Entrepreneurship, Second Edition

7.2. The Story Model

One of the major goals of business planning is to attract various stakeholders and convince them of the potential of your business. Therefore, you need to keep in mind how these stakeholders will interpret your plan. The guiding principle is that you are writing a story, and all good stories have a theme—a unifying thread that ties the setting, characters, and plot together. If you think about the most successful businesses in America, they all have well-publicized themes. When you hear their taglines, you instantly gain insight into the businesses. For example, when you hear "absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, most people think of Federal Express (FedEx) and package delivery. On top of that, they think of reliability, which is the quality FedEx wants to embody in the minds of its customers. Similarly, "Just do it" is intricately linked to Nike and the image of athletic excellence (see Figure 7.2).

A tagline is a sentence, or even a fragment of a sentence, that summarizes the essence of your business. It's the theme that every sentence, paragraph, page, and diagram in your business plan should adhere to—the unifying idea of your story. One useful tip is to put your tagline in a footer that runs on the bottom of every page. As you are writing, if the section doesn't build on, explain, or otherwise directly relate to the tagline, it most likely isn't a necessary component to the business plan. Rigorous adherence to the tagline facilitates writing ...