The 5 Year Business Plan

It's universal that during times in my life when I planned extensively, I made the most progress.  The progress wasn't always in the direction of the plan.  However, without a plan, it's easy to let inertia take hold.  Once you're leaving yourself to the charity of the prevailing winds, you've relenquished a lot of control in your life.

Ever since my current business got off the ground, I really have lost a lot of fire in the belly.  However, I'm a bit young to be retired in place and it's time for me to set some goals so that I won't be sitting here 10 years from now, in the same shape, business-wise, that I'm in right now. 

I've decided that I need some very tangible goals for the next 5 year business period.  Here they are.

1.  To be debt free in my Servpro business.  I've made what I consider prudent use of debt in my business.  We grew quickly, from revenues of over $200,000 in year one, to revenues of almost $900,000 in year 4.  As much as I tried, I simply could not acquire the necessary equipment using ongoing revenue as my only source of capital.  However, from here on out, my goal is to pay for everything in cash and to pay off the notes I have remaining.

Part of me doesn't think this goal is very important.  My debt service isn't that substantial, really.  All told, maybe $3,000 a month.  But to paraphrase an old saying, a thousand here, a thousand there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.  There are better things I could think of to do with $36,000 a year.  Over a 5 year period, that's enough money to buy a house.

2.  I just took some baby steps to establish a lawn care business unit.  In 5 years, I want to make sure that thing is cash flowing enough that it would be a reasonable stand-alone business operation, even if I weren't trying to take advantage of synergies with Servpro.  I have several contingencies based on how well this business unit performs, but I'll need to see what happens before I take it in any specific direction.  This could just be a way to absorb overhead during down-times in my Servpro business.  Or, it could take off and be something I could scale up.  I won't know until I get in it, full-time.

3.  Servpro has a level of operations that earns an operator a Rolex.  Right now, it's given for $1.5 million in revenue in a calendar year.  I suspect they'll change it (probably right before I hit $1.5 million), but sometime in the next 5 years, I want my Servpro revenues to be at whatever the prevailing Rolex level is. 

4.  We are currently leasing our warehouse.  I love the arrangement.  The rent is cheap and the warehouse meets all my needs.  However, I would like to have some commercial real estate, and I think sometime in the next 5 years is a reasonable time-frame to reach that goal. 

5.  I want to establish an asset lease business unit that leases various vehicles (like the commercial trucks and vans we use in the business).  In the next 5 years, I want to establish that as a separate business unit and include things such as aircraft leasing and disaster restoration equipment leasing under the same corporate structure.


If I can do all those things, the next 5 years will be really great.  My son will also be 13 years old, then.  So, the 5 year plan after this one will take up the years until his 18th birthday.  Not long after that, I am looking forward to a business plan that brings him in as a partner in the business and transitions operations to him so I can retire.