 Thank you. Thank you, Christine. I'm so sorry Christine have to leave. That's a really perfect timing. I'm sorry I have to monitor the room and let people in where I'm actually doing the presentation so bear with me for a little bit. There are just still people coming in. So I'm going to try my best to do both at the same time because we have quite a few people still coming in. Can you all hear me? Could you all hear me and see me and see the slide? Perfect. Great. Yeah, so I think someone gave a suggestion that why don't you let people in for five minutes and then start. So yeah, so I'll probably just wait a little bit, just a little bit. We have plenty of time to go through my presentation today. So I just give people a little bit of time to lock in and thank you. I'm going to change to the second slide so you can read what we offer at the LGBT Center. Why are you waiting? So I'll give you some things to do while you're waiting for the people to join. But we will start at just about four minutes. We'll start at 2.10. We do have enough time to go over all my presentation today. It seems like most people is already in. So I might just get started soon. Yeah, I think I can get started. And I'm just going to continue to monitor the room. Welcome everyone. I'm sorry Christine had to leave. As the people that just arriving just arrived, Christina from the San Francisco public library. Savannah is actually put up by the San Francisco public library, but she had to leave because there's a fire alarm going on in their building. So she had to evacuate so, but she hopefully she's going to come back very soon. I'm going to do a quick introduction of myself and the program at the San Francisco LGBT Center. My name is Eddie Tang. I am the small business consultant for the, I managed a small business program at the San Francisco LGBT Center. And I am also a business owner myself for about a year. So I can definitely connect with a lot of you here. The San Francisco small business and sorry San Francisco LGBT Center is a community center in San Francisco, mostly focusing folks in the LGBT community. But our small business program is open to anyone, actually the whole center is open to anyone you, you know, it could be anyone and you can come to us for support. These are the few things we do at the center. Most focuses on business one on one coaching and one on one consulting. And my main focus on business is on business planning. And that's what we're doing today as more business plan and business strategy finance. We work with a lot of other local nonprofit that provides support to small business as well. I can give you a few names. For example, mainstream launch opportunity fund. Meta Renaissance entrepreneur center. We were we work with all these nonprofits together to provide support to local residents who want to start a business or who's running a business. Anything that I cannot do at the LGBT center I can usually refer or find a resource to refer you to. For example, if you need free legal service, we know where to refer you to, or if you need funding to help you start a business. We have a few nonprofit that can provide funding to people who want to start a small business who we can refer you to as well. We can also help you prepare to apply for different loans through these nonprofits. Another thing we do is small business workshops. We at the LGBT center we host about two small business workshop every month. And sometimes it's marketing, sometimes legal finance workshop accounting pretty much anything related to small business. We usually will have a workshop. Yeah, I host some of the workshop, but sometimes we invite other industry expert to host workshop with me. So that's another thing we do is a regular small business workshop. And I want to mention that so far all our program at the LGBT center all our program on a small business program at the LGBT centers are free. As long as you're a resident in San Francisco, you can always just reach out to us to receive support from us. We host street fair, so it's about two street fair we host at the center. Basically, it's like marketplace people and come set up table, sell their product and promote their business. And usually it's before pride and then another one is before the holiday. We didn't do it in the last two years for obvious reason for because of pandemic, but hopefully we will start doing that again after the pandemic. For those of you who are a woman, own small business. We're also one of the TA for the city of San Francisco who can help you apply for this grant. This is called San Francisco Woman's Entrepreneurship Fund. It's a $5,000 up to $5,000 grant for women runs small business in San Francisco. Some of the key requirement are a has to be at least 50% owned by women has to be a full time business. So it has to be full time business has to be in business for sorry had to be full time business had to be at least 50% owned by women has to be in business for at least one year and generate some income. We can help you you do have to apply through one of us. So if you are a woman runs more business or you know someone who is a woman runs more business feel free to connect them with me. We do have a more systematic training program. It's a nine weeks training program where we'll go through one topic every week to help people build a business from the ground up. A usually we purposely maintain this as a small very very small group usually is between six to eight people in this group. Again, this is a free training program as well on current here we have a corporate sponsor for this program. So if you go through this program and finish all require assignment you will receive a $400 grant from appropriate sponsor and on week nine you actually will present your business to a panel of judges and the two winner there are two winner will also receive a one will receive $1,500 grant one will receive $1,000 grant. Again, it's a very intense training program you have to do pretty much do one presentation every week by people I see a lot of business new business owner completely transform their business throughout this program. So the target. My target audience I would say would be people who has a business idea and hasn't started business yet, or people who already have a business but they're running their business and it's probably for winning the first one or two years. And they have some challenge growing the business, and this will be the right program for them, but it really depends. If you feel like it's something will benefit you, you can definitely reach out to me. For example, our last cohort with someone that's in business for 20 years. And after our interview with him, we realized that he could really benefit from this program because he's making a changes to his business, and we still accept him in this program. So, this is my contact information, as the consultant SF center that work. You can always email me if you have any questions. So, just because I am here by myself. I asked you to, and because we have quite a few people in this class today or workshop today. I asked you to put any questions on the chat. If you don't know under in the control panel. There is a control control panel there's a chat window, you can always put your, put your chat there I will pause a regularly to answer questions throughout the workshop and I also leave time in the end of the workshop, at the end of the workshop to answer more of your questions. So, some people asked me to tell you a little bit more about my own success story. So a little bit, I guess more of my background, I started out as an engineer, I was engineer for about four years, and then got into financial industry. I was a financial advisor for last large bank and manage about 100 million dollars portfolio for the bank. And then one day I just realized, you know, I was, I was managing high, high net worth individual. One day I just realized I really much prefer to help small business. A lot of the client I helped or they're so well off the really probably don't need my help. I had a came to San Francisco after 10 years working at financial industry I came to San Francisco, receive my MBA from the University of San Francisco and start my business a years ago and I, I never look back. So that's currently managing the small business program for the LGBT Center, but I'm also working with San Francisco Tech