Back of the Napkin to Business Plan: How to write a business plan on a flight from San Francisco to New York with Brandon White

Danny: You’re listening to engine hires, how to build a nanny agency podcast. I’m Danny Rosenthal, and I’m using my 20 years professional childcare experience to ask the must know questions to the leaders shaping the nanny industry. So you can start, run, and build your nanny agency into the.

Imagine today is the day. This is your shot to finally turn that dream into a reality, but where do you even begin? Today we’re diving deep with Brandon White, the entrepreneur who’s seen a lot, and he’ll tell you he had two big exits and a lot of strikeouts. Brandon’s book, Back of the Napkin to Business Plan, how to write a business plan on a flight from San Francisco to New York is the game changer you’re looking for.

And he’s here to walk us through his 11 step system to crafting a winning plan. Even if you’re stuck in the air with nothing but a pen and a napkin, please enjoy my conversation with Brandon White.

Brandon, thanks so much for joining us on the how to build a nanny agency podcast. How are you doing today? 

Brandon White: Good, man. Thanks for having me on here, Danny. This is, I’m really grateful for having me on this morning. 

Danny: You’re an Amazon bestseller, which that’s pretty amazing. Could you just kind of tell us a little bit about your background?

Brandon White: Yeah, sure So I did write an amazon bestselling book which we’re going to talk about today on how to write a business plan 11 slides And we are going to go through each and every slide for listeners So don’t tune out, but I started my career. I have a really eclectic career I think I started it out on the internet, uh in the early days Started my first company when I was really young and I built what became in the late 90s uh What became the largest social networking e commerce site for sport fishermen on the internet and had a wild ride there To a crazy ride.

We don’t have enough time to go into it today But um long and short of it is is that I bootstrapped it. I raised money the dot com crashed I bought it back from the investors and then ultimately sold it to a Public media company, 11 years ago, which is how I got here to where I live now in Half Moon Bay, California.

I really ran it as a side hustle for a while, automated a lot of the stuff that how that ran until I came back to it with a business plan in five years, which we’ll get to in a minute to sell it, which happened after year four. But after that, I worked at America online and marketing in the early days.

So. That was a really cool company. It was the internet sort of, actually, people thought it was the internet, Danny, but. 

Danny: I got those CDs in the mail. We put it in the computer, update everything. I thought that was the internet for sure. 

Brandon White: Yeah, everybody thought that was the internet. And I was really lucky. I worked on the antivirus product there that we grew from, team grew from zero to 90 million in like 12 months.

I mean, it was just, it was a phenomenal time to be on the internet and it was the same as it is now. But very different it was smaller then I worked in venture capital I worked for two venture capital firms investing in uh enterprise software And big data we called it quote unquote. I started an automated crm company that became an analytics company I’ve had a pretty eclectic.

There were some other things I You know people always ask like hey, you’ve had some good exits. You’ve had and i’ve had yeah exit But i’ve failed way more than i’ve been successful So it’s just that when you are successful when it does hit it tends to hit if you can Play that ratio, then you, you know, you get lucky.

Danny: Yeah, like you said, that’s a really diverse background. It’s really amazing too. I have to ask, you’re like your first business that you bootstrapped. What made you start that one? 

Brandon White: Well, I was a fly fisherman and light tackle fisherman, and I grew up on the east coast in the Chesapeake Bay. And, At the time, there was not a magazine that really focused on fly fishing and light tackle fishing.

The magazines at the time were focused on trolling and bait fishing, and I have nothing against that. There just wasn’t anything, and I was, wanted to, uh, do a print magazine. And this very kind person at the printing house that I went to visit, Asked me a series of questions, Danny, that pretty much led me to, you don’t have enough money to launch a magazine.

I think I had 800 in my bank account. You know, I was a student just trying to make my way through. So I came up with this idea. This is 1996, 1997 of like, hey, why don’t we put a magazine on the internet and everybody listening We’ll just like roll their eyes right now. But back then that was sort of really innovative.

And then I thought, well, if we have all this content and we can get users to leave the content, which fishing saltwater fishing, at least is a dynamic where you need to know what the fish move every day. So you need to have that type of information and we can get people to leave that information, then maybe we could sell them products too.

Crazy, right? Now we have product companies. That become media companies, right? Like Red Bull was using or GoPro. Whereas I sort of did it from reverse. It became a media company and I realized that I could sell people fishing tackles. So that’s how I got started and just fished. And I was really lucky. I, you know, doing something you love.

Danny: Uh, well, I want to get into your book. So. Tell us more about how this all works developing the business plan. 

