This whole idea of a Business Plan is far more than a way for you to secure loans from lenders, although it can do that, but much more importantly it sets a STRATEGY within which you will set up and operate your business. Your STRATEGY and your BUSINESS PLAN will be involved with the following areas, and many others: 1. Strategy 2. Marketing 3. Sales 4. Advertising 5. People 6. Legal 7. Office 8. Operations You may not get rich in propagating reef animals. The best way that I know to make a small fortune in this is to start with a large fortune. BUT, it is possible to make a good living and to enjoy yourself along the way, if you do that you are way ahead of most of the worlds' population and are blessed among all mankind. Before I get into discussing these individually, I want to introduce my own list ( some of which are not to be found in any MBA program), for success in a Small Business. I call these 'The Laws for Small Business Success" 1. Have fun!!!!! 2.Have a Plan & a Budget, stay within it. 3.Control Expenses, they get away from you. 4.Watch your CONTRIBUTION MARGINS(See previous articles on this) 5.Avoid Expensive Advertising, its wasteful and nonproductive. Concentrate on your own market segment. 6.Stay away from 'friendly salespeople', they are not your friends. 7.Treat customers right, they are your biggest asset! This is the third biggest item after fun and the next one on this list. 8.Treat yourself right! This is called survival, work healthful hours, get enough rest, enjoy your family, keep things in perspective, count your blessings and enjoy them, work six days and rest one, give something back to your community and your country. 9.Have fun!!!!!! Most of these I will touch on as we go along in the discussion. Going back to our first list of area to become aware of and to incorporate into your Business Strategy, and your Business Plan I will begin with the number one area, your overall Strategy. Strategy includes your personal ideas for pursuing your objectives, it includes your Business Plan your buying and selling strategy and your total sales and marketing plan. Without any of these thought out ahead you cannot succeed, you MUST know how to pursue and to accomplish each one of these areas. Strategy includes your total operations, manufacture, production, inventory and sales, and follow-up on sales. Marketing includes how you are going to position yourself within your chosen market, who that market is and how you are going to reach them, planning any publicity and advertising, mailers, internet approaches, your Point of Sales, Trade Shows and your competition. and much, much more. Sales includes your choices, who you sell to and how do you sell to them, Face to Face, Telemarketing,Internet, Yellow Pages, all are good choices for a Reef Propagation Enterprise and are ones that you need to look into and chose one or more. Few operations are going to be able to use all in the beginning, or even later. Advertising includes your Media Choices, Direct Mailing, Yellow Pages, Internet, Trade Magazines. People is your leadership people of your company, and any employees, their backgrounds and suitability to this type of enterprise, and their ability to do what their job description entails, and the size of the work force. Money includes how to get it, your accounting, projections for using it, credit, purchasing, taxes, handling money problems, and retaining it. Legal includes the legal structure that you chose to operate under, Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, S Corporation or full Corporation, business practices including fair selling and claims, and tax obligations. Office includes how you plan on handling the 'paper work', whether a home or separate office, time management, customer service and contact, and time management and time management and time management . Other then negative cash flow Time Management is the singles biggest cruncher of Small Businesses, not structuring your time properly, you MUST deal with the important things first, prioritize things, and then let nothing slide. Operations includes how you function daily, working to a schedule towards a weekly workload accomplishment. Every day cannot be exactly like the day before or the day after, you must set a goal to accomplish for that week, if it is to sell 10 boxes of corals a week then you must make provision to make the cuttings to place on rocks, grow the cuttings out, make or acquire the rocks, care for the brood stock, order operating supplies, make sales,take orders, contacting customers. do daily maintenance of your facility and the livestock, and a myriad of other activities, without a weekly workload schedule and structure you cannot succeed in a full time business, you MUST have a work schedule, and stick to as best as you can. Stop and smell the roses as you go along, planning your activities and structuring your weeks' work will let you enjoy those new xenia and star colonies. This is why