Council, we're running a program. We're helping people 50 and over to start a business in San Francisco so you can reach out to me as well if you're interested in the other program. Again, it's helping people 50 and over start a business in San Francisco. I'm doing also doing some consulting work for other, if you are the nonprofit here as well. Okay. So some people ask me so if you have any questions about what I just mentioned or a program and LGBT Center people free to ask them here. Yes, someone asked me I think someone's asking me about the woman's grand. So the woman's grand, you have to be a full time business and the way to determine your full time business is that you have to be actively working your business for, I think of 32 hours a week, or about $25,000 a net income year to qualify for the San Francisco woman's entrepreneurship fund. We are a San Francisco LGBT Center is a nonprofit, but most of the small business we help are not nonprofit we mostly help for profit business. I do have a knowledge with nonprofits so I can definitely help people with nonprofits as well, but most of the business we help for profit business. Yeah, so the business we help could be just one person business or business with multiple client, a certain many employees, so really depends as long as you're San Francisco business, you can reach out to us. Christine but I believe they the recording can be sent to you and I will send you the slide, send the workshop slide to you as well to everyone here as well. So you have my content and the slide. All right. So, everyone is here I believe you're here because you want to write a business plan. And you don't know how to start. And that's, you know, that's not a unique situation. I think a lot of times people need to write a business plan. They kind of put it off, or just because simply because you don't know what to be what needs to be in there. And how to write each section so, and sometimes you have to join a probably a week's training program that we do or many other organization do in San Francisco, or in the Bay Area to learn about write a business plan. And my goal was this workshop is really convinced out that a week's program into this an hour or one and a half hour so that you have a basic understanding of how to write a business plan. So hopefully you can start writing a business plan. So yeah so really condense the very long training program into this two hours. Hopefully you can learn how to write a business plan. Before you start writing a business plan you always want to ask yourself and I think every everyone, you probably already have a reason you want to write a business plan. One is you apply for a loan, especially if you're a new brand new business. And if you try to apply for a loan from a, if you try to apply for a loan from a bank. Most likely they will say no, even though you have a fully written business plan, they will say no just because banks are usually conservative. They're usually, sometimes they say backwards looking, what do you mean by backwards looking because they wanted to look at your financial statement for probably two, three years before they lent you money. I shouldn't say I should say banks are more risk averse so they wanted to look at your, your proven financial record before they lent you money. A lot of non profit I mentioned like mainstream launch opportunity fund, a meta working solution PVC, these non profit in the Bay Area, they will help you. They will give you a loan, even you are a new small business owner of course not guarantee everyone will approve. They do still have to look at, you know, different things and one of them is business plan. Especially if you're really new in business. If you're brand new business owner chances that they probably want us want to see a business plan, because that's probably the only thing they have go by to know how much you understand about this business. And then raise capital. As we all know, San Francisco is, you know, there is a lot of startup in San Francisco, and a lot of investors wanted to see your business plan. And lately, a lot of investors will ask you for a more condensed version of business plan we call them pitch deck. But once they are interest, a lot of them will still come back to you and say hey, I still want to see a full business plan. So when you raise capital. That's when you need to have a business plan. Apply for grants. Sometimes the people provide grant will probably have a pretty short form for you to complete. It's kind of a short version of business plan. Sometimes they do ask for a longer business plan as well. A, but the most like, I think the most important reason you write a business plan is really for yourself to guide your action and business plan should be a plan that you constantly update as your business changed. All right. So, as I mentioned, a lot of people don't want a business plan because they don't know what should be in it. And what they do is they go Google and they probably find a thousand different business plan template on when they Google it, and you could probably find a thousand different business plan template. But if you look at 10 of them, you probably realize they're pretty much more or less the same. They kind of structure differently. They probably format it differently. Something is probably more sophisticated. They create an app that you can go through the app and do it step by step. But the key component, the key components of the business plan, the all the same. So it's active summary. Your product and service, your target market and target customer. Your marketing plan and marketing strategy. Your industry and competitive analysis. Your company's organizational development plan. Your operational plan. And your revenue model and financial plan. So some orders are different. Some business plan I probably have a different order, but they're more or less the same. So I'm going to get into every section to you give you more information about how to complete each section of the business plan. I'm pretty sure you all heard that people have very, very short attention span. Right. People probably have 30 second for you. You know, that people just, this is the, this is the time where there's so much information out there. And people just don't have a lot of time to go through all the information. And so a lot of investors will probably only read one section of your business plan, which is the executive summary. So this is probably the most important part of the business plan. You, the goal of this part of your business plan is you need to get people's attention. You need to attract people's attention. You need to get people's interest in your business in yourself through this section. If you don't get people's interest, they will not go and look at other sections. So this, this is the most important part of your business plan. It should be on the front of your business plan, but you should write this part last. Because it's the executive summary. It's a summary of everything else in the business plan. So you should write this last, but it should be on the first page of your business plan. Okay. And some people ask me, how many page should I have on a business plan? Should I have 20 page or have 100 page? Should I have a 50 page? Should I have five page? There's no wrong answer of this. I've seen 100 pages business plan. I've seen 50 pages business plan and I've seen five pages business plan. My suggestion is if you just start, just write a five pages business plan. Have all the important information in there. Because you can always expand your business, based on what you think what's important and you can always expand your business plan. So starting to write a business plan, 100 pages business plan is probably going to discourage you and you probably never finish it. So my, my recommendation is write a five to 10 pages business plan, have all the structure, have the structure there and have more, the most important information in there. And then you can go back and look at each section and see what's more important. You can start to write and improve each section. So what is the summary? So what is the best? So except the summary, it is, again, an overview of the business plan. It talks about all the key points. Say people time, right? Again, I mentioned people probably only have 30 seconds for you. It needs to be very, very concise. So what