Building your Business Plan

Did you develop a business plan when you started your home based business? Are you working on a business plan, or are you just doing what you think works? Keeping a focus on your home based business is critical to your business success. You are probably watching your business like a hawk, but are you following any type of business plan? Did you ever write one up? If so, how does your current business situation compare to what you planned? These are tough questions, and I would like to bet that many of us have a sketchy business plan, but really nothing significant written down.

There is a good reason to writing down a business plan. If you write down your plan, then you actually have created a map to follow to grow your business. I am not referring writing down the big ideas like, you will make the business successful, you will earn lots of money, etc. I am talking about a relatively concise business plan. If you go to the library and look up various business plans templates, some of them will cause you to run out of the room tearing out your hair screaming. The basic idea of the business plan is to create a road map of where you currently are and where you want to be in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years and 10 years.

Tonight we are going to start a short series on what to include in a business plan and why. Some of the business plan templates I have reviewed can be daunting. The plans look for an analysis of the market you are planning on entering, describing the past, present and future market behavior. They also should include some analysis of your competition, product comparison and positioning, communication strategies, how are you going to launch the business, budgeting, advertising, pricing, policies, distribution, and metrics for success. At first look, creating a business plan can be a terrifying experience. Sometimes it looks like you need to have a Master's degree just to write a business plan.

Our goal is to get you past that concern, and help you to write up your own roadmap to success. We want to take the fear out of creating a business plan, and want to make it relatively simple for anyone to develop a basic plan so you can stay focused on growing your new business opportunity. You don't build a house without a plan, so why would you consider starting a business without a plan for success?

If you really think about a what a business plan is, you should already have the information in your head. For instance, why did you want to get into a particular line of business? Intuitively, you believed there was a market out there for the products or services you want to sell. What a business plan really does is to force you to take that information out of your head and put it down on paper. You will find that once you put the ideas on paper, it becomes easier to look at the various ideas you have and determine how to improve those ideas.

The first draft of your business