Personal Business Plan

Madison Szuminsky

Mission Statement

Company Me is dedicated to including diverse, trustworthy, and hardworking employees while also promoting a safe and healthy work environment.

Business Environment

For Company Me, I will be competing in the management industry with other managers and business students. As of 2017, there are approximately 1,680 sales managers employed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Globally, there is expected to be a 7% job outlook percentage between the years 2016-2026, which is as fast as average. By 2026, there is expected to be 414,400 jobs available. In addition, although online shopping is on the rise, “brick and mortar” stores are competing by still offering quality customer service (“11-2022 Sales Managers,” 2011).  In terms of supply and demand, if more firms that require managers enter the market, then there will be an increase in demand for sales managers. The same can also be said if there is a decrease in firms, which would decrease the demand for sales managers. Also, if this continues to be a high paying industry in comparison to other industries, more workers will enter the sales management business. If there is higher pay in another market that can easily be entered by those with management degrees, then sales managers will leave the management market and travel to the higher paying market.

Entrepreneurship and Strategy

            An entrepreneur is someone who “…identifies a business opportunity and assumes the risks of creating and running a business to take advantage of it” (Collins, 2017). One advantage of being an entrepreneur is being able to control your lifestyle and have endless learning opportunities. Some disadvantages include a large time commitment and having many undesirable duties (Collins 2017). When you are selling yourself, you are basically an entrepreneur.  As CEO of Company Me, some challenges that I expect to face in promoting and selling Product Me is the risk of many other competitors who may be very similar to myself. When companies are hiring business managers, they look for strong analytical skills, communication skills, customer service skills, and leadership skill (“11-2022 Sales Managers,” 2011). Fortunately for me, all of my current and past jobs have incorporated these skills into my job and I have an extensive background in all of these skills. In terms of my strategies for starting as an entrepreneur, I would talk to my father. My father currently owns his own business and is an entrepreneur. I would consult with him about the pros and cons of having his own business and receive feedback from him. I believe having this background knowledge, as well as confidence and my background will help me to stand out against competitors and sell Product Me.

Management

            When you’re a general manager, there are many tasks that must be performed such as planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. As the general manager of Company Me, I would take many steps to make sure I could efficiently manage Company Me. For planning, I would start off by networking as much as I could so that I could understand and have examples of what I should do as a manager. As Kevin Granville states in his NY Times article, networking “provides a strong medium for a vibrant career and a cushion for when the unplanned happens” (Granville, n.d.). This would allow me to plan for the future and get my foot in the door with many companies. To organize Company Me, I would write a resume and keep track of experience so that future employers could see what I can do. I would also take control of my time to make sure my priorities are in check. For directing, which is said to be the most important step of the management process, I would make sure I set myself up for success with correct guidance. I would make sure I could delegate my time correctly to tasks and look for inspiration. For control, I would set standards for myself and take action to make sure I meet those standards.

To manage myself, as the HBR puts it, I will make sure to “place [myself] where I can make the greatest contribution to my organizations and communities” (Drucker, 2017). I would make sure I am taking the opportunities presented to me, and not just pursue something that I may love. Motivating myself is usually not hard because I enjoy competition, therefore I would set goals and expectations for myself in comparison to other business management students and make sure I exceeded. For making sure I was attracting the right industries, I would make sure I did my research on those industries. I would make sure that my past work experience and skills matched those of the industry that I was looking at to make sure it is the right fit for me and what I would like to do. As previously stated, I think competition is important and I enjoy competing against others because I believe that it makes me work harder, which is how I would set my goals. I do work well in teams, which I attribute to being able to delegate tasks to each persons’ strengths and that would allow the team to succeed. In the article titled “7 Traits of Super-Productive People”, it states that being able to anticipate and solve problems, which allows teams to accomplish work more efficiently and be able to work around roadblocks (Folkman, 2018). In terms of communicating with coworkers and bosses, I always make a problem known as soon as it happens so that we could work towards a solution.

Marketing

            As CMO of Company Me, to promote Product Me, I would most likely use promotion mix, which is how you communicate with customers. Promotion mix may include “… advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and publicity” (Collins, 2017). I would most likely use personal selling to promote Product Me because I would be trying to convince future employees to ‘buy’ my products, which are my abilities and experience. My marketing mix or four P’s include product, price, place, and promoting. My product would be my skills and abilities that an employer would want to buy. The price of my product would be around $120,000 annually or $58 an hour. For placement, I would make sure that I was allowing myself to travel to different networking events so that I am making my product available to many ‘buyers’. Lastly, for promoting, I would continuously update my LinkedIn profile to inform potential employers that I am available for them to ‘buy’. I also believe I am a pretty good sales person; therefore, I would use personal selling to sell myself to employers. To attract potential customers, I would talk about my experience and what qualifications I have that would make me a great fit for the job and make customers want to purchase the product. To search engine optimize my LinkedIn page, I would use key words that a lot of employers look for. I would also use strategic phrases that, again, buyers would look for. These are steps that I would use to market Product Me.

Accounting

            My hypothetical balance sheet below represents one month of my assets, liabilities, and equity:

Assets

Cash……… $1,000

Accounts Receivable……… $8,320

Total assets……………… $9,320

Liabilities

Accounts Payable………… $500

Other Liabilities……………$500

Total liabilities……………… $1000

Stockholders’ Equity

Common Stock…………. $4,000

Retained Earnings………... $4,320

Total stockholders’ equity…. $8,320

Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity…… $9,320

My assets equal my liabilities plus equity, which means my balance sheet is in check. To manage my investments, I would most likely use an investment app to help keep track of where my money is going and when I can be expecting to receive money based off of my investments. For my financial plan, I would start by creating a projected sales forecast. I would also create an expenses budget and set up a statement of cash flows. This will help me determine where my inflows and outflows of cash would be.

Information Systems & Operations

            One information system tool that I would most likely use is a Decision support system (DSS). This would help me to decide what would be the best choice to make using the ‘what-if’ method (“ICT,” n.d.). I would also use a knowledge management systems (KMS), which would help distribute knowledge through PowerPoints, Microsoft Word, and spreadsheets (“ICT,” n.d.). This would help to optimize my productivity and make me very efficient in distributing information. I would use this on my computer to help analyze the data I collect and use it to help me reach out to other companies and to help make decisions on what companies I would like to work for.

Works Cited

11-2022 Sales Managers. (2018, March 30). Retrieved November 13, 2018, from https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes112022.htm

Drucker, P. F. (2016, October 17). Managing Oneself. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from https://hbr.org/2005/01/managing-oneself

Folkman, J. Z. (2018, July 08). 7 Traits of Super-Productive People. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from https://hbr.org/2018/04/7-traits-of-super-productive-people?autocomplete=true

Granville, K. (n.d.). How to Manage Your Career. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/guides/business/manage-your-career

            ICT: Types of information | tutor2u Business. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2018, from https://www.tutor2u.net/business/reference/ict-types-of-information