I stated above in 'The Laws', that you must make HAVING FUN an integral part of your Business Strategy, without that it will wear you down and make your dream into a drudge. Stop and smell the roses as you go along, planning your activities and structuring your weeks' work will let you enjoy those new xenia and star colonies. If this is not fun for you do not do it!!! Find something else that you enjoy doing, as I said last month, this kind of farming, and farming it is requires you to have a PASSION for it, if you don't have a PASSION for it, find something else to do for a living. You will not get rich in propagating reef animals. The best way that I know to make a small fortune in this is to start with a large fortune. BUT, it is possible to make a good living and to enjoy yourself along the way, if you do that you are way ahead of most of the worlds' population and are blessed among all mankind. Exercise reasonable judgment, plan your actions and proceed carefully and step by step and you will enjoy yourself, and make a good living for you and your family. And, you will be taking pressure off of the worlds' reefs with every coral that you have raised yourself and sold. Such a deal! Making a living and helping the environment to survive! Few people in our troubled world can lay claim to this. Think about it. The actual BUSINESS PLAN is a pretty straight forward document that structures your BUSINESS STRATEGY and PLANS into a simple readable format. Planning, researching, and writing a BUSINESS PLAN is an exercise that will structure your own thoughts and plans into a format that will enable you to succeed. I am not going to be discussing making cuttings, making rocks, caring for brood stock, or anything else related to the mechanics of dealing with reef animals in this discussion, what it is going to do is to show you how to organize yourself, your thoughts, actions and resources into a BUSINESS OPERATING STRATEGY that will enable you to make a living for yourself in your own REEF PROPAGATION ENTERPRISE. Every marine hatchery, or similar enterprise that has failed in the last twenty years has been in violation of the things I have discussed so far and am going to further discuss in this. Think about that. And, every one that exists and is staying in business is doing so because they are accomplishing what I am discussing here. There is no 'magic wand' to success in business, just following, or violating, the basics of business life is what makes what happen to happen. You either make enough income to remain solvent, pay your bills, and return an adequate income for you, or you do not, it all depends on whether you follow these basic precepts. or, are independently wealthy and can spend whatever you want, in which case this is all irrelevant to you. If you are not wealthy then what I discuss here is relevant to your starting and remaining in your own business. The BUSINESS PLAN is divided into 15-18 separate discussion areas, based on which format you elect to use. I am going to use a 'condensation' of my own, which is about 32 pages long. Each separate area should be discussed in your plan enough for a reader to understand what you are talking about, but most importantly, so that YOU know thoroughly that area and know how you are going to deal with it before you have to deal with it. I have condensed mine to provide a sample for you to understand what is included and which you can use to adapt one for yourself from. Just remember that each category needs a thorough explanation of the category and the realities of it and how you will deal with them. Good Business Plans can be as little as 8-10 pages, and much longer then mine for many enterprises. It all depends on the requirements of the Business Enterprise. There is an old cliche that says " Failure to plan is planning to fail ". That is why we have BUSINESS PLANS, so that we will not fail. Typically, once written, a BUSINESS PLAN would be kept in a binder, or folder, it should be the plan that you envision for your company for the next 3-5 years of the business life. If, you intend to look for outside financing then the BUSINESS PLAN would be an integral part of your loan application, and for a Small Business Administration(SBA) Loan it is a requirement. Once written it does not get put on a shelf, it is used and all of your business decisions should be made in accordance with it, or it should be rewritten. If, you write a business plan, then put it 'on the shelf' and ignore it, you are in all likelihood going to be in another line of business in a year or so. If you do not follow a sound BUSINESS PLAN you will not be in business for very long. I spent almost a month putting my plan together, researching the various areas, and figuring out how I was going to deal with each of the various areas, I began it last spring, and it is very close now to my original plan as I have stuck with it and followed it. By formulating my plan I set myself a plan that