In the second post from her series on teaching Business English, Natilly Macartney shares ideas for getting your students to write a business plan in English for their own start-ups!
Start-up companies
This semester, my favourite topic in my business classes has been start-up companies. With start-up being one of the trendiest phrasal verbs/nouns in the business world, it’s not difficult to find interesting content. Furthermore, with the likes of former start-ups such as Facebook and Apple to refer to, students can easily relate to this topic, resulting in high levels of engagement (sigh of relief).
We began the semester by discussing recent start-up companies that have emerged within the past 10 years. Each student presented a start-up company of their choice, ranging from healthy snacks and temporary tattoos to online crowd funding sites. In their presentations, the students presented the history of their chosen start-up, its target market, where the company is at today and its potential for the future.
I brought the students’ attention to the ‘tone’ of the companies, in other words the style of language used in their marketing campaigns and on their packaging. For example, one student chose a company called Bear Nibbles which uses an informal style of language, similar to Innocent Smoothies’ style. The students identified a recent trend that has emerged in the food and beverages industry, in which newer companies opt for a chatty style of language; online this phenomenon has even been given its own term – wackaging.
Creating a start-up
Having looked at established companies, it was time for my students to create their own start-ups. The students formed small groups and were given a sector to create a start-up in. The sectors I chose were translation and childcare and were based on interests that the students had expressed in class. The first group designed an impressive real-time translation device using artificial intelligence, and the second group designed an innovative childcare service that works via a monthly membership, similar to that of a gym.
Writing a business plan
Once the students had their ideas, the next task was to write a business plan which they could present to potential investors. One of my biggest challenges at the moment is time, therefore, with little time to put together my own business plan template, I turned to the internet. Fortunately, I found an informative pack put together by the Prince’s Trust Charity.
They run an enterprise programme for young people in the UK who want to begin their own start-up. On their website (www.princes-trust.org.uk/help-for-young-people/tools-resources/business-tools/business-plans) there is not only a template for a business plan, but also an accompanying business plan pack which guides you through each section of the plan; an excellent resource for students, and teachers alike, who may have not written a business plan before. The sections my students focussed on were the executive summary, the market, marketing strategy, desk research, competitor analysis and operations and logistics; I used these sections as a topic for each class.
Marketing strategies
To warm-up my class on marketing strategies, the students began by listing the factors that make a company successful. Both groups came to the conclusion that marketing is one of the most important factors for success. We discussed the pros and cons of different types of marketing including word of mouth, business literature, social media and direct marketing. It was interesting to see my students develop their own marketing strategies for their start-ups. For example, the childcare service group identified that direct marketing and word-of-mouth would be the most important for their company so that they could build trust with the parents. Whereas the translation service decided that this was not so important, and for them online marketing would be the most useful tool.
Creating a company strapline
In order to write the executive summary, students did activities in class such as summarising their business and its aims to a partner in three sentences and creating a strapline for their start-up. This was a really fun session to run, and the students looked at different companies’ logos and recalled their straplines. In order to write their own memorable straplines, I discussed the different techniques that they could use such as alliteration and rhyme, and emphasised the importance of keeping the strapline short and catchy.
Pitching a business idea to investors
Now the students have finished writing their business plans, the next class will involve a Dragons’ Den style activity in which the groups will pitch their business ideas to a panel of ‘potential investors’. The students have watched an episode of the Dragons’ Den and analysed what the entrepreneurs did well, or not so well, in their pitches, as well as noting the questions that the panel asked. I’m really looking forward to this class, and I have managed to get together a panel of volunteers, including someone whose company actually participated in the Austrian version of the show!
Don’t forget to catch up with Natilly’s previous lesson article on writing an effective CV in English.