Brandon White: So I, I did, I used to teach how to write a business plan. I still do a little bit here and there. I teach high school kids for free because I think I wish someone would have taught me in high school 

Danny: how to 

Brandon White: write a business plan, especially today where, you know, kids have the internet at their fingertips.

But I know that your audience is mainly nanny agencies and we can It while a nanny agency is very specific Businesses are generally all the same. So what we’ll do today if it’s okay with you. We’ll go through the 11 slides We’ll stop on each one and you know, we can talk a little bit about it and at the end Our listener will have The makings of the infrastructure to write a business plan and that right and the goal here For me was that you weren’t going to spend my first business plan probably took six months because it was 50 pages But this is a business plan in 11 slides And the tagline is so easy.

You can do it on a flight from san francisco to new york so the idea here isn’t is really just to add some structure and Thought around your plan because if you’re building an andy agency You’re There’s some fundamental things that you need to know and we’ll jump right in here with slide number one Which is what is your elevator pitch?

So, you know people building any agency might think well my pitch is I find nannies for people in the Chicago area that that might be it but you might want to be more specific and say I find nannies for people who have children who are Two to four right like and specializing in that a good elevator pitch is really short It’s less than 15 seconds an example of one would be we fix bad haircuts So you might be a nanny agency that says we fix bad hires Right.

Maybe, maybe the people out there try to go and hire a nanny on their own. That doesn’t work out. And then they’d come to a nanny agency. So your elevator pitch needs to be short and it needs to be concise. And I will mention two major mistakes. There might be three that people like, one is people want to tell the story why they got started.

And what I tell people is interesting, but your customer doesn’t care. All your customer’s trying to do is get a nanny. If they ask you how you got started, then that’s permission to talk about it, but only talk about it like for a minute, not 10 minutes, right? Every, we all want to tell our own story and people will introduce themselves, which you certainly can.

But at the end of the day, people don’t want to know that what they really want is a solution. So if you jump right in and you solve something for them, naturally, someone’s going to ask, what’s your name? You’re like, Oh, I’m Danny. I, I have nanny agency. How do you get started? And now you’re in a conversation and that’s what that elevator pitch is supposed to spark.

Danny: Amazing. Do you think a lot of people actually ruin their interactions with their customers by inserting all of that about like their background? 

Brandon White: I do. I think they miss an opportunity. It’s not about you or us. It’s about your customer and solving their problem. And if you just think about yourself, Like you just want solutions to problems, you know, then you’re interested in their name their story uh, how long they’ve been in business all these other questions that naturally come up, but I think people miss an opportunity and People get turned off by that and here is the formula a person does x their pain is Existing solutions are broken because so fit your business your nanny business agency to your business Or if we have listeners or have any other business you can or service you can fit it into that structure So a person tries to find a nanny their pain is they can’t find one they need one fast because for whatever reason summer’s coming up and existing solutions are broken because Trying to find one on your own is hard Uh, I don’t know you everybody listening has to come up with that, but that’s your problem slide Your solution slide is your solution, which is an any agency that that’s nanny’s guarantees that they’ll work or some I made that up, right?

But 

Danny: yeah 

Brandon White: has to be some solution that’s going to differentiate you and then we get to slide four Which is your market I would figure out if I was doing a nanny service Let’s say in chicago I would focus first on that. I would go to the Census Bureau. I’m making this up on the fly here. So I’d find out how many families were in the area.

I’d find out how many families had kids. I’d find out how many families are in each economic place because they’re going to have to be in an economic bracket to be able to afford a nanny. And then that’s how I would start scoping my market because you can do this on the census site, which is free. I’d scope it within 25 miles, let’s say, and then I would start there and then I would work out.

It doesn’t mean that if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh, well, Brandon, I want to build a national. Nanny agency. Okay. We’ll do that. You can get there, but I probably would start in my own backyard. If you own your local market, then you can use that local market to expand going to slide five, which is your go to market.

How are you going to go to market? Well, my question would be like, how are you going to get to these 40 million people in America? Like, how does that work? You’re going to do paid ads. If you’re going to do paid ads, you can only do certain selectors on paid ads, right? Yeah. Which is probably geography. You could do male, female, household income.

Maybe you can do kids, but also if you’re doing, if you start local, then you probably gain some trust in that because you are local and the fact that you could probably go meet the person. Now if I was hiring a nanny for my kids, I’d certainly want to meet them But the agency that was going to do that So i’m just i’m not saying that this is the thing But these are the things that you need to be thinking about and the approach that I would take to build a successful business.

So, so far we have the opening slide, which is the elevator pitch, the problem slide, the solution side, the market, and the go to market. 

Danny: Can I ask you when you’re coming up with that differentiator and you like look around yourself, like how focused do you think it needs to be? 

