Why Starting Your Business Doesn't Always Start With a Business Plan

Hi everyone, my name is Whitney Hedden and I am the CEO of 19th and Park, a creative execution agency, as well as the founder of The Life Currency, a digital educational platform which is set up specifically to foster mentorship, professional and personal growth for men and women between the ages of 18 to 35. When you're starting a business, it's not always about you. It's not always about what you want and how you want it and how you see it fit. It's really about what is the best opportunity to service your clientele. Starting a business is meeting a need, and the factors that you have to do to determine that is really about, is this going to make money? Is this something that people are asking for, or am I gonna have to convince people that they need it? And am I fulfilling a gap that is so wide that I'll have So many people, consumers, places, things, clients coming to me. Who are the people that you would directly be trying to serve, and what are they looking for? Once you're able to answer those questions, you're halfway there. If you can understand where the need is, then you can understand what the purpose is, and you can attach your business model to that. One of the things I think that it's always an anomaly when it comes to business is that if there's competition, if somebody's already doing something, then that should deter me from doing it. In reality. Seeing somebody already doing something, seeing something already be successful is determining that it's a viable product. You are now in a marketplace to not only compete for those clients, but also bring in new clientele and introduce them to a product. As a marketer, I believe that you should conduct research from your consumer. Consult with somebody who's done it before. People can only give you advice and base situations off of where they've been. And it's not to say that friends and colleagues and people don't have your best interests in mind. Sometimes they have no idea that what they're doing is projecting their fears and their insecurities or their failures onto you and your idea. And that can be very detrimental, especially in the beginning stages of trying to create something. If anything I can say to you guys today is go outside of your friend group, go outside of the people that you know and the people that you speak to every single day to just ask certain questions. You're going to have to step outside of that group to get the answers that you're looking for. When we're talking about business planning, it makes sense to come down and put it on paper and understand what it is that you want to happen. But don't get so caught up in the vision and what you're writing down that you don't— you forget to do the actions. There's so many great ideas in the world, but the world is measured by great executions. I started one of my businesses as a hobby simply because I was trying to fulfill a gap for myself, which was financially. And I was like, I can take these skills and I can take this opportunity and I can create the same thing over here while still executing my job, which I loved. I was never one of those people that felt like I had to be an entrepreneur. And I decided to step out on my own. It was divine. It was right place, right time, right things. And I had to jump. That's not the case for everybody. But for me personally, I think if I sat back and I planned everything out and I wrote everything down and I made sure that all these things were done, I don't know if I would ever have done it. However, what I did make sure that I made sense of is like, was I making money in this to make that jump outside of like going from my full-time job? Like, was this something I felt like I could dedicate time and days? This is about your life. Think about what type of life you want to live. Think about what you want. How much free time do you want? Do you want children? Are you married? Do you want to be married? What does that look like in the construct of what you're creating? That all is a factor. In everything, as you're thinking about revenue, as you're thinking about branding, as you're trying to get a logo, as you're trying to get a website, don't forget what you want in that. And those are the types of modern business planning you want to make sure you equate for. Something else that goes along with business planning and stuff like that is it changes. You change. What you want changes. What you do changes. How you live changes. Just like we see today in a COVID world. Your business, your mindset, your ability has completely shifted across these different narratives and like what can happen around that. So how do you prepare for that? You don't. You make sure that it's working and it's operable and you make sure that you can keep going. What is difficult is some of the systems that are put in place specifically around being a woman, being under 30 years old, Being Black, being able to get business loans, being able to get credit for your business. That goes for all of these different types of obstacles that are put in place as a whole, not for me as a businesswoman, but for Black people in general. Those are the things where you have to figure out how do you fight a battle where you don't even get the opportunity to speak up for yourself. Those are the times where people say like, I have to be Twice as good or 10 times as great because you have to fight things that you can't even see. That's the hard part when you're owning a business and you're putting up proposal after proposal after proposal. You have no idea why they're telling you no. All you know is that you have to just keep going. And those are the obstacles and challenges that you're going to face being actionable. People are going to tell you no. People are going to hate it. And you're going to have to be the one to stand up for yourself. That is how you stay afloat. That's how you don't get discouraged. That's how you win.