 Do you think an investor will give me some money? Uh, if you have a well-thought-out business plan. I will now, thanks to this video. Yeah. It's going to be brutal. Ha ha ha. Business up and running. It's the first year. Now what? What do you do besides maybe celebrate? Celebrate. Well, after celebrating, right, you really want to really figure out what the foundations are of your business. But before you jump in, you're running your business. It gets tough. You have to remember to give yourself some self-care, right? It's- Get your Zs. Get your Zs, get your Zen. You're probably working, I don't know, 40, 50, 60, possibly more hours a week, right? And you can forget about you and you are important. If you get burnt out, then that business suffers. So, Em, what do you do to get that self-care? Do you sleep for 20 hours a day? What is it? Okay, that's excessive. But I'm all about the eight hours, also eating a well-balanced meal. I'm a big plant-based gal for all you vegans out there. That keeps me refreshed, feeling healthy, spry. Also, making sure to balance my social life as well. Because I know, like, I work remote personally, so I'm at home and it's easy to get, you know, the clock strikes 5.30, and you're still working because it's just like, you're in that work mode zone. So you've got to make sure to really schedule out your days and ensure that you get exercise in a social life. Yes, absolutely. Social life is huge, right? Many of us solopreneurs who are just working by ourselves or maybe with a small team, we get trapped in our bubble and then we look up. It's bedtime and when we wake up and then we work on the business and we go to sleep and it's just never-ending cycle. Yeah, and then you get burnt out. And then your business is also going to experience that, which brings me to, I know you have a lot of info on this, the team that you cultivate as well. Because those are the people you're going to be around day in and day out fulfilling your goal and your mission. Right, like even if you're a solopreneur, you still want to surround yourself with like-minded people. That's why I surround myself with Nealey. So many of us, again, solopreneurs, we don't have that team, but there are lots of places where you can find those like-minded people like M here, right? There are meetups you can go to. They're absolutely free and you can find people that like the same stuff that you do or check out. Maybe a local co-working space, right? There's a ton of people. And free coffee. Free coffee, usually free beer with membership. I may know. What's next? What should I consider doing next? So my first year of business. Yeah, so stick to the foundations. The foundations are never any fun. It's not the fun side of running a business, but they are so, so, so very important. And probably the first thing that you should do, even just starting a business, is to register your business with your state. Many people do this by filing as an LLC or a sole proprietorship. Probably the most common though is LLC. It helps protect your business from your personal assets. Question? Yes. Okay, LLC. I've seen this and my friends are doing their taxes and I would start to brainstorm, okay, I see LLC. Why are you LLC versus Inc versus Co? How do you decide on that? Does it matter the type of business you're running or the state you're in or? It really depends on the business that you're running, right? And the team that you have behind it. So what I would recommend is your state will have some information on how to file your business and give you some information on what's right for you. Should you be an LLC? So should you be a sole proprietorship or a partnership or a corporation? What does that look like? All right, Nealey. So I'm having flashbacks to my childhood when I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I think about having a business plan and that's what my parents would ask me. They're like, okay, so you want to own an amusement park, cool. But like, what's your business plan? And so I'm thinking about now as an adult and the entrepreneurs listening in in their first year of business, real talk business plan. Is that something you need to be doing right now? And how do you go about that? How do you organize that? How much information do you need to know or can you wing it? I definitely don't wing it, right? There's a lot of business owners, like especially just starting out as solepreneurs, they're like, cool, I'm just going to start my business and go, right? But the business plan keeps them locked in, helps them really find that foundation that they're going to need to stand on when they start to really grow their business. Now, business plans are pretty lengthy and it does take a ton of time to create. There are plenty of sites out there that'll help you generate those, but we're going to go over some of the different sections of a business plan and hopefully help you out a little bit. All right, so the first section of a business plan is the executive summary. Now you can really think of this as the cliff notes for the entire document. It's going to give a little bit about what that business is, the market it serves, and some other information. So if anyone were to read this, like potential investors for your business, they know what they're going to get into. Okay, so number two, don't worry, I got this one nearly. You want to have a business description. What is your concept? So let's go back to my amusement park. Okay, let's do it. I think it should be a pizza park because what else would you want to eat? And possibly throw up after a roller coaster ride. Pizza, of course. Oh, those tilt worlds are just... It's going to be brutal. But that's my, that is my concept. All right, so number three in your business plan is the industry analysis. Now going back to your pizza park, right, it's really just an overview of your industry. Like who are the major competitors in your industry? How do you rank up in that list and just the market itself in that industry? All right, so with your competition, can you give us a little insight of who your competitors might be and how you would stack up against them? Yeah, so no big surprise in the amusement park world. A few that are my competitors would be like a Six Flags or Disneyland, or what's one of your favorites? I think as a kid, I used to go to Busch Gardens a lot in Florida. They had the Chikurai, the 9-needry straight angle. Scared everything out of my mom. It was fantastic. He threw up pizza. So back to my amusement park, what makes me unique is that it is this pizza-themed park. So not just the best slices of pizza from all different kinds of themes, like we have the