recovery Plan template
Overview - Financial Projections - Expert Session
The Recovery Plan Template will help you prepare both yourself and your business for the next one to two years. It will teach you why and how to prepare an exit strategy, how to assess the wellness of your business, and how to develop specific goals for the coming year.
The real value of the recovery plan lies in utilizing the plan as part of a process for identifying the outcomes you want and need to achieve with your business, and the actions you will take to get there. Done well, the recovery plan should create a clear strategy and course of action for the business to pursue. It is designed to be completed within 1-3 hours and should be completed before moving on to financial projections. The template will be used to inform the financial projections and lessons from the Expert Section.
There are two ways to complete the recovery plan: one option is to click the button below to download a word version of the recovery plan that you can fill out on your computer or print and fill out by hand. The second option is to read through the recovery plan below and complete the exercises using a notebook.
Exit Strategy:
The business exit strategy (or exit plan) identifies how you hope to exit the business. Your exit strategy ultimately should inform the path that you will take with your business. Common exit strategies include selling the business after a certain milestone is achieved, or closing after a certain period of time, but each strategy will require different steps to achieve, and the process starts years before you get there. For example, if your exit strategy is to grow your businesses enough that it can be bought out by another corporation, how you position the business to be attractive for a buyer is going to look very different than that of a business that has an exit strategy of slowing down and discontinuing at the end of the owners' retirement years. Other examples of exit strategies include selling the business to another local owner after a certain number of years, growing the business into multiple locations prior to selling to a larger company, or slowly shutting down the business and earning a side-income from it before closing.
In a few sentences, write down your ideal exit strategy. How do you plan to exit the business? If you are hoping to sell the business, who do you plan to sell it to?
Business Wellness Wheel:
The Business Wellness Wheel (see image below)is one of many tools you can use to evaluate the overall health, strengths, and weaknesses of your business. This wheel will allow you to take a moment to better understand the foundation of what you’re building on before you strategize the additions and improvements you want to make.
Either draw this wheel in your notebook or print a copy (link) and give your business a score from 1-5 (1 being poor and 5 being excellent) in each of the 12 sub-categories in the graphic, underneath the categories: people, growth, product, and finance.
After filling out each of the categories, take a look at the shape of your wheel. Are there any bumps or divots?
Some wheels, like bicycle wheels, are large and get you to where you want to go quickly. Others are smaller. They can still get you where you need to go, they just take more time and effort. Your goal is not to necessarily be at a 5 across the wheel; is it to have a balanced wheel. If there is a large bump or divot, it makes every turn of the wheel very difficult and uncomfortable. So what do you want?
You want a well balanced wheel at all times, meaning the areas that need attention when they need it are getting it. One thing isn’t getting all the focus and energy; conversely, one thing isn’t always being ignored. Don’t feel bad if your business is not at a 5, there’s always room to grow and these scores are relative, right? You might be at a 5 in financial wellness but as you grow you need additional support, or need help to manage the finances, that area might go down to a 3 until you bring on extra resources. Areas of weakness in our business are putting the entire business off kilter. Having a well-balanced wheel is an indicator of business well-being; if things are balanced, the ride is smoother.
Goal-Setting:
To get a well-balanced wheel and to begin to create the pillars of your recovery plan, you’re going to identify 3-5 major goals for your business. These goals should be attainable in the next two years, they should be based on the wheel above, and will drive the rest of the important actions you will take over the next year. Good goals are SMART, meaning that they are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound.
List 3-5 SMART goals in your notebook, based on your business wellness wheel.
For example:
Goal 1 (example): Increase sales by 30% through launching a new virtual class product line, by January 30, 2021
Goal 2:
Goal 3:
Goal 4:
Goal 5:
Testing Assumptions:
Underneath each goal are assumptions and impacts. Assumptions are things that we think must be true, that drive us to create the goal we've made. For each goal, think about the core assumptions being made by key decision makers, and the potential impact of each core assumption. For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 30%, assumptions might include what your customers will or won’t buy, and the impact is that you don’t try new products, resulting in potential cost savings through shrinkage/waste and also missed sales growth.
List the assumptions and impacts for each of the 3-5 goals you listed during the previous exercise.
For example:
You might have a SMART goal to: Increase sales by 30% through launching a new virtual class product line, by January 30, 2021.
You’re assuming my customers want this product/service (based on what I already know about them), and that they will pay for it. You might also be assuming that promoting it on social media will be enough to drive traffic to the website where they will make the purchase... etc. The impact is that you will be changing my attention from in-person services to online which might diminish the quality? Or another impact is that you’re not working as much with clients one-on-one because now your attention is on building out a new product.
Gap Analysis
This table will help you drill down into the difference between where your business is at present and where you want it to be. The gap is what your business needs to do overall to get to achieve your desired result, and remedies are the specific actions to accomplish the desired result.
For example:
If my goal is to increase sales by 30%, the gap is the difference between my current sales and my goal sales. Remedies for this goal might include researching an additional product to add into the mix, testing discount strategies, or increased marketing to a specific group of customers. The current state is where your business is at present, and the desired state (if not clearly defined in the goal itself) is where you want your business to be in order to achieve your goal.
Take a few minutes to create a the table link the one below in your notebook and fill in your goals, current state, desired state, gaps, and remedies.