is the best way to start a executive summary? I think some of you probably heard of this is starting with a problem statement. It's an opportunity that you have identified. Start with an issue that people are facing, right? Let's just say a, try to think, Uber, right? Uber, the reason why Uber starter is because people are sometimes people try to look for a taxi driver, look for a taxi on the street and they probably wait for a very, very long time for a taxi or a taxi very expensive. So there's a problem here and Uber tried to address that problem, right? So start with a problem is a very, very effective way to start an executive summary. There is research done. There are 80% I think a lot of you probably heard of, 80% of small business fail in the first three years, right? That's the reality. The reason why people start a business, eight of them probably will fail. And the number one reason small business fail is because there is no demand for their product. And the reason why there is no demand for their product is because the entrepreneur or the small business owner have started a creative product, they actually thought it was addressing someone else's problem, but they're not. Right? If your product is not addressing, so if I'm not getting a benefit from your product or service or I don't feel there's a need for your product and service, I'm not going to pay for it. So it's very, very important for any one of us who is starting a business, the people who are starting business today, think about what problem you're addressing for your customer. If there is no problem, there's no business. If there's no demand, there's no need, there's no business. It's very, very important. And that's the part, if you start with that, sometimes it's actually a very good starting with a story, right? A lot of times, we're starting a business because we have to experience something ourselves. And it's probably like your parents or your friends experience something themselves and inspire you to start this business. So think about, write about that story. That would be a really good way to talk about this problem statement. And then you want to talk about how does your business solve this problem? So there's a problem. Your business doesn't really solve that problem. There is no match, right? So talk about how your business actually go about self-solving this problem. Now, just because your business has a problem doesn't mean this is a business. As a business, you still need to generate income so you can pay yourself. You can pay your employees and you pay for our expenses. So revenue model is here to talk about how do you generate income? How do you, so you have a business, just think about Facebook, right? Facebook have many, many followers, many users, but for a very, very long time, Facebook does not know how to generate income. They don't, they don't have a business, they didn't have a business model until they actually started doing the tithing. So think about what is your business model? Is your business model advertising? Or is your business model subscription? Is your business, what is your business model? How do you generate income? Financial highlights. So financial highlights would be, if you're already in business, what is your revenue today? How what is your revenue in the last 12 months? How much, what's your revenue in the last two years? Now, and what is your, what's your projection in the next one or two years? So financial highlights. If you are a brand new business, then you only have projections. So think, talk about what do you, what, how much you're planning to generate in the next six months, one year. You can also talk about your financial from a number of customer. How many number of customer I wanted to have in the next one year? How many number of customer I want to have in the next two years? A lot of times, if you are writing this business plan for a specific purpose, you can always have a call to action here. For example, I'm writing this business plan because I'm looking for $200,000, be very specific of how much you're asking for, what you need the money for. For example, I'm looking for $200,000 and I need to this $200,000 to hire two engineer, they need to, they both cost me $60,000 a year and I also need $20,000 for rent. So be very, very specific of what you, what you need this money for. Any questions? I'm actually just going to look at the chat and see if there are any questions. There's no questions. If any questions, just please feel free to put on the chat. So, so your product and service, we talk about how does your, how does your product address your customers issue? Right. How does, how do they address your customers issue? Talk about how does your product and service work? For some business, this could be very, very simple because your business could be pretty straightforward. But for some business, it required quite a big explanation here and this is the part where you can go very, very long or you can, it could be pretty short because it's pretty easy for people. Your business might be very easy for people to understand. But for some business, this could be a, their business ideas are new, their business models are new. The products are new. So it could take a while for them for you to explain to people. And this is the part where you can really go a while and you can go long and talk about how your product and service work. How are they made? How do they work? How do you charge people? How much do you charge people for this product and service? IP protection. So why is the IP so important? Especially if you make a physical product, your intellectual property is very important. If you create a product, if you don't provide intellectual property to your product and someone else can just create, can copy it. And, you know, they could probably do even do a better job making a product. So for, if an investor want to invest in your business, and you create a physical product, most likely they wanted to know that your business, your product has some kind of intellectual property protection to that business. Okay. So that's the question, BPP is the, how do I, okay, I am, I don't know that question is related to me, but did you actually elaborate on that question a little bit, and I'll come back to you. So, so that's the, that's a product and service of your business. Okay, so remember we talked about, if you create a product is because there's a demand. And usually this group of people that the demand, there's a certain group of people have this particular, this particular problem is actually facing by a certain group of people. So we call them target market, right, so this group of people, particularly feeling this pain of a feeling this pain so they will actually need to use your product or your service. Target market is probably one of the most, it's very difficult to determine especially a new business and sometimes you get it wrong, which is completely fine. But it's always important to make the assumption in the beginning, because otherwise you have nothing to go by to actually create this business. But don't worry about you might not get it right in the first time once you start to sell your product, you gradually actually get a better grasp of where your target market is. So how do you define a target market. So this is market segmentation is a tool to help you define define your target market. So, there's different way to Simon your, your, your target market. So it could be based on geographic location for example I'm starting a restaurant that is in the mission of San Francisco, and I think I think that most likely people in my neighborhood is going to come to my restaurant or some someone probably a little bit further will probably come so geographic location, people probably not going to come from Denver to come to my restaurant, but that is a way to Simon your, your, your target market some focusing on the neighborhood. So, demographic is also another way for you to think about your, your target market. So, demographic could be a lot of different things that we usually use to, and I actually when I was doing workshop with other, some other group. I didn't come up with this, but I don't really wanted to use demographic to Simon, my, my customer, and that's okay. There's different again, you, you, there are different way tools here, be to Simon your target market it does not have