The Blueprint is a Strategic Review that ensures the entrepreneur and advisor mutually understand the business and its potential for growth. Key aspects and assumptions are logic-tested to develop a coherent strategy, including:
Unique Selling Proposition or Core Brand Differentiation. This gets to the essential value of the brand, the elements of the entrepreneur’s passion and skill as translated into the business, and potential areas where the business stands out from the competition. Once this is clear, strategic decisions regarding the business can take place with cogency. While this analysis takes into consideration market aspects (for example, how the brand is understood or presented), it is primarily an interior-oriented review.
Market Analysis & Segmentation. A wider market review considers both where the overall business exists within the competitive landscape, and where each revenue generating product and/or service confronts consumer options within market trends.
Pivotal Assets/Core Strengths: A review of assets than can be leveraged for success includes not only financial or “balance sheet” assets, but also human resources, unique access possibilities or rights, networks than can be leveraged, etc.
On a stand-alone basis, the Strategic Review articulates the entrepreneur’s vision across all platforms, including external marketing and branding (web presentation, product descriptions, public relations, etc.) and internal team management expectations and targeted recruitment. It would also form the bulk of any future business plan.
The Perspective
The Perspective outlines the key areas of growth heretofore identified and examines their potential impact on the entrepreneur’s future success. Whether these options be multiple or mutually exclusive, the analysis includes:
Strategic Value Proposition. Each opportunity is assessed in terms of how it affects the business and its market position, its contribution to brand differentiation and how integral it is to the business’s overall strategy.
A Cost-Analysis will include both a budget (initial and on-going costs), and line-item revenue expectations required to reach break-even as well as generate an acceptable financial return.
The Path
The Path is the Strategic and/or Investment Plan, a recommended course of action based on a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the growth opportunity and its potential impact, within the current realities of the enterprise, the market, and available (or likely) financing.