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Chronicles Of A 50+ Entrepreneur: Mapping Our Business Plan

Jeff Tidwell
Former Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Tidwell covers startups and entrepreneurship.
This article is more than 5 years old.

In the previous articles in this series I have written about the beginnings of my company ‘Next For Me.’

Next For Me publishes news and resources for 50+ audiences. We host events across the country to discuss work, our communities, and what’s next.

The Growing Scope

It’s been a while since I did some mind-mapping of what we’re up to. Using different tools and approaches brings new perspective. Being a visual person it is especially useful to me to look at things in a larger way with a simple set of index cards that can be moved around. Sometimes I do it on a big piece of paper and create some color schemes for different contexts.

...the subtlety of having pen and paper and just the kinesthetic touch and feel of paper, where you can play with it, you know it’s informal – there’s just something about it. There’s something about that and I would put that in the same category as a white board. It’s like the informality of it itself actually adds to some of the creativity and inclusiveness of it and lowering the barrier to entry doesn’t have to be so right to be able to do that.” - David Allen on mind-mapping

Things have been moving fast and I find this time to think creatively useful to pull myself from the doing stage to the dreaming and planning stage. It also drives organizational thinking so we know how we should be thinking about our efforts with our very limited resources.

This is how it shook out today.

Jeff Tidwell

This is hard to see, I know, but I’ll break it down below.

In the center is the entity: Next For Me, I added our vision as well to keep my eye on the prize.

A Catalyst for Transformation

From that shakes out the high-level business units to support the vision:

  1. Business
  2. Editorial
  3. Resources
  4. Community
  5. Development
  6. Marketing

I'll explain what comes from each and how it drives us to make money.

Business

Most of this is left up to me for now. I see it as the relationships and obligations we have committed to:

  1. Investors: This includes existing investors and future investors. There is communication and tracking involved. I want to keep my current investors updated on how we’re spending their money and what the results are. I’m tracking a large number of future investors through ongoing communication and meetings 1. I update them from time to time so that we stay on their radar.
  2. Advisors: I communicate with our advisors at least once a month and sometimes more. These are very concise emails that bring them up to date and I always conclude with how they can help.
  3. Accounting: This is the very last thing I ever want to do. I do know how the spending is going and where we are with the budget. To make it easy on myself I keep a very accurate calendar and have a filing system that keeps any documents digital or otherwise easily available for when I do meet up with my accountant. It helps that I’ve had the same accountant for over a decade and he knows what he’s getting when I walk in the door.
  4. Legal: This is ‘just enough’ at this stage, but it’s about to become more of a burden. I completely trust our counsel and I know he has me covered for the many things that I don’t understand. We speak when we need to and I copy him on the investor and advisor updates.

Editorial:

This is evolving and requires some planning attention, as it will bleed into Development, Community and Marketing.

  1. Original: Our interviews and articles that originate with us. We also aggregate news on our topics and edit and put our spin on them.
  2. Contributors: We’ve started with republishing articles from our partners and like-minded colleagues we’re meeting. We’re about to begin giving some subscribers access to the system to publish original articles and stories. This will likely morph to include local news that come from our meetups.
  3. Podcasts: As well as our weekly newsletter podcast summaries, we are recording more of our interviews. Having them in the wild and on all the major platforms helps with search engine optimization and appearing to be everywhere.
  4. Video: We also create video collages of our weekly newsletters using the audio from the podcasts and imagery from our articles. Starting with our recent public events, we’ll include interviews featured at the events.

Resources:

You can think of resources as the output from our Editorial efforts that are packaged for downloads. They will also become a profit center when the output can be purchased or sponsored.

  1. Guides: We have already published a Job Guide and will publish a Social Media guide for those involved in a transition to a new job or on an entrepreneurial journey. We approach this through a series of articles that then get assembled into something that can be downloaded.
  2. Training: Take the guides from above and package them into a curriculum for self-guided courses, workshops and events.
  3. Series: The guides and courses start as a series of articles or other media. It’s worth noting that some are also published on other platforms such as LinkedIn, Medium, other publications (the exchange with other publishing partners) and some pieces here on Forbes.
  4. Research: We are tracking what we learn with our interviews and in-person events. We will publish trend reports (the first in January) and will convene communities of research for marketers looking to understand our market. The public research will have sponsors.

Community:

  1. Online: This is in the planning stages and it’s something that our team has vast experience executing. It will come from the events and local groups who are self-forming. We’ll begin with some high level online discussion boards, nurture them and see what forms naturally. We are also in talks with a partner to develop discussions around the topics they are addressing. This may be our first bit of revenue.
  2. Offline: Our events are the public piece and they are taking on a life of their own. We’re gathering more partners with each event and can imagine them getting much larger with a revenue stream from entry fees, sponsorships and lead gen.
  3. Local: These will evolve from the public events and intimate meetups organized by our readers. We’re supporting the meetups with materials, giveaways, schwag. They provide stories, photos, audio and video. Active local members will have the option of publishing to our platform and running discussions related to their areas.
  4. National: Thinking big here - BIG events on a national scale

Development:

While we try to keep the tech lightweight, there are improvements we can make to be more effective and drive greater engagement with some basic refinements.

  1. Resend: We’ve had 10% improvements on opens and clicks on the newsletters. Automating this function for subscribers who didn’t open on the first send has been on the list for a while.
  2. Analytics: The numbers we are tracking are handled in an ad-hoc approach from a few different sources. Generating regular reports will help in forecasting and will become a requirement as our fundraising becomes more formalized.
  3. A/B Tests: We are making assumptions about what drives engagement, but we can become much more precise in testing what moves the readers to engage.
  4. UX and Design: It pains me to see some of the flows and presentation of our content. It is one of those things that I’ve had to find peace with. Our few resources have had to stay focused on publishing and production. With the completion of our brand work it will be a good time to fix some of the obvious bugs and give the whole experience a face lift.

Marketing:

  1. Brand: We conducted a comprehensive brand architecture exercise with experts from our connections world-class marketing firms and driven by our advisors who have so much experience in this kind of thing. We’re now working with a designer to visualize the output of that exercise. Brand, logo, colors, editorial design, etc.
  2. Partners: This has been a magic bullet for us, multiplying our efforts and exposure. We’ll accelerate these relationships and expand on those already in place.
  3. Sponsors: We can’t sell advertising against the raw numbers we have currently, but we can engage sponsors to have a paid presence for our events and the research we are conducting. We are executing on a plan with a few categories of potential sponsors in some obvious silos such as Financial Services, Insurance, etc.
  4. Growth: This is something we’re experimenting with. We know we can always fall back on Facebook to get subscribers, we’ve done it before. We’d like for it to happen more organically. We have some evidence that we can do it through other mechanisms and through buzz with the events.

A Map To Drive With

This exercise delivered plenty of actions to take and new areas to explore. I may go in again and assign ownership and tasks for each area. I might include some flags for those categories that are revenue generating and riff on those. We’re ready to make some money and this map will be useful in guiding our efforts. 

Previous articles in the series:

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website. 
Jeff Tidwell
Jeff Tidwell