Uncovering The Old Business Plan
Posted by Michael Mindes on December 01, 2011
A couple of weeks ago as I was cleaning up the house and purging myself of some additional possessions, I came across my original first draft of my Tasty Minstrel business plan that I wrote in early 2005. I wrote the plan 4 years before Tasty Minstrel was officially started.
Since I have worked as a financial advisor, I have credited many of the skills I learned in that profession to some of the success that I have seen as a board game publisher. I found some surprising things, upon reading through the business plan now 6.5 years old. I wasn't surprised to find some exceptionally great ideas, I was surprised that without referencing the plan I had followed it almost 100%.
The basics of the plan were:
- Publish games with amazing gameplay, artwork, and production.
- Rely on game reviewers and word of mouth marketing to build sales.
- Provide great customer service and work to gain a large core fan base.
- Utilize social methods to obtain the initial sales.
Sure, I might not have executed those as well then as I have now. Also, many of the internet based tools that I find incredibly valuable today did not really exist back then.
Still, it is nice to see that the ideas and foundational principles about how to run a game publishing company were unchanging in my mind and obvious to me years before I did it.
Then I started to think about all of the people that have started a business in their mind. Maybe these people have even written down their plans and are on the edge of executing it. I thought, what would happen if all of these people decided to just get started. To move forward...
Where would Tasty Minstrel Games be at today if we started 4 years earlier?
Where could you be 3 years from now if you just got started now?
