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If you are seriously thinking about starting a business, you should write your own business plan. It is in your best interest to do so. You can google to find out all of the necessary components of a business plan - but how you define it, the research you do (online, direct observation, interviews/discussions) will directly impact your success or failure. If you do start a business, inorder to improve your chances of success you will need to master everything related to it including marketing, managing and hiring people, accounting/bookkeeping, operations, sales, etc. So you mind as well start by mastering everything required to write a business plan (market research, budget and cashflow planning, go to market planning, product development, etc.).
The average bookstore has lots of titles on the subject. Some even have digital supplemental worksheets, et al, to help you.
That being said, several things about formulating a business plan:
1) Be pessimistic on revenue and expenses. I've found that most first-time biz plans are exercises in wishful thinking. It's more important that you be realistic about what you'll make and what you'll spend. Yeah, it's a lot less fun that looking a projections that make you a zillionaire by Year Three, but it's a surer path to success.
2) Business plan projections are pretty much useless by Year One. If you're incredibly prescient, it might serve you through the first eighteen months. But then you'll find that your assumptions were flawed or that the world has changed.
3) That being said, a business plan can be a living, breathing document. It should be something you revisit and revise moving forward. Because while you get to Year Two and say, "Well, my assumptions were stupid," the business plans should allow you to bake in your new assumptions, giving you a model to implement refine your overall strategy for growth.
4) A business plan should be single-minded in terms of positioning and market. Entrepreneurs seem to always fall into the trap of thinking how many different ways they can make money. They see multiple revenue streams from all these ancillary products or services. The problem is that all those other ideas aren't just blue-sky thinking. They are dangerous because they are distractions that dilute your core business. In that sense, think in terms of the elevator pitch. If you cannot succinctly describe what you do and how you're different from your competition in thirty seconds or less, then you don't have a truly compelling business idea. What's more, all you have is 50-60 hours in a work week, with anything more than that risking burnout. So it's important that your business plan has focus on your single, primary selling idea.
5) For the love of God, allocate money to marketing. I can't tell you how many business plans I've seen that detailed their business expenses down to the last paper clip, and then kind of threw a lousy $500 at marketing. So their web site looks like something cobbled together by someone's nephew and their business cards look as if they were done at Kinkos. Trust me. That's not a confidence builder. To be sure, you have to have your act together in terms of operations and the whatnot, but if your brand isn't signaling professionalism from the beginning, good luck prying your customers loose from other, more established concerns. I've seen well-designed WordPress websites for under five grand that made the startups look like they had been around for years.
6) Forego the company car, the fancy offices and the receptionist with the gravity-defying tatas. Keep your expenses as low as possible and still look professional. When you're cash flowing like crazy in year five, knock yourself out. But until then, you need to get the most out of what you spend.
What kind of business plan you need? There are many business modals.
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