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http://myopenx.com

About four years ago, Thomas Perlmutter and his wife took their friends the Lewises out for dinner to celebrate Robert Lewis's 45th birthday. The Perlmutters even gave the birthday boy a gift: a Montblanc fountain pen. But when Lewis tried to use the pen, he found that he was unable to pry it from the hard plastic case in which it was packaged.

It was an especially awkward moment: Perlmutter's business was designing inserts for those obnoxious "clamshells," the difficult-to-penetrate plastic packages that hold everything from MP3 players to, well, fountain pens. "You," his wife complained, "should invent something to open those things."

That wasn't exactly a dumb idea. Manufacturers and retailers love clamshell packaging because it deters theft while showing off products in all their glory. But what consumer hasn't had to resort to scissors, keys, fingernails, or even teeth to get inside one? A friend of Perlmutter's once joked that clamshell makers probably own stock in kitchen-knife companies. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that attempts to open plastic packaging led to 2,943 injuries in 2004.

So Perlmutter took his wife's anti-clamshell sentiment seriously—and began addressing it immediately. Before finishing their filets mignons, he and Lewis had drawn back-of-the-napkin sketches for a safe, easy-to-use tool. A few days later, they met in Perlmutter's office and began working on a prototype, which took two months to bang out. "The hardest thing was to get the blade at the proper angle so that people wouldn't cut themselves," Perlmutter recalls.

That wasn't the only obstacle, though. Perlmutter was at first convinced that he could manufacture the cutting device—he was already calling it OpenX because OpenExperts was too long to write on the handle—in the United States. But factories in Pennsylvania and California, where he initially farmed out the work, were too slow. "It took them a year to make a mold and forever to make some changes," he says. Finally, Perlmutter got in touch with a plant in Taiwan, which shipped back a finished product six weeks later. "They delivered exactly what they said they were going to deliver," he says.

In February 2003, Perlmutter and Lewis founded a company called Ranchmark to market OpenX. The tool sells for $9.95 at the company's website (myopenx.com) and at retailers including Amazon.com. Perlmutter, who is CEO and runs day-to-day operations, says Ranchmark was profitable on revenue of $250,000 last year, and demand shows no signs of flagging.

A big break came in May, when the popular gadget blog Gizmodo praised OpenX as "a great solution to an infuriating problem." The next day the company received 1,100 orders. Of course, such success pales in comparison with how OpenX has improved the Perlmutters' home life. The couple uses the cutter not only for plastic clamshells but also to open letters, boxes, FedEx envelopes, and plastic wraps around water bottles. "I was part of the problem, and now I have created the solution," Perlmutter muses. He's on the lookout for his next invention—and listening very carefully to his wife's complaints.
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Nervous About Writing Your Business Plan?

Clever marketers infiltrate video Web sites

I recently received this message in an e-mail. I’ve edited it to hide the writer’s personal details, but here’s some of what it says:

I'm currently in the process of starting my own business. I have extensive knowledge of and experience in…

I have the necessary resources for my startup and all of the necessary partners for the business to start…

Unfortunately, I'm not a writer. This is my Achilles' heel. I have this great business concept I'd like to put on paper and have been challenged every step of the way. My startup began two weeks ago, and I've consulted with several CPAs, but to no avail. They either don't have the time, charge too much or aren't interested in assisting me with my business plan. I just couldn't believe how neglected this area of business planning is when their profession deals with financial management and, to a greater extent, consulting.

My response starts with an emphatic “No, please, no!” You're missing the point of business planning--getting caught in the trap of the plan as a document--and making your life and your planning process far more difficult than they should be.

Notice how this e-mail puts the problem into perspective. The guy's starting his business, feels quite confident in the business concept and has “extensive knowledge and experience” in the specific type of business, but can’t go further because he’s “not a writer.” That’s crazy, right?

What’s wrong with this picture? Why do people assume a business plan is about quality of writing? Hey, I was a literature major years ago in college; I was a journalist before I was an MBA and a planner; and I love good writing as much as the next person. But being a writer has nothing to do with writing a business plan.

This is really important: A business plan is about content, not writing, formatting or pictures. I've listed some of the things your business plan needs to do below. Notice how none of them have anything to do with quality of writing.

1. Define your strategy. Strategy requires focus. Figure out what you’re really selling, who wants it, why they want it and how your business provides something different from the competition.
   
   
2. Control your destiny. Determine where you want to go and break that down into specific, concrete steps with dates, deadlines and budgets. Don’t merely react to events; be proactive and set a roadmap to follow and revise it as things change--and they will change.
   
   
3. Plan your cash. You’ve got to make a good, educated guess, then manage your planned cash flow vs. actual cash flow very carefully. Growth costs money, and profits don’t necessarily mean cash, so lay this out in detail. The math isn’t hard, but getting your financials organized takes some time and effort (see "The Numbers in Your Business Plan" for more information).
   
   
4. Allocate resources realistically. This doesn't just have to do with cash, but also with know-how and responsibility. Who's in charge?
   
   
5. Communicate your plan. The business plan is the standard tool for communicating the main points of a business to a spouse, partner, boss, banker, investor, manager or other interested person. This is where we get confused, I think, about the plan as a document.
   
   First, we have to recognize that not all business plans are about communicating to outsiders. In planning, form follows function, so if you aren’t communicating to outsiders, then lighten up! Make the plan useful to you in as simple a format as possible. Maybe it’s a cash plan and a presentation, or a cash plan and notes, but nobody's saying your success depends on the document itself.
   
   Furthermore, if you're in a situation in which you have to communicate to bankers or investors, stay calm--and stay focused on business. If investors want a presentation more than a plan document, focus on the presentation. If bankers want financial projections more than an extensive look into your company's mission, focus on that.

We’re afraid our plan has to be well written because it represents us and stands for our intelligence, experience or ability to run a business. Get over it. It isn’t a writing contest; it’s a business. Tell your story. Keep it simple. Bullet points are fine.

Also, don't confuse your plan for the kind a business student would turn in. In business school, the plan is a teaching tool. When I give students a grade for a business plan, I look at writing. I judge the quality of the document in part based on spelling and grammar and, more important, completeness. That’s a special case, though, that shouldn't apply to you out there in the real world.

The bottom line is, well, the bottom line--not the editor’s pencil. A good business plan is about results, not writing. Don’t wait an extra minute for that “writer.” Get working on your plan. And never forget, the real value is in implementation. Prepare to track results, compare those results to your plan, revise, correct course and manage your business better because of your plan.

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Tim Berry is the "Business Plans" coach at Entrepreneur.com and is president of Palo Alto Software Inc., which produces the industry's leading business planning software, Business Plan Pro, as well as other popular planning applications for businesses.
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