New York style, the deep dish Chicago style. What's your favorite style? This is a little embarrassing because it's really boring, but I just like a good cheese pizza. Like I'm Kevin off of Home Alone. It's just, I prefer Dairy Free. Chicago style or New York style? In between the two. Okay, you heard of her first. And then also what's unique about the park is that everything is pizza-themed, even the rides. So there's a bunch of really bizarre-looking rides because they're shaped out of like pepperonis and dripping cheese for the slide, but it really sets me apart from everyone else. And fun fact, all the prizes that you can win too are also pizza-themed. Heck, yes. I'm here for it. Cool, come on down. Could you just deal on yourself? Come on down to Pizza Park. Okay, so another thing that comes up. You know, here I'm just one person. I'm gonna have an amusement park to draw in a lot of people. I need a good team. How do you go about organizing that? Who's gonna do what? What's the organization of this Pizza Park? Right, and that's number four, right? That's the organization in your business plan. Who's gonna run it? Is it just you? Are you going to have a team? Are you gonna have a board of directors and investors and all this good stuff? That's where you map that all out. So you really have that plan when you go to start your amusement park because I know you're awesome and you can do a lot, right? But you can't be running from ride to ride to ride, stopping it, starting it, plus running the business, plus eating the pizza. I get it. You need people. Yeah, I worked at an amusement park. Fun fact, when I was 16 and it was just enough doing one ride and you just pull a lever and then you stop it, but kids are, yeah, mind of their own. Mind of their own. All right, so number five is your financial projections. Now, I'm not saying you're gonna go, I'm gonna make a million dollars and that's it. What are you talking about? My projection. No, this is what your budget is, how much you're gonna be spending, what you're projected to make, right? Not every business is profitable in their first year of business. That's more like two, three, and five years, right? You really want to have that plan and that projection of what you think with the industry and the competitors and the market and your customers and how much you're selling tickets for all in that little projection there. So do you have projections on your business? Are you gonna make a million dollars that first year? What are we doing? Well, maybe we should sit down over some pizza and talk about this, but I just kind of feel really confident about my business model. I'm just thinking put it together, however much money it costs to put this on, what have you, that's fine. The customers are just gonna come rolling in. If you build it, they will come? Yes, a little field of dreams, right? Oh, yeah. Okay, that's a good movie trivia point, Emma. So, yeah, I just, I hadn't really thought about the exact numbers. We'll go over that. Okay, thanks. All right, so with everything we've talked about, now we're at number six, which is investor. You have a great idea. You have a well thought out plan. Now you gotta go and get an investor. Get that money, right? Absolutely, that's a whole point. Show me the money. Give me the money, right? But you want to, you're building this business plan to get investors. That's one of the main key points of this, right? The investors don't wanna just hand out their money anywhere. Have you seen Shark Tank? They're not just saying yes to everyone. They have a plan. They're very picky. Very, very picky. And that's why you have your business plan as well thought out, well written. That last part, that investor request or that finance request is really to say, here's exactly what I'm asking for and then let the negotiation continue. So with my idea being Pizza Park and what we've discussed, the themes, the uniqueness, the vibe, the fun, do you think an investor will give me some money? If you have a well thought out business plan. I will now. Thanks to this video. Yeah. So let's say good news. The investor likes my idea and I did in fact get the money to pursue my idea. Next thing I'm thinking of is keeping track of how much I'm spending, right? Where, how do I look for a return on investment? How do I keep that all organized? So I'm gonna be dishing money out in all sorts of places. What are your recommendations though from your experience nearly with keeping track of ROI? Yeah, especially in your first year, you have to keep track of literally everything. And now what a lot of people do is they go gung-ho and crazy and start spending their money on a bunch of things because they think they need everything right now. But what I would recommend is go lean and really focus on your ROI or your return on investment. Make sure the money that you're dishing out to your amusement park, you're dishing out with your business is actually getting customers back. Because at the end of the day, if you run out of money and there's no more investors, there's no more business, right? So focus on that. You can do that with some bookkeeping software. Like QuickBooks is the main competitor out there. There's GoDaddy Bookkeeping. There's many, many other ones as well that'll help keep track of your income, your expenses, and even help you with tax time or tax season rather. I love that. Help you stay organized. Definitely check out the resources you have. It will make your life a lot easier and your bank account happy. Yeah, we gotta keep the bank account happy. How else are you gonna buy all this pizza? Otherwise you'll just be at home sitting on the couch eating cheap pizza and that's depressing. So imagine with everything we've discussed and I know this comes up a lot with social media when I'm educating on best purchases, trial and error. Expect it. It's going to be definitely something that you need to embrace trial and error. Also just keeping in check with how your team is doing and make sure they're on board with the goals and the success and your struggles. So open communication is key too. But expect to have some trial and error. Would you agree? Absolutely. One of my favorite little quotes or whatever is failure is feedback. Failure is not the end of the road. It's something that you learn to kind of grow and just become just a better you or a better business. So fail early, fail often, but always keep learning. Oh, I love that. And if you love this, be sure to like this video. Also subscribe to the channel and ring that bell and comment below on what you learned to do for your first year of business. This is The Journey. We'll see you next time.