I knew that I could follow and was doable for me with my interests and capabilities. It is useless to formulate a plan that you cannot follow, that is a recipe for disaster. Be honest with yourself about your interests, skills and capabilities, and weaknesses, and you will write a BUSINESS PLAN for YOU that will enable you to be successful. Take it to an expert that you trust and discuss it with them, I would suggest a lawyer or Certified Public Accountant (CPA). If your expert advisor has a good picture of your Business Plan from what you have written then you have laid it out well, but, do not get discouraged if they point out problem areas or weaknesses, that is what you are going to them for, to get a good critique of your plan and areas where you need to improve it. The BUSINESS PLAN is an organized step by step vision of your enterprise, go at it this way and you will succeed. My plan follows, abridged and condensed. I have not included the financial forms towards the end as they do not transmit well by Email, refer to previous articles in this series for this information and how to configure it. CONTENTS 1. SUMMARY 2. THE CONCEPT 3. CURRENT SITUATION 4. THE MARKET 5. MARKET SEGMENTATION 6. CONSUMER ANALYSIS 7. COMPETITION 8. PRODUCT FEATURES / BENEFITS 9. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS 10. POSITIONING 11. ADVERTISING/PROMOTION 12. SALES 13. RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 14. OPERATIONS 15. KEY PEOPLE 16. FINANCIALS 17. PAYBACK / FUTURE SUMMARY AND SAMPLE PLAN YOUR COMPANY is a Sole Proprietorship, later to be a Chapter S Corporation founded to engage in the captive breeding and propagation of marine reef animals for sale to marine aquaria dealers. The products consist of marine reef fish, corals and invertebrates currently primarily imported from existing wild tropical reefs. The product mix consists of about two dozen species currently under propagation and others to be added for a solid core mix of attractive products to the marine dealers and their customers. YOUR COMPANY operates as a wholesaler/distributor to stores and does not engage in retail operations. top of next column

THE CONCEPT YOUR COMPANY will focus on the propagation of those reef animals that make the bulk of retail sales in Corals, Invertebrates and Fish for the Marine Keeping Hobby. Through focusing on a particular market segment and utilizing the advantages of local propagation YOUR COMPANY will enable its targeted market segment to supply their customers without adversely impacting on the wild REEF ENVIRONMENT by taking organisms from the wild reef through destructive collecting practices. Captive bred populations of reef organisms have been shown to be hardier, better equipped to survive and breed under captive aquaria conditions and enjoy longer life spans in captivity then wild caught specimens. YOUR COMPANY will capitalize on the state of the art COMMERCIAL AQUACULTURE TECHNIQUES to propagate their products. Additionally, a localized targeted market segment will profit from one- on- one regular contact with YOUR COMPANY to receive regular servicing of their accounts on an individual basis. Local propagation of the products will enable the products to be marketed at a competitive basis to wild caught specimens. Individual delivery to the stores, or store pickup of the products will insure personal service and control over their products by the stores. Individual and personal service will ensure customer satisfaction with products and service. the Law #1 you must make HAVING FUN an integral part of your Business Strategy, without that it will wear you down and make your dream into a drudge. Stop and smell the roses as you go along, CURRENT SITUATION At present within the industry most MARINE REEF CREATURES are captured from wild reefs, through often destructive actions against the reefs or fatal injury of the specimens, then shipped through several handlers to their ultimate destination of the retailers and from there to the aquarists. YOUR COMPANY will provide specimens that have only a transfer from their rearing tanks to the retailers in place of the multiple environments the specimens are currently exposed to and shuffled through to their detriment. Market Research indicates that the MARINE REEF HOBBY is growing exponentially and has extensive growth within the last twenty years. Currently three major magazines cater to the hobby plus a wide publishing industry with regularly introduced new entries in the genre. Nationwide in the USA over 2 Billion dollars is spent yearly on the pet trade and the REEF HOBBY is growing rapidly within the industry. Within the upstate NY area there are currently over 60 active pet shops, 2/3rds of which maintain marine sales. YOUR COMPANY is privately financed without outside funding on a 'grow as we go' philosophy to minimize debt load. THE MARKET Th e Market Area targeted is primarily in the upstate NY area within an 80 mile radius of Nunda