Brandon White: Yeah, I think you need to come up with some hypothesis about what you believe based on your market research, you shouldn’t be doing this in a vacuum.

You should be talking to customers. And once you do get customers. Then you should go back to your customer and say, why did you hire me? And they’re going to tell you tell you that if you don’t ask don’t assume right? I mean so many times I don’t know about in your life, but my life i’ve had something happen I’m, like, well, why did you pick me or why did you do this or why did you buy that?

And they’re like, well you said x or this product has x and you’re like I never even thought of that so You need to be in a two way dialogue with your customers once once you get them and maybe you could even canvas People who do have nannies already Right and and you find out who those are by doing cold calls or however you do it You got to be innovative as an entrepreneur and scrappy and basically say like hey Why did you hire your nanny or i’m sure there’s a facebook group or something?

I I don’t i’m making this up But yeah, you got it. You got to like dig in and figure it figure this out But I would to answer your questions You do need to have a hypothesis because that way you can start to build a framework around that hypothesis And the good news is you know This business plan that we’re building here is so simple that you can change and pivot and move, uh, without having to like rewrite 50 pages.

Slide six, we’re on traction and milestones. So what traction do you have today? What milestones do you have? Set your milestones for months, quarters, and the first year, and then have a big vision. Uh, you know, doing your five, where do you want to be in five years? But really focus on the things that are in front of you because that’s what’s going to move the needle And like anything we we don’t know what’s going to happen in 12 months 12 months The whole world could be look different, right?

So so have a vision of where you want to be but focus on your immediate One month, one quarter, one year. Then who is your competition, which you’re going to need to figure out. You could use Google, probably Google maps for that, or just Google and be like, how many nanny agencies are there in the Chicago, Illinois area?

I’m sure, you know, You’ll get a summary with a chat gpt or something like that You could probably also look at that on the commerce department and the government has those sorts of statistics um number Eight slide eight is your financials. You need to build financials. You need to build a spreadsheet Nobody wants to do that danny because it’s painful But you need to understand like what is your price point?

How much it’s going to cost you to find that nanny yourself? What is your profit margin is and then how many people? You’re going to need to place to actually make a living for that year In in addition to any other expenses you have licenses or anything like that Then you need to know who’s on your team.

Maybe you need to have an assistant to help you Maybe you’re going to need a marketing person Uh slide 10 is how much money you’re going to need to start this. So can you start it yourself? You don’t quit your job right away unless you have like two years of runway Maybe you started as a side hustle.

If you are going to do it right out of the gate How much money do you need to start this like and then probably double that? Just because things never go as planned. That’s not a negative thing That’s just you know, we’re building we’re building a business plan here in a vacuum without point of contact yet So things never happen as fast as you want in general um And there’s expenses that we forget about and then slide number 11 is the summary slide So I know I went through there fast, but I wanted to make sure we get it in for the show And then now we can discuss anything.

Danny: That’s that’s awesome. Thank you so much for running us through that I feel in my heart that it’s really helpful when people start this as like a side hustle 

Brandon White: Well, I think it depends on everybody’s circumstances, but here’s what i’ll say You need to make sure that you have two years of money to live the way you’re living if that’s what you choose to live You Without having to get paid and the first place that I start when people ask me for help Is I actually don’t start on the business plan.

I start on their personal finance plan because most of the people that I ask I my first question is what’s your burn rate Danny? And people are like, well, what does that mean? I’m, like how much money do you need every month to live? And most people actually can’t answer that question or they’ll give me an answer and then I’ll be like They’ll give me a number, and then I’ll say, Okay, let’s walk through it, and we will start listing.

Okay, here’s my mortgage, here’s my car payment, here’s my insurance, here’s eating out, shopping, you have kids, sports, kids sports, kids clothes, and what happens is people’s eyes get really, really big. When we start looking at that, that is where you start. Now, if you’re married and your spouse has income, that may give you all the runway forever.

That’s a circumstance where it works. If. You’re not in a place where where you or you both need to work Then probably a side hustle is the right way until it cash flows your whatever your burn rate is I think that’s the right way to look at it I think the advantage that i’ve learned over all the years From starting companies and you know The ones that have worked and ones that haven’t is your advantage in the beginning if you don’t have to pay yourself But if you have to cover a ten thousand dollar a month burn rate gosh, dude That seems like how many how many placements do you have to do in the first month?

You To cover 10 000 bucks. How long does it take like I think there’s an interview process, right? There’s the nanny themself the family. It’s a two way street Not, you know, some nannies i’ve seen they’re like I can’t work for that family, right? I mean It’s a dating process. So are you really closing deals in 30 days?

I don’t I can’t say but it sure doesn’t feel like it feels like 30 days would be aggressive So there’s all these factors I think That you have to think about but going back to your question understand your personal burn rate period That’s that’s advice whether you’re starting a company or not You should know but you know people don’t like talk about money Danny, 

Danny: but even my eyes got open and I was like Oh, yeah, nobody wants to think about that number.

It doesn’t matter how how much money you have. Nobody wants to think about All everything coming in and out. That’s that’s horrifying. Yeah 

Brandon White: people I mean people are scared by it I have As much anxiety as anyone about but I’ve learned just that how powerful it can be. I mean, I met a guy once This is years ago, Danny He’s doing a gaming company for kids like great idea really cool idea and he he said to me Oh, I quit my job.

I was like what I was like, do you know your burn rate? He’s like, well, I sort of know my burn rate. We went through the burn rate. I’m like, okay Well, let’s just do some back of the napkin That’s why I call it like back in the napkin math. Yeah, let’s let’s the book back in the napkin to business plan 11 slides.

I said, um, Your game sells for 39. 95 Your cost is going to be like 10 or 12 bucks means you make 20 bucks Maybe that’s before we even go over the other business expenses. How many how many I don’t know what his burn rate was 7, 500 like how many games do you have to sell to make 7, 500? 

Danny: Yeah, 

Brandon White: okay like Do the math right now.

You know, we’re all thinking about it probably in our head right now. It’s a lot. And then tell me, tell me what marketing channel, tell me what distribution channel. Tell me, is your market even big enough that there’s going to be this many kids who are going to buy a new game? His wife, unfortunately, was there with me, but when we were talking about this, but I said it because you know what?

Those people are going to be better off. 

Danny: Yeah, 

Brandon White: then going eight months. I did see another business. I saw a husband and wife quit their jobs I was like you guys aren’t even in production yet. There will something will go wrong with production Oh, it’s the same thing Like how long is it gonna take for you to get your pipeline of potential nannies to have to be available to people?

Yeah, like That’s a whole Segment of your business that you need to know and you know It just doesn’t feel like that happens in 30 days to me. It feels like that takes longer so, you know know what your burn rate is because It can really mess up your business because if you get to it You’ll get to a place where you run out of money yourself and then you’re making decisions that aren’t good for the business and you know, you may have You may have ruined your opportunity because you went too far in debt or something like that.

Um, and i’m not saying Don’t take chances. This is a guy, you know, I didn’t go into that whole story But I traded stocks in my first company to make it i’m not suggesting that anyone on your show should do that I’m, just saying I did that, you know, these things are really really risky and i’d also say It depends on your stage of life if you’re in in your 20s You can afford to make some mistakes and you can recover, you know, you can you’re not your infrastructure Isn’t probably some big home with two kids It could be but you know, you haven’t accumulated all these things if you’re in your 30s You probably still can make a mistake your 40s.

You can afford to maybe make a mistake You know if you if you’re in your 50s 60s I mean, maybe you retired, you know, maybe you had a career and now it doesn’t matter and you want to build this as a side hustle. There’s all these, there’s so many variables that you really need to figure out for yourself.

Hopefully, everybody listening right now, there’s like a million things going on in their head right now. Um, that helps them. I’m sure there are. With their nanny business. You know this this episode probably turned into like life lessons episode. Um, but who couldn’t use a few life lessons Yeah, no, it’s true.

It’s like this all comes together when you’re thinking about building a business 

Danny: Yeah, 

Brandon White: and you just got to think think think about that type of stuff 

Danny: Brandon, thank you so much for sharing so much of your wisdom Everyone listening, I’m sure could listen to you for so much longer. I know that I could talk to you for so much longer, but I know that you have things to do.

Um, so where can people go to learn more about you? 

Brandon White: Yeah, the best place you’ll find everything that I’m doing. I work with third brain, which is an AI and automation company now. Um, and you can get some information on business plans, where to get the book, the books on Amazon, but the best place is Brandon C white.

com. That’s B R a N D O N C as in Charlie. W H I T E. com. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. If 

Danny: you liked today’s episode, shout us out with a review. So we can reach more listeners just like you. And if you haven’t already like share and subscribe, so you never miss this information to take your agency to the next level.

And this podcast is just the first step. We have so many more ways to assist you from our nine steps to starting a nanny agency guide to our bi monthly webinars and the engine hire blog to get you building your nanny agency. We’re always here for you, so don’t be afraid to reach out. In fact, I encourage it.

Send your messages to me, Danny Rosenthal, to podcast at enginehire.ca. Learn more at enginehire.io/podcast to grab the show notes, listen to more episodes, and learn how you too can share your wisdom as a guest. Thanks for listening and check us out next week on how to build a nanny agency.