to just based on demographic could be based on lifestyle, right I'm starting a yoga, yoga studio or I'm actually selling organic food. So I'm focusing on people more health conscious. They might not necessarily be a certain age range. Sometimes there is. But usually the way to Simon this group of people is the lifestyle, the more health conscious, right, or I'm starting a certain of selling a product that probably will focusing on people who are more socially conscious. And that could be a way to Simon your target customer. And it's okay to not get it right, right away. People, especially for a new business owner, a lot of times when they just started business they always feel like they have to get it right in the first time. You don't have to get it right in the first time a lot of people is going to make a lot of small mistake, or even big mistake, until they gather until they do it right so it's okay not to get it right in the first time, just make your best assumption and do research. Buying, sorry, buying pattern could be another one dollar for, for example, dollar store, right they're focusing on people who's more price conscious. That could be a way to Simon your target market. So, why is it target market so important because target market would dictate how you do marketing, which we'll talk about. So, once you determine who you want to target. It's also very important to find out how big this group is. Why so important to find out how big this group is. So I'm sure I'm sure that everyone here who want to start a business is because you at least at a minimum you want to be financial independent right you want to generate enough income that you can pay yourself at least. If you have identified a target market that's so small. Let's just say I want to sell a certain product and really even you penetrate the whole market, the total sales going to be probably $10,000 year, you know it's not going to be a viable business. Right. So it's very important for you to actually find out how big this market is. So, that's why we have this concept is called total available market basically is the whole market. Right. This is a, the whole market that's not just necessarily available to you to competitor, the whole market. The service, the serviceable available market is you as a business can reasonable reach out to you. But still that is because you have competitors in this market so you're sure of market is also only a part of that is it possible to find out before I even started business is a possible to find out how big this market is. It definitely is possible to find out how big to get a good understanding of how big this market is. And there's a few way to do it. One is that you can actually get a lot of data from us sensors can get from statistical if you actually products, actually even San Francisco public library, there's probably a lot of database for you to, for example, I wanted to sell organic path food in San Francisco. There's a few things I can probably find out one is how big the path food industry is in the US. I don't know, maybe 20 billion right so I can find out because there is data out there. And I can probably even know how many pet owners are there in San Francisco. And that's another things I can probably find out this data is already out there. And how many people how much money people spend on the pet. That's also another information like you probably find out. How many people will spend money on organic pet food. I probably don't know. That's just make assumption here. Let's just say in San Francisco, there is about 150,000 pet owners. Each pet owner spends about $1,000 a year on pet food. I can't do the math, probably like 15 million or something like that. I don't know how many people buy organic path right so you look at 15 million you you're thinking that's great that's pretty good industry to get into because I can make $15 million. That's not necessarily true because when you have a competitors to you probably not everyone want to buy organic path. So how do I find that one out, you probably not going to be able to find that information so what do you do in this case. And then we call primary primary market research. So what is primary market research is you go out to get those data yourself. So, give you one example based on this a base on our this organic path. So I'll probably create a survey and I'm going to send the survey to a whole bunch of friends and I'm asked them to share with their friend and have their friend to share with their friend. Maybe through Facebook through other email or other channel now you're going to get a whole bunch of a survey back. Right. So, you might ask questions such as do you have a pet, how much money is spent on pet on your pet on pet from every year, or a very important you want to find out, would you buy organic pet and how much you want to pay for organic path. And, and would you only buy organic path, you're going to ask these questions right. So once you get the survey back. You'll probably find out all this 1000 people. 500 of them a pet owner, and only 10 of them will say I say they only they will only buy organic path. Now, I can do the math now in my head so to 500, 500 people and there's only two of them. Well, that's 0.2%. And then your total market is 14 million 0.2%. It's pretty small. So you realize that even I penetrate the whole market is going to be a pretty small market. What does that tell so what you have to you have a decision to make at that point. One is that. So I don't get into this business because it's so small and it's probably about 150,000 hours. I can't get into this business because it's too small of a market for me to get into. Two is that maybe I need to do some adjustment to my business plan so that I can punish. I can, I can have a bigger market. I have to adjust my expectation and say I would be okay with some people probably be okay with $150,000 a year of revenue. And that would be okay for them. So if you have to make a decision once you do that. But this is actually a very useful tool for people when you just started business is always good to go through this. So once you have the target market. So let's just say I want to target senior right my target market is senior. So why is so important for me to know that my target market senior because senior is getting their information through a different channel. What they want to hear is probably different. And the, the read the way to reach out to them is going to be different. So your marketing plan is really dictated by your target markets you really want to find out what your target market is. Before you get into actually come out with your marketing strategy marketing plan. So I always tell people there are two key to your marketing plan one is your marketing channel. One is your a marketing message. Right. So your marketing channel could be how, how do you reach out to you. Again, I'm going to use senior example. A lot of seniors are. Actually, I don't know. I guess is there are a lot of seniors still getting their information by through TV cable TV. Some of them on social media now something they're probably use Facebook more they probably don't use tick tock they probably. We don't know but you can actually find out what how based on who your target market is, you're going to come up with strategies I'm going to use certain channel, and I'm going to actually create a certain, my branding, my logo, my marketing message, all these things going to design around this the target market that the market you want to target. So, what's your marketing plan is always good to come up with the marketing goal first. There's always, it's always good to think about. What is my marketing go I'm going to give you one example of where your marketing go could look like. So, so example, my marketing goal is in the next six month. I wanted to reach out to 200,000 people. I wanted to reach out to 200,000 followers to in my a Instagram right now you have a specific goal to work or towards so it's always good to set up a goal. And then you can start set an action plan to help you achieve that goal. And there's also important to think about the cost. So, think about the responsibility is who's doing what. And, and this is something I actually came across quite a bit is a lot of small business owner do not want to do marketing, a lot of small business owner. They, especially social media media market a lot of them don't want to do social media media marketing, and they don't want it to, they don't have the time to do it. And that's completely okay. One thing of being a small business owner is about understand what you get at where you, where you are not good at, and being okay to let go some of your responsibility to other people to do right, hiring in term hiring a part time or even just outsource your marketing to someone because there's a lot of marketing company out there. So think about that. I'm not quickly just jumping to answer some questions. Someone say does this target market strategy apply to all types of business activity. Yes, I am personally a big fan of all business activity should connect. I know that a lot of different business function. You know you have marketing department finance department but if they don't understand each other, you just, you won't have a business that's doing well. So I think your marketing strategy should should be you should convey your marketing strategy with all your company department if you have multiple departments. I'm not sure if Christine is back, I might not be able to monitor the chat. Christine if you're bad please send me a private message. So understand your industry is also very important so that's another component of your a business plan is understanding your industry and your competitor. Okay, and I always hear people say well I don't really want to I don't really feel like I need to compete with other people. Unfortunately, if you are, you're starting a business, and you in a way one way or the other you are competing with someone else. If you don't have a competitor, you should be worried, because if you don't have a competitor chances like there's there's no demand for this product. So, you actually should be wondering if you don't have a competitor. So, and someone some people say well I'm just a small business local small business why does why does the whole industry so important to me. Let me give you one example. I think some of you probably don't know bloodbusters if you're really young, but you know, many of us know bloodbusters, right bloodbusters used to be pretty much every street corner, I use like I use to enjoy going to bloodbusters. But they, when Netflix is completely took over bloodbusters have one banker. And they completely close every single store. And that is a great lesson of someone or business don't understand the industry trend and they don't focus on industry trend. They will actually. So when that first started, I think I think they actually have opportunity to purchase Netflix and they have rejected because it didn't feel never Netflix will ever become a viable business. But they actually the one actually one bankrupt so understanding industry is important let's just say I'm thinking about getting to the industry to start a DVD business. And if I actually do an industry research I realized that, well it's probably not the right industry for me to get into. Right because the industry is going down so understanding industries under is about understanding the trend of the industry with different opportunity that could be present in the industry. If you're a B2B business I'm not sure of any one of your B2B business if your clients are other business, your clients business also important if your clients in the dying industry. The chances that it's going to affect your business as well so it's very important to understand your business and it's always very important to understand your, your customers business as well. Another very important part of your industry competitor analysis is doing a SWAT analysis which I will actually getting to do, getting to a little bit more. So, what is SWAT analysis, I think some of you probably already heard of SWAT analysis you probably have done SWAT analysis in the past. SWAT stands for Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat. This is probably one of the most useful, this is probably one of the easiest to learn strategy tool that you can have is SWAT analysis, and it can help you form a business strategy for your business. Strengths and weakness is internal to your business, opportunity and threats are external to your business. So, let me give you, let me give you one example, let's just say I'm starting a, I'm starting a, no, I'm starting, I have a, let's just say I own a ski resort in Lei Tahoe. Strengths could be, have great customer service, again, strengths is internal, great customer service. Did the equipment I have a really high quality location I have so great, right, so these are your strengths, they make you stand out among your competitors. Now, weakness, weakness could be, I don't have a lot of financial backing. You know, if my company is not generating any income next month, I might actually go under, or it could be my customer service really bad. I don't think anyone admit their customer service is bad, but customer service, bad customer service, it is one of the weakness. Opportunity is external, let's just say global warming. Global warming has a, because of global warming, this year in Lei Tahoe, there was no snow. There was no snow, there was very little snow. And because there was very little snow, actually, so this is actually a threat, so to create a threat to not just me, to all ski resort in Lei Tahoe. So this, this is external factor. Most likely it's going to affect most of the business in this industry, in the same location, in this case. Opportunity could be, again, I'm going to use the pet food, organic pet food as an example. Let's just say more and more pet owner is moving into San Francisco. That create opportunity to my business, but it's also create opportunity to my competitor. Right. So, a lot of times opportunity and threat, or something that applies to both you and your competitor who's doing something similar. So, as I mentioned earlier, so the core of the business of a quarter of business identify your customer, your customer opportunity and allowing your strengths and competency with those opportunities is what analysis can help really help you do that. Usually what I recommend people do is, let's sell the top three strengths your company have. And then think about these strengths, does it really connect to what your customer need. Let's just say, for example, right, a I am a NBA basketball player, I'm really good at playing basketball, right, so I'm tall and really good skill playing basketball, but I'm starting a fast food restaurant. And so me, really good at playing basketball, does it align to what my customer need, which is a good burger probably not. So you really wanted to align your strengths with your customer. So think about the top strange you have, and then come back and think about does it really match my customer's demand or what my customers need. That would be a competitive advantage. I think a lot of you probably heard of that term is your competitor. What is your competitive advantage is competitive advantage is something that you are doing better than your competitor to help you stand out among your competitor. I'm actually going to share I will share the slide to with everyone of you so you can see some example here. But let's just do a really quick. So what is really important part of the business plan so I kind of want to spend a little bit more time on this. So, because it's really a strategy part of your business plan. Think about strengths, think about what things your company is doing well. Think about the qualities that separate you from your competitor. Think about the internal resources such as skill knowledge. Think about tangible assets that your business have intellectual property, capital, technology, all those things. Think about weakness. Think about what your company is like, what your company lacks. Think about the things that your competitors doing better than you. Think about the resource limitation, measure finance, financing. Think about what is unclear if you need value proposition, meaning that your customer don't know what you're selling. Your customer don't know how they can benefit from your product. And that's a very, very important mistake a lot of small business make as well. They don't understand how to convey that message to their customer. How can they, why would their customer buy their product from them, not from someone else. What kind of value they're