In this instructional video, J. Anthony Allen—musician, PhD, professor, and serial entrepreneur—introduces the third module of his Music Business Fundamentals series, focusing on how to write a business plan for music‑related ventures. He explains why a business plan matters, especially for attracting investors, and outlines the key sections such as the executive summary, company overview, revenue model, market analysis, and staffing. Allen walks viewers through a hands‑on, step‑by‑step process, using a sample company (Slam Academy) and providing templates that participants fill in as they follow along. He emphasizes that a well‑crafted plan clarifies the creator’s vision, defines customers, and maps out how money will be made, making the otherwise “boring” task both painless and valuable for musicians and other creative entrepreneurs.
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Everybody has their thing. Whether you make things, sell things, build things, play things, we all work hard at our thing. While some of us are happy to do our thing on someone else's terms, a lot of us feel the need to forge our own path. I'm a musician by training. I even earned a PhD in music. In the early 2000s, while the record companies were collapsing, I was teaching myself to start companies. I'm now a college professor with a number of successful companies and a few flops. I'm excited to share with you how I've learned what I know and all my experiences along the way. My job is to share what I've learned in a simple, understandable way, because I believe anyone can turn their thing into a successful business. Sam. But they need to know you have a business plan. Most of the time, they're going to read it and they're going to scrutinize it. But there's a part of the business plan. It's the first part, but it'll be the last part we talk about, and that'll make sense in a minute. It's called the executive summary. It's kind of like the elevator pitch. It's just a little bit of text that says what this business is about, what you're going to do to make money and how you're going to make it. The investors are going to read that, and if they are satisfied with that, they will continue reading it. If they are not, pizza by the slice shop. But you should use your actual business and fill this out with me. So company overview, business name, let's call it, maybe list it as unfilled or whatever. So for Slam Academy, this is it. So we have. The way we're kind of set up is we have me, we have a cco. This is essentially my main partner, and he's in charge of our quality control and essentially our product, our classes. So we call him Chief Content Officer. That's kind of a term we stole from Netflix. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Music Business Fundamentals Part three, Writing business plans. Now, if you were just watching those intro clips and thinking this is all business stuff, what does this have to do with me as a musician? Well, like, a lot. So this isn't going to be the class that helps you sell more albums. Unless your goal is to start your own record label, figure out your own distribution, figure out how to set up a company to get your album on itunes or Spotify or anything like that. Because you, as an artist by yourself, can't do it. You need to have A company set up to do that. This is what this class is about. So throughout this whole series of music business fundamentals classes, we've been talking about how to set up the company. It was kind of in the first part. The second part was about how to fund that company to get some startup capital. In this class, we're going to be talking about how to write a business plan. Now, if you're thinking, I assume writing a business plan is the most boring thing on earth, then you are correct. But I am going to show you how to do it in as painless and as fun of a way as possible. There's a lot of reasons you want to write a business plan. The biggest one is if you're trying to lure an investor into your company. But there are a lot of other reasons to do it. And one of the best reasons is for you, because writing a business plan really helps you get down to the nitty gritty of what you're trying to accomplish. How you're gonna make money if there's money there to be made, who your customers are, how you're gonna market, who's gonna be on your staff. Every tiny little detail of your company is outlined in this thing. So we're gonna do it in this class. I'm gonna give you all the documents you need to do it. You're gonn with me and we're going to go through making an entire business plan together. So follow along with the class, take it slow, do what I do and fill in. It'll take some thinking. You'll have to pause for a night and kind of figure out how you want to answer a particular question. But if you stick with it, by the end of the class, you will have a very professional business plan done, all set up for your music company. Okay, now, throughout the class, we might not always focus on music. We might talk about other businesses as an analogy for your business, your music or art based business. That's totally okay. So just stick with it. Trust me, there's a method to my madness. So all that being said, let's dive in.
