For people running a business
Playbooks
Each playbook is a sequence, not an article. There is a starting point, a set of steps, a way to tell whether it worked, and a decision to make at the end. Nothing here assumes you have a finance team, a lawyer on retainer, or venture funding.
All playbooks
Validate a business idea in two weeks
Talk to five real buyers, then ask for money. Two weeks, one written decision at the end.
02The 13-week cash flow you can build in an hour
One table, three columns, updated weekly. The whole point is finding the low point early.
03Pricing that survives a bad month
Three numbers and one sentence you should be able to say out loud without hesitating.
04Find your first ten paying customers
Hand-to-hand sales until you can predict where the next ten come from.
How to use a playbook without wasting a fortnight
Every playbook on BizoNow follows the same shape, and it is deliberate: decide, do, check, choose. If a step does not change what you do next, it does not belong.
- Set the decision before you start. Write down the decision you are trying to make — “do we take the £8,000 order”, “do we hire”, “do we keep this supplier” — and the date you will make it. A playbook that ends without a decision is just reading.
- Use real numbers, not round ones. Your actual bank balance, your actual cost per unit, the actual date an invoice was due. Round numbers hide the problem.
- Write the pass/fail threshold first. “If fewer than two of five buyers will pay a deposit, we do not continue.” A threshold decided after the results is not a threshold.
- Time-box it. Research expands to fill the time available. Two weeks is usually enough to learn whether demand exists; it is never enough to perfect a product.