makes a good business plan? And then we're going to talk about the importance of and how to use it. But what actually is a business plan? So basically it's a working document. It's not a one and done.

It's something that you're going to go back and tinker with and tweak here and there. but it basically lays out everything about your business from your mission statement, your vision, your short-term, long-term goals, why you're in business, who you're selling to, financials. It encompasses everything you need to know about your business. And it's a great thing to refer back to when you're in the grind of doing your business. So, that it can remind you of all these important aspects of doing business. It's easy to get caught up in the day to day and forget about why you're doing business and why you got into business to begin with. 100%. It kind of gives you a train track to run on, right? I mean, if you have, you know, if you

begin with the end in mind, as they say, Stephen Covey was famous for saying that, and you go, here's where I want my business to be. Well, then let's make the plan so that then you know what the step next quarter should be, next year should be, and even next week. Exactly. And, you know, unfortunately, the statistics of new businesses are one in five won't make it past the first year. And 50% won't make it past the fifth year in business. The one that really caught my eye was 88% of women business owners never make it to six

figures. That's why I've created this program. And three of the reasons that are cited in most of the studies that I've seen are number one, ineffective marketing, number two, lack of research, and number three, cash flow issues. That's all covered in the business. Well, let's unpack that a little bit and talk about those specifically regarding the importance of because you heard the statement, Cash is King. well, cash flow, man, you know, you hear the people on Shark Tank going, yeah, we did a million dollars in revenue last year and they're like, okay, what was your profit? Well, none. We were losing money. So cash flow is super important. Talk a little bit about the importance of cash flow

and where that is dialed in in the business plan. So one of the elements in your business plan will be your financial projections. And in those projections, you're looking at short term and long term financial forecast that you're going to try to shoot for. That's how you can get your business to six figures to begin with. You put that end target on and then you reverse engineer that back to what I have to do not just monthly, but weekly and daily to hit my target goals. And as far as cash flow is concerned, you also want to make sure that you know what your business expenses are, you know, having a budget for the business and knowing where you need to come in so that you're not overspending and then you find out way down the road that you don't have enough cash flow

to keep the business going. By having this as part of your business plan, something you refer back to frequently, you're going to know and be able to spot those issues and take care of them right away so that you're not one of those statistics. You know, you said something that I want to, if we could type this down, I would be underlining, putting in 24 point font and hitting bold, which is refer back to. Too many times people spend six months creating just the most perfect business plan and then they never refer back to it. Well, what good does that do at that point? Exactly. So when I was in business, I only had to go back quarterly as far as like really seeing, you know, did I come in on the quarter? Did I meet all of my goals? You know, what we refer to as our

KPIs, our key performance indicators. We're going to want to know what those numbers are and how we're doing. So because if you don't, how are you going to make yourself and improve your activities and so that you can make them the next time? But I've learned that quarterly is not enough. I've got to start looking at it monthly to really nail those down. I have time to make the necessary changes? Yeah, that's a huge piece to consider because KPI's key performance indicators lead to those goals. You can't just say, here's our goal in the business plan, and that might be a three-year goal, but what's the step right before that that you need to achieve to meet that?

And then the step before that and the step before that. Well, if you look at a goal that's too big, you could feel overwhelmed. And it might feel like I can never do that. But if you break it down to, let's just say monthly goals, well, I can focus on that because that means that this week I need to do this. So having those key performance indicators in there are really, really a huge piece of that business plan, right? Exactly.

And when I was running my business and when I was referring back, it really helped me to keep my short term and long term goals in focus and also reminded me of the day. daily tasks that I had to accomplish in order to meet those goals. And again, it also just reminded me during the tough times why I was in business to begin with and what my end goal was. So if someone is listening to this going, ooh, good points. I need to create a business plan. What are some of the common mistakes people make when creating a business plan? Because I know that you can probably go online to find a one pager and go click done. But I think that there are some people, times they miss certain elements. What are some of those things that the people should keep in mind?

Well, the top of the list would be do one to begin with. So apparently only about 41% of new business owners actually develop a business plan. So again, step one is even just putting one together. Also, but online, what I've noticed is there's various types of business plans. You've got to pick the right one for your particular business. Some of it has too much and some of it doesn't have enough. And so picking one that really focuses in on your particular business and your business needs is important. But the biggest mistake is just not completing it and maybe doing it too quickly,

maybe just roughshodding it and abbreviating and just not going, full out like this document matters. So in the end, if you need, like say your business needs to apply for a business loan, this is the first thing a bank is going to ask for. And they're going to want it full out, best presentation, 100% done. And so do it that way, even if you never even apply for the loan. You know, that's a really huge point because I was literally earlier today saying to someone in a conversation, you know, it's funny. The old saying really is true that banks want to lend you money only when it appears like you don't need the money.

Well, you need to be in a good financial position. And one of the things that they're going to need for a business loan is show me your business plan. And if you don't confidently whip it out and put it on the desk and say, here it is, boy, you're already nine steps behind the curveball right there. So getting it done, yes, that's a great point. point, but getting it done so that you're ready if and when you need to get funding, you might not think or need funding right this minute. But at the moment that it pops up that you need some business funding to expand or whatever the case is, that's not the time to start writing a business plan.

Exactly right. Because it's not just for loans. And maybe you never even have to apply for a loan because you do so well in business and you bring the cash flow in and that's great. but it's there if you need to. But it's not just for if you need to go to the bank. This is a working document that is going to benefit your business by leaps and bounds. You know, and another thing to think about, you know, kind of as we building off, we were building off of the concept of the financials,

aren't there going to be some aspects of that business plan that is going to be looking forward, like the pro forma section of it, like here we are today, but in three years, we will be here. And in five years, we will be here. It kind of gives you those milestones to check your progress against. And if you're not close enough to them or meeting them, that becomes a red flag to say, we need to address this, right? Well, exactly right. And that's why I had said, you know, back when I was, you know, working at Maryland's global wealth management, we only needed to really review the planned core. orderly. I just don't think that's enough. I think in order, and especially in today's very

competitive and crowded marketplace, if you're not looking at where your business is monthly, even a few times a month, it's so easy to get off track. Time is going by so quickly that before you know what the month is over and you're like, where did time go? You know, how did my business do? So this is a way to stay on track with that and still get those day-to-day activities done. But shoot for those milestones, as you said, and keep your business on track and keep it competitive. You know, I know that I have personally created a business plan and then an element of a business plan is the marketing plan. So that all of a sudden, now they're nested up underneath each other. what is the length when you're working with people thinking about writing a business plan

I know that they can be as short as one page and as much as 30 pages what are you what are you advising people to consider regarding the length well honestly I think that one page is not enough and 30 pages is too long so I'm somewhere in the middle but I think it's very much tied to what your business does how many products and services you have there are some essential elements. And yes, you spoke of one, which being the, you know, your sales plan, your marketing plan, your branding plan. This all comes into play. And it's also all intertwined. One component speaks to another. The marketing is, is part of your branding and your selling. Your selling is part of your branding and marketing. But one thing that's really,

that I found like women entrepreneurs can sometimes get a little off track with is, what am I supposed to do this month for my marketing? Well, part of your business plan will lay that out. So it's not this big, okay, it's a new month. Now what do we do? More like, okay, this is what we said we would target for the month of June. This is what we're going to focus on in July. And at least you know the framework of what you're working on with your marketing efforts.

for the whole year. You're not having to come up with things on the fly. It's all part of your plan. 100%. That's really a huge, huge thing to consider. So, Sherry, I'll tell you, this has been really eye-opening and informative to learn the benefits of a properly structured business plan. What are some final thoughts? And if someone is interested in learning more and reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can do that? Well, I am starting a new program coming up shortly. It's the five pillars to six figures. My mission and goal is to help as many entrepreneurs get to that six figure mark in their first year so that they can be successful and become financially independent. So I'm going to be hosting shortly a

master class coming up so that you can learn a little bit more about it. In the meantime, you can visit my website at savvywomen and wealth.com. And if you have any particular questions that I can help you answer, you can email me at savvy women and wealth at gmail.com. Excellent. Well, Sherry, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to

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