which includes the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, and Corning and a total population of over two million plus additional access to another million within the Syracuse area, another fifty miles away. Additionally, national exposure is possible through Internet Web sites and trade magazine advertising. It is anticipated that 80 percent of YOUR COMPANY sales will be through the local targeted market. A percentage of that will be realized through discounted sales to dealers who elect to drive in and pick out their own selections. MARKET SEGMENTATION Currently the Retail stores within the targeted area are of three types, sole proprietorships, multi-store mini-chains within a local area, and national based chain stores usually situated within malls. A few of the sole proprietorships are also incorporated but are free-standing stores with owner/operators. The targeted market is the owner/operated stores and the local multi-store operations. Most of the national chains have little or no MARINE PRODUCTS or the personnel with sufficient expertise to maintain them in a quality manner and expect or demand unfavorable credit policies with slow payment of deliveries. CONSUMER ANALYSIS In the last twenty years the growth of the aquarium hobby has exceeded that of any other hobby within the pet trade. Twenty years ago the expected population to maintain a pet store was expected to be at least a population of 50,000 within driving distance, now we find communities of less then 20,000 with two operating pet stores. The presence of MARINE FISH & INVERTEBRATES in these stores has expanded from 10% of revenue to over 40% of store revenue in that time. Many current pet stores are MARINE only and carry no other pet products. Disposable income for retail customers has increased within the last two decades and is expected to increase further facilitating the entry of new consumers into the MARINE HOBBY. YOUR COMPANY is positioned to be advantageously situated to supply the growing needs of MARINE RETAILERS within the targeted market area. COMPETITION There are two wholesalers / distributors with in the upstate target area, but provide half to less of most retailers needs . Many Retailers currently import most of their MARINE SPECIMENS themselves and have to deal with airline problems and high shipping costs to receive their products. Neither wholesaler currently provides captive bred organisms on any kind of regular basis. Target stores surveyed expressed an openness to local bred and raised products above imported wild caught specimens. Survivability and lower mortality with local bred specimens will enhance this openness to a strong demand. Ultimately with increasing CORAL REEF COLLECTING RESTRICTIONS demand for captive bred specimens will far exceed the supply of current or future projections. Your own BUSINESS PLAN should reflect YOU and YOUR desires and YOUR plans and provide a blueprint, a road map for you to get there. Do it now, and enjoy yourself along the way. PRODUCT FEATURES/BENEFITS Captive bred MARINE REEF ORGANISMS have shown themselves to be hardier under aquaria conditions and subject to fewer imported parasites and other diseases. Additionally manmade rocks on which the corals are grown harbor no noxious pests currently introduced to aquarists' tanks from wild caught specimens, and only those organisms specifically selected for and cultured are ultimately put into the aquarists tanks thus providing them a demonstrably superior product. Additionally captive breeding techniques identify and qualitatively increase those traits that enhance an organisms ability to thrive under captive conditions in the aquarists tanks. Further captive bred specimens are selected for enhanced esthetic qualities such as color and compatibility while improved longevity is already demonstrated. Captive bred MARINE REEF SPECIMENS are demonstrably superior to the same specimens imported from the wild and already have a price advantage over wild caught specimens. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS YOUR COMPANY will enjoy a competitive advantage over wild imports through immediately available personal service in sales and delivery and contacts with the customers. The knowledge of the principals insures that the retailers inquiries on products will be quickly resolved and that the very specimens have been reared on the premises ensures a knowledge base of the specimens far beyond what an importer can tell the retailer of wild caught specimens taken through 4-5 facilities before arriving in their tanks. Many wild caught specimens are collected with cyanide or other poisons causing heavy mortalities after arrival in the dealers or aquarists tanks. This is not a problem with captive-bred specimens. Additionally short delivery transit times ensures that the products arrive in the retailers premises in a timely manner and the specimens are in peak condition. POSITIONING YOUR COMPANY is positioned with a solid core of products to provide a wide range of the best selling species of MARINE REEF SPECIMENS. In avoiding marketing to the major chains which require extensive credit arrangements and slow payments the cash flow of YOUR COMPANY will be kept current on a COD delivery basis. This insures a up to date and current cash flow. 30 day billing will be offered to selected customers after a sufficient trial time of purchases. Local access to target markets, and cash point of sale places YOUR COMPANY in an advantageous position. ADVERTISING / PROMOTIONS The major advertising effort will be through a web site with a product list and updates on new products and maintenance of the product line. The target market will receive regular mailers on new products and existing products available. Regular weekly phone calls will keep customers abreast of principals and maintain contacts and relations. A 'Yellow Pages' ad will inform new dealers of availability of YOUR COMPANY. During summer seasonal slowdowns some promotions will be enacted to raise the traditional summer slump in sales. SALES Sales will be made through initial personal visits to shops, meeting and becoming acquainted with dealers and offering initial samples of some products. Weekly telephone calls will maintain contacts with customers on a regular basis. Maintaining a current Internet Web Site will bring in out of area sales serviced through telephone and FedEx and UPS deliveries. Sales will be structured on box lot sales of corals and fish in dozen or half dozen lots. Production figures will be based on the expected weekly sales projected on a monthly and yearly basis. RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT Continual and development of new species under propagation will continue and be enhanced through interchange with other scholars, research centers and trade organizations to increase the number of captive bred species available for the trade. Additionally ongoing subsequent captive bred generations of species propagated will enhance the suitability of those species for aquaria life while continuing to minimize the demand for those species from the wild with every specimen sold to the hobby trade. Further development will be done on a patent pending system for multiple tank filtration systems for refugia. This product will be introduced as development and testing progresses for two sizes of the system.This product will be manufactured at a local off premises site under contract. OPERATIONS Through centralizing all operations at the Nunda location strong control will be maintained of all aspects of the business operations. Minimal outside labor will be utilized and that kept to delivery personnel and some cleaning operations. Through holding down labor expenses more funds will be available for the fixed costs of the operation and development of the products and product lines. Unavoidable labor costs will be assigned through contract labor rather then employees.Home office space will be utilized rather then separate free standing office space. KEY PEOPLE Key person is YOUR NAME Owner / Operator whose experience within the Pet Trade and knowledge of chosen species of the product line will form the core activities of the company. Other local area personnel knowledgeable in building trades and maintenance will from time to time be utilized as their skills are needed. All efforts will be made to achieve and maintain a high quality relationship with the customer base. FINANCIALS (deleted for transmission problems, refer to previous articles) PROFORMA PROFIT & LOSS YEARS 1,2,3 PROFORMA P&L MONTHLY YEAR 1 PROFORMA BALANCE SHEET, CURRENT YEAR, 2,3 PROFORMA CASH FLOW YEAR 1 FINANCIAL STATEMENTS NOTES FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ASSUMPTIONS PAYBACK It is anticipated that the Payback Period of the investment will be achieved within five years of operation. This will be achieved by providing a superior product at a competitive price to the competiton while maintaining a high quality customer service relationship with the targeted market. NOTES TO GARF READERS; This is GREATLY abbreviated many pages less, I eliminated much nuts and bolts information in numerous categories relating to the 'how-to' of propagation and discussion on products etc. you can find that info on other articles at this site, plus other web sites. What this is intended to illustrate is a format for writing your own BUSINESS PLAN. Your own BUSINESS PLAN should reflect YOU and YOUR desires and YOUR plans and provide a blueprint, a road map for you to get there. Do it now, and enjoy yourself along the way. I would be glad to hear from any of you on further things that you would like to hear. next month I will be providing information on a number of books, and computer programs on all that I have been talking about these last 8 months that will help you in the setting up of your very own REEF PROPAGATION ENTERPRISE. Do it! save a reef, grow your own!