Late Late Show was the feature Showcase for all new Entrepreneurial Activity in Ireland. This Late Late Show did not follow the traditional show and there was no Panel Discussion – just selected invited guests were interviewed by Late Late Show Host Gay Byrne from the Audience.

David Murray was invited Guest and interviewed by Gay Byrne on his Expertise in the Financial Rescue of Corporate Customers after their Financial Trauma. David Murray recognised as an Honest Broker by Late Late Show – the world’s longest running TV Chat Show with over 55 years running in continuous existence.

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Frontline hosted by renowned Broadcaster – Pat Kenny – is the Irish Equivalent of the BBC Programme – Questiontime. David Murray was an invited Audience Member as an Expert in Financial Audited Accounts and a Bank Expert Accountant.

David Murray challenges Accountancy Profession and Institute of Chartered Accountants representative in respect of the failure of Big 5 World Accountancy Practices and their Audit Reports on the Largest Banks in the World. In particular, the Going Concern Concept not applied in the situation of the impending collapse of the Worldwide Banking Crisis.

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David Murray was an Invited Audience Guest Member selected in advance of the Programme as a financial accountant for the purposes of raising a challenging question on the whether all Irish Banks should now be Nationalised.

Broadcaster John Bowman asked David Murray on his Question on the Banks Nationalisation which was answered by Mike Soden former Chief Executive of Bank of Ireland Plc.

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The Video Transcription:

This should be the first chapter in the business plan. However, it will be the last one to be written. We shall come back to this later on in this seminar. The executive summary should be a short, concise, overall summary of the business.

There should be a note from each of the subsequent chapters in the summary and it’s important that the summary is capable of being a stand-alone document. Senior managers tend to only read the executive summary and that’s also why it’s vitally important to get it right.

The executive summary should have overall highlights of the business without getting into too much detail. The length of the summary should be ideally between 1 and 2.5 pages. It should be enough to excite the reader that they want to read the whole business plan. There should be one short note at the start of the summary of explaining the overview of the business. It’s very important that you explain in the executive summary the need that you’re satisfying. Every business is satisfying a need for its customers and filling a gap in the market.

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The Video Transcription:

Company overview should be the shortest chapter in the business plan. There should be a mission statement of what the business is about, included in this chapter but it should be no more than 1 or 2 sentences. We don’t want the Magna Carta. Ownership of the business should be detailed in this chapter. Should illustrate the very shareholdings in the business. The location of the business should be in this section. And there’s a useful tip. If you put in a map, it engages the audience because they look at the map and say “Oh, I know such and such around the corner from there” and it engages them with your business plan. You should also have a brief history of the company from its origins to date. And there should be a note on the professional advisers, who they are and their experience, etc., in the company overview section.

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The Video Transcription:

1. Describe in detail what you are doing.
2. Explain the problem that you are solving in the competitive landscape.
3. Identify the primary pain point for customers.
4. If you cannot pinpoint the exact problem that you are solving for customers then you might not have a viable business plan.
5. Detail your solution for the customer problems.
6. Detail each element of the production process or the manufacturing process or the service process.
7. If possible, include pictures or photos for each stage of the manufacturing process, etc.
8. Detail each element of the service process, etc. that you are supplying.

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The Video Transcription:

The Marketing and Sales part is broken into 3 sections:

Section A – Competition

• Detail your competitors. Everyone has some competitors. The biggest mistake we see with promoters is that they come to us and say “Our product, our service is so unique that we have no competitors. All we have to do is to get the product into the market and we’ll go from strength to strength.” There’s always an alternative – horses rather than cars, 2 bed apartment rather than 3 bed semi. There’s always an alternative and, as a consequence, there’s always competition.
• Detail the competitive advantage that your business has.
• Sourcing and fulfilment – detail where your products come from, how they’re delivered to you and how you deliver them to your customers.
• Technology – describe the technology involved in your business, state your secret sauce without revealing the Coca-Cola formula.

Concentrate on your initial products in this Marketing and Sales chapter. State what future products and services you hope to provide to show where the business is thinking of going. But do not over-elaborate on this section. You have to jump the first hurdle first to get to the last hurdle.

Section B – Target Market

• Potential customers – identify how many potential customers there are for your business and also state how many customers are sufficient for your business.
• Identify target market segments and not just “We are a shoe company, everybody has feet. Therefore, everybody in the world is a potential customer”.
• Do not expand too much on very long-range plans.
• Identify for the reader whether your target market is growing or contracting.
• Identify a customer for each market segment. Sort of a super buyer persona for each segment – helps to develop the marketing approach to attract such customers to your business.
• Include market research and market analysis in this section, whether it’s market research specifically carried out by yourself or from alternative research sources.

Section C – Marketing & Sales Plan

In this section we’ll detail how you propose to reach your target market segments.

• Include a pricing plan in this section – low budget, high-value luxury brand or combination of both.
• It’s very important to understand to whom you are marketing. As mentioned earlier, the super buyer persona helps. If you do not truly understand your customer, then it’s very difficult to design an effective marketing plan.
• Detail the position your company, product and service will have in the marketplace. Price sends a strong message to consumers but it needs to match their requirements and expectations of the product and service. There are two overall messages in sales and marketing:
  1. Turnover is vanity profit is sanity.
  2. A good salesman is not someone who sells a hundred million a year but it’s a salesman who sells at a good margin. Any fool can give it away.

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The Video Transcription:

There should be a biography of senior management included in this chapter. It should be a short biography of each of the senior management.

Do not have all the senior management at C levels – Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer. It’s important to allow people to grow into titles rather than allocate them all out on the first day.

Provide an organisation chart in this chapter. Identify any gaps in management either now or likely in the future in this part of the business plan.

Include a schedule of employees now or required and these can be referred back to more detailed appendices detailing out same.

The experience of the managing team is crucial to the success of the business. Most would rather invest in a mediocre idea with a first class team rather than a blockbuster idea with a mediocre team. And keep that in mind in relation to the business and a relation to the business plan.

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The Video Transcription:

1. There should be a summary of the projection in the financial details of the business plan.
2. There should be monthly projections for the first year of operations.
3. Three-year projections – suffice – in the first business plan.
4. The sales forecast should be detailed and explained. And I don’t mean “1% of 1 billion market, therefore we’ll easily achieve 10 million sales”. Nobody believes that anymore.
5. There should be profit and loss account projections detailing out the profit and loss accounts.
6. There should be detailed cash flow forecast for the business plan.
7. There should be detailed pro forma balance sheet at the end of each year’s projections included in the business plan.
8. There should be an explanation of the utilisation of the funds being applied for or requested what exactly the business will do with these particular funds included in the financial details of the business plan.

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The Video Transcription:

The schedule of appendices to be included in the main business plan report:

1. There should be profit & loss projections included in an appendix.
2. There should be cash flow projections included as a separate appendix.
3. There should be pro forma balance sheets for the end of each year of the projections.
4. There should be a schedule of the financial assumptions utilised in preparing the financial projections.
5. There should be more detailed management CVs included in an appendix to the main report.
6. There should be detailed sales forecast by market, by product, by whatever is required in the business.
7. There should be details of sales orders or contracts agreed or about to be agreed which underpin the business plan.
8. There should be a schedule of plant and equipment, etc., furniture, computers that are required for the business over the first 3 years.
9. There should be a summary of the main potential customers for the business included in the schedule of appendices.
10. There should be a schedule of the professional advisers who are going to be engaged by the business.

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