providing to the customer, and they're not able to convey that message. People say you don't buy their product. Opportunity. Actually opportunity and threat. I'm going to use the other slide to tell you a little bit more. Again, there's more example here, which I will, I'll share the slide with you so you can see more example here. The best way to do swat analysis was just will be just like this create a chart with create a table and then just put my recommendation is put yourself on the table and then put two or three of your competitor on the table as well. And then one of the very important thing is don't overthink it. So one of the thing people do is when they think about one of their weakness, they will want to quickly think about how do I address this witness. What you're, what you try to do now at this stage is not try to do that. It's just list everything out. Okay, and the early stage to try to list everything out everything that you think it they come to your mind just list them out here. Again list yourself and two or three competitors. There's the strengths, weakness, opportunity and threats in this chart. I already talked about how you look for actually so. Again, you can look at your company's strengths witness through your product, your service pricing. My price is really good. Your distribution channel could be a very good. We talked about Amazon I think probably one of the biggest advantage Amazon have is there is the way they, they deliver the product logistic. Right. And that's very important. Your marketing sales, company function your process, great people you coming up great people. Your partners infrastructure so you can look at your strengths and winners from these different area. The resources, core competency capabilities. All these things. Where do you look for opportunity and threat there is actually a term here is called PES TEL. Political, economic, economic, social technology environment and legal. So, one example. So, the reason why Netflix was was able to make lobster obsolete was because of technology and the reason why they didn't want to buy Netflix was because they didn't believe internet could be fast enough. People can watch high quality video through a streaming technology. Right. A lot of things actually have become obsolete because of the technology change so technology is a big part that can create opportunity and also can create threats. A environmental change we talked about earlier, global warming legal, right. So, for example, California had legalized marijuana and that creates some opportunity for some people but it also creates some threat to some other business, because for some business that they have been running a cannabis business for a long time now they suddenly have a lot more competitor. All these things, if you're doing a business in a country where the political environment is less stable, that can create a threat to your business. So, this is a through PES TEL that's where you can look for opportunity and threat for your business and people's tastes, people's lifestyle change, people's taste change, all these things can affect a create opportunity and threat to your business. So, there's more example here about how to create a SWAT. Again, I'm going to share that in a slide. So the next slide, the next section of your business plan is organizational development plan. So, organizational development plan for some of you could be really simple, because I know some of you here probably you want to be a freelancer you have no interest in hiring employee, you have no, you're not trying to grow into a large company. So, organizational development plan could be pretty simple, you're just going to write about yourself. Is it important to write about yourself, yes. Sometimes if you say for instance you reach out to an investor, if you reach out to a lender, they want to know you have the competency to run to become a to be a successful business owner. So, this is where, for many of you here, this is where you want to talk about your experience, your expertise, talk about your passion about writing in this business. Now, if your goal is to actually hiring other people, and you want to talk about your hiring plan, who do you want to hire first? Why do you want to hire this person first? How are you going to dedicate work? The cost of hiring your employee. And your company culture. The company culture really make a difference in terms of how you who you're going to attract to work for your company. I know a lot of business plan don't mention company culture. I personally have decided to put it here, because I really think company culture make a very difference in terms of how you actually talk to your customer and also how do you talk to your employees. So that is your organization of development plan. Again, it could be really simple. It could be pretty complex if you want to develop a larger organization. My operational plan. And that's another session that could be very, very simple. I see some of you here are maybe professional service provider like myself. My operational plan is super simple, right, because we don't, we don't really have a, we don't have a fit, necessarily have to have a retail space or location. You know, inventory have to deal with distribution and production and we have to deal with. So a lot of a professional service provider, your operational plan is super simple. But for some of you, if you have a retail store, if you're a manufacturer, if you provide produce product, your operational plan is going to be pretty complex. And that's where you want to talk about it. So talk about your location, talk about your retail store, talk about where you're going to get your inventory, talk about where you're going to get your product made, how you're going to make your product, how you're going to distribute your product. Why are these important? Because a business efficient, efficient business operation can save a business a lot of money. And if your business is not running efficiently, even though you're generating a lot of income, you still can be not profitable. And restaurant is a really good example, right? A lot of people want to start a restaurant. And one of the biggest challenges with restaurant is operation. And the reason why it's really hard to manage your restaurant is because there's a lot of product, there are a lot of expenses they have. So for example, their ingredients or their labor costs are all perishable, right? So if you have a purchase, a ingredient, if they're not using in two days, then they're going to go back. Or if you have an employee, but you don't have a customer, you still have to pay for this employee. Now you're actually putting money in and you're not making money. So operation is actually very important. And that's why a lot of restaurants, even though they're running, but they're not generating income because they're not able to manage the operations. So operation is actually a very important part of your business plan, really think through how you are going to create an efficient operation on plans so that your business can minimize the costs of your business and you can have a more profitable business. One really good example is Dell computer. A lot of you probably don't even know what Dell computer is because they haven't been out there, but Dell computer when they have started, they have a very good inventory management system where they do not make a computer until someone make order, right? So I don't know if you have bought Dell computer before you go to the website, you tell them what you want to order. You want different kind of the technology in their computer and you order and they'll make that computer. So for them, there is no inventory. And that minimizes inventory costs. And that's your operational plan. The last but not least will be your financial plan. So remember I told you earlier, your if someone will only read one part of your business plan, that will be your exact summary. If they have time, actually most likely they will also read your financial plan. That's probably the second most important part of your business plan, your financial plan. A lot of times people is going to attach a financial income projection, a cheat to the financial plan will look just like this. I created this. You can probably download it online as well. But I did create this template here. The financial projection is really telling people your expenses, your revenue in the next couple years, but there's more to your financial plan. So the financial plan, first you want to talk about how do you generate revenue, right? So your revenue model. So revenue model could be I'm selling a product. I'm doing advertising, subscription fee. I'm charging subscription fee. I'm doing a combination of both. We always talk about multiple revenue stream now. For every business you can always think about, you don't have to, but you can always think about, am I able to create another revenue stream? For example, myself, right? I am a business consultant. So my revenue stream, if you really look at it, it's pretty straightforward, right? I can sell my client and I charge them an hourly rate and they pay me. But I've seen a lot of small business consultants now, what they do is, for example, they will create a process. I don't know why I was reached out to another business consulting company and they create a process to value a company. They provide valuations. For example, I want to sell my company and they will come in and they will provide, put a value of your company. They provide this process and they create a certificate and they start to sell this, I guess they license this process and they start to sell this license. They reach out to me and say, hey, do you want to be part of this license? We're charging $500 a year and you can actually become part of revenue, sorry, evaluation consultant, valuation consultant. Of course, I didn't want to be part of it, but I thought that was a great business model, right? So even for business consultant, you can think about, can I actually make my service a physical product? Now I actually can generate more income. If I was a fitness trainer, right, can I, a fitness trainer, you charge people $100 an hour, but can I do group section? Or can I also create videos and people can subscribe to my video? Or can I even sell physical product through my physical training section? So there's a lot of revenue stream you can think about. Sometimes it's about think outside the box. You can probably think about different things. Pricing strategy is something that I'm not going to talk about today, but there's a lot of different pricing strategy you can implement, right? For example, a, I try to think, pricing penetration, that could be one of the pricing strategy. You try to occupy the markets, you lower your price at the beginning, lower your price than your competitor. And so that you can actually penetrate the market. So that is one of your pricing strategy. Or another way to, another pricing strategy is premium pricing, right? Think about Apple computer. Apple computer, do you think if, do you think Apple will be more successful? They actually lower the computer to all the computer to $800. If Apple will be $800, they're probably not going to be more successful because, and I think they actually try to do that a few years ago with one of the iPhone and they quickly just actually just continue that, that model of iPhone. So that's premium pricing, right? Mercedes Benz, Gucci, or a BMW, these are all great examples of premium pricing. So think about what is your pricing strategy. I do have a different workshop to talk about, especially talk about finance, where I will teach you about different pricing strategy. But think about what is your pricing strategies here. Think about what is your profit margin. So profit margin is basically saying that how profitable is your business. For example, I sell my, I made furniture, I made chairs, and I sell $100 per chair, and it cost me $80 to make the chair. So my profit is $20, right? So 20 divided by 100. So my profit margin, profit margin is always a percentage. So my profit margin 20%. Not too bad, right? We always want to compare. So if I'm a furniture maker, I want to compare to other furniture maker to know how profitable I am. If your business is not profitable enough, you definitely want to look at why my business is not profitable. Am I charging too low? Or is my cost too high? If my cost is too high, how can I reduce my cost? Another thing you want to talk about in your financial plan, especially for people, or it's not especially, for people who is starting a new business owner, you want to talk about, you can create a table. And list out everything you need to start a business. Okay, that could be registration, permit. I think someone has a question about permit. But list on the chat, but permit, license, prepay rent, maybe leasehold improvement, equipment purchase, initial inventory. So it's one thing a lot of people forget. So I've seen a lot of people, they get a place, they buy the inventory, they start around the business. They have nothing left in their bank account. And they completely forgot that your business is probably not going to generate enough income to pay yourself or pay all expenses, maybe for two months, maybe for three months, maybe for six months, maybe for one year, really depends on what industry you're in. So you wanted to, you wanted to come up with some initial working capital that will cover some of the expenses. For again, three months to six months, really depends on your business, could be even longer. I was talking to a small business owner. She said she had prepared six, 12 months working capital because she, she, she felt that for the first 12 months she's not going to be able to generate enough income. And that's one of the problems when people start a small business is they didn't prepare that. We all seen that happen that people start a small business after six months, they run out of money, they have to go back to go for a job. So really think about list this. So you understand how much money you need. If you do need to borrow money, at least you know, now you know how much money you need to borrow. So financial projection, again, this is this sheet that I just created for you. So really it's just lists of how much money can generate every month. If you're a seasonal business, some months going to be lower than a certain month, your cost of goods sold. So cost goods is basically the direct material and labor that is actually going to make your product. And then all island expenses, a salary, a marketing insurance, all those expenses that that will actually give you the end is your net income. The revenue is your top by revenue income, the income to bottom line. So how much money after you make, you may have $100,000 to pay $80,000 in expenses, at the end of the day have $20,000 in your hand. That's what you have left to pay yourself as a business owner. Your investor or the bank, the investor want to know that they can actually, by investing in your business, they can actually get a good return. Now, for a loan, sorry, for land lending company or for a bank, they want to make sure that your business generate enough income, so you can pay them every month. Right, so your financial projection is very, very important. I also actually attached this, this great thing here is someone asked for nonprofits. So there is actually a specific business plan that template that you can use to write a business plan is actually very similar for a for profit business, they call it different, like target market target audience. That is slightly different, but it's quite similar. There is a link here. Take you to the template to write a business plan for no profit, which we also support at the LGBT Center. That is it for the business plan presentation. Do you have any questions. I think even if you want to, if you want to even just raise your hand. I just call you Patty. Silva, Silva. Sorry, I pronounced your name correctly. So you need to unmute yourself. I'm sorry, Silva, you need to unmute yourself on the, on the left bottom. Oh, you cannot unmute yourself. Okay. Yeah. There you go. Can you, can you. Can you put down the screen. So we can see everybody. Well, you have control of your screens for you to see everybody. It's going to be, it's going to be the controls on your screen. So we all can see questions. Eddie Tang. How can I move the. Okay, you're right. Hi, Eddie, this is an ESA from the library. I just wanted to jump in and do let you know we have closed our library, but I'm here to help you finish out your program. Okay, anything. All right, let me just ask for feedback here. So Eddie. Yeah. I'm sitting in my home in San Mateo, but I used to live in San Francisco, and I taught math and for the San Francisco unified school district. Did you go to school in San Francisco? I did. I did my masters in the university. No, no, no. Elementary school. You said school. I apologize. No, I didn't. Okay. Well, that's usually the case. People who grew up in San Francisco. Can't afford to live there. They, they're gone. Yep. And, but when I was teaching at the secondary level, like ever at junior high school, LinkedIn high school, what I realized is that most of my students did not understand basic first grade addition and subtraction. It was just memorization and no thinking skills. Like if you're adding nine and four, they know, they did know you start with nine and you go 10, 11, 12, 13, but to break the four into one and a three and add the nine and the one to make 10 and three. The problem is, for all people who speak English and all the related languages, the numbers from 11, 12, 13, 14, they don't make any sense because they're, they're 11 is just a meaningless noise. The most important thing is to start with counting stuff. To understand we have a packaging system we count to 10, and then we start 10 and one more 10 and two more. Okay, that's my point that to prevent these bad habits. I have. Let me let me finish. I've invented these playing cards and games to play with the cards where there's these special icons I call them visual math numerals that combine the basic Hindu Arabic numerals with a picture. So you see that 11 is 10 and one more. And then you play games, and by playing the games and and thinking in this critical thinking way gives you a foundation for math education for for having a strong educational background that you can end up. This this forms that you've had people fill out. This makes a lot of sense. I'm so sorry for interrupt you. I want to make sure that we leave enough time for every. Okay, let me just ask the question, the question as in your experience. Have you seen a need for people to learn critical thinking, basic math skills. When they're little kids right up rather than getting into a business and failing. You see a need. There's definitely a need, but I can tell you that what I think is not important. Because I'm just, I have my guess is that when you were in first grade, you, you understood math. Yeah, so, so silver I'm so sorry I'm more than happy to meet with you one on one because I feel like this is a brainstorming. I do brainstorming all the time with people. I'd like to answer more questions relate to the workshop. And also as people are leaving I'm sorry I didn't say bye to some people but this people are leaving I wanted to thank you all for being in the workshop if you were, if you were leaving. Feel free to reach out to me but I'm going to stay here till, you know, till 330 as you feel more questions feel free to raise your hand, and I'll call you. Yeah, so feel free to ask questions. Again, thank you so much for being part of this workshop and feel free to reach out to me. If you have any questions, if you need support through the LGBT Center, feel free to reach out to me. And I really enjoyed the workshop today. And I thank you for the San Francisco public library for hosting this and provide providing this great sort of resources to people in San Francisco. Absolutely thank you so much. Yeah, no problem. Again, I'm going to stay till three. Should I just say stay till 330 just any questions again about anything. Can we have a meeting, a zoom meeting or in person meeting. I would ask you so I believe Christie is going to share my slide with everyone who registered the workshop and then on the slide there is a my content information. So you can definitely always reach out to me through my email and we can talk about how we can provide further support to you. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, again I Chris. Oh, sorry Christie's not here. Yeah, I don't think she is here. You know if you have any library questions I can try to help you. Yeah, I guess I was thinking Christie probably would send my slide to people, right. And so they have my contact because I didn't share my contact on the chat. Well your contact is right there so hopefully if they wrote it down they can put that in the chat but yes I will talk to Christie tomorrow and see if we can send all the participants a follow up email along with the slides and anything else that folks are looking for. Again, yes thank you for for all being here was a weird one when the building evacuated. I hope everything's okay in the library but I have someone raise the hand just want to quickly probably answer their question. Thank you. Thank you for presentation Eddie. I have a question when it comes to failure and trying again. If you have a business plan if you're proposing business plans to different, you know, investors or banks or for loans and things like that. And they keep shutting down. At what point do we do you feel we should change our direction versus our approach, or just keep running into the wall so we both throw. I think you should always actually think about, you know, how do you adjust your approach, but I would, you know, I think it's important to understand why, like, in terms of like bang or invest or why they eject your reject idea. Personally, if I really strongly believe and that's that's one thing I found about, you know, just from the small business owner I help. I feel like there is one kind of small business owner I really admire is that it doesn't matter who tell them what they will keep pushing forward. And a lot of these are the ones actually succeed, you know, people will tell them they're crazy business ideas crazy. They do not care because they really believe what they do and they will keep pushing forward. So, does it make sense. I don't have a lot of context like why people will reject your idea. I will ask for feedback, you know, if I wish you I will ask for feedback why do they think this is not viable business because remember I mentioned earlier, 80% small business fail in the first three years, but I actually want to rephrase that I think the more accurate way to say it as many of them not a few percent of small business fail, a lot of them just quit. Right. You could really just make adjustments to your business and become a successful business, but a lot of people just decided to quit. So, does it make sense. Definitely makes sense. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Eddie, there is a question, the mute button. Elena, are you able to. She are you able to type your question into the chat. I see that you can't disable the phone. And so I remember. Yeah, so the Christine has had started recording as long as we started a program so I think Christine has the recording. And she can definitely send it out and I will email her my slide as well so she can record send out a slide and the recording the same time to people who register for the course program if they, you know, if they wanted to come back and watch it again. Thank you, Eddie. That's really generous of you. Yeah, I mean, it's not a problem at all. Elena, I could not unmute I hope pretty sure Eddie would not be opposed to sharing what he recorded. Yeah, I think the only challenges that she want us to send to her, like, right now, which probably not. I'm not able to do it just because I don't have access to any one of your content only Christine Christine have and I can send the my slide to her and I don't think she's going to have time. She's able to send everything out today. Oh yeah, our library has closed so I am joining you from a remote location. Okay, let me now say by tomorrow night was fine. Okay. Yeah, so again, I don't have access to everyone's contact information. So I'll send it to a Christine and she will forward for for for everyone. Great. Yeah, so 331. Thank you all for a being part of this workshop and thank you again, San Francisco Library. Thank you Eddie and thank you library community for being patient during all this this and Eddie thank you for just taking on over we appreciate you. And we you know we live by the show must go on motto virtual land. Yeah, and I will to follow up with Kirsty and give her all of the great feedback and that you all want all this information I will tell her. All right friends and Eddie you have control so you're going to go ahead and end it. Sorry one second. Yes, I'm going to stop.