Thursday, December 4, 2008

My Super Awesome Business Plan

I came up with an idea for a super awesome business plan the other day. Before I shop it around to various venture capitalists in my Rolodex, please help me by taking a look at it to see if you think I've got everything in order.

First, I am going to start by producing a substandard product that gets more irrelevant every year as my foreign competition uses technological advancements to make superior, competing products.

Speaking of competition, I will open no less than three stores in every market to sell my product. Not only will each store have to compete with each other for the customers of our products, but I will also overproduce units, thus relegating them to commodity prices.

Speaking of price, for every unit of product I sell, I will take a $2,000 loss. While this will cut into my profits a bit, it won't compare to the red mark left in my ledger after paying my staff.

I plan on using unionized workers to produce my product. I will pay them full medical benefits and a salary that is, not only commensurate with work experience, but also top dollar across the local economy. Gotta stay competitive to get the most skilled workers, right?

In addition, when my workers retire after 30-40 years in my factory, I will keep paying them full medical benefits and a healthy pension for another 20-30 years. And this pension? Well, it'll have to keep increasing every year, of course.

Now, you're probably wondering what my contingency plan would be if my company ever found itself in financial trouble. This plan is ideal in a strong economy, of course, but if the economy ever slows down, in order to stay solvent, my plan is to keep moving at the same pace and not close any stores or factories. Closing factories would be sad. My company is about being prosperous - not about being sad.

Heaven forbid my company ever end up in financial trouble, and I don't know how that could possibly happen, but if it did happen, I would, of course, have to let some of my workers go. But these workers shouldn't fret, because I promise that if I ever have to lay anyone off, I will pay them at least 95% of their previous salary for up to 4 years after I let them go. After all, I have to give them adequate time to find a new job, right?

So, what do you think? Do you think I'll be able to convince a venture capitalist to give me 50 million dollars to start a business with this plan? Do you think I'd be able to convince Congress to give me 25 billion dollars to keep a company running that had used this business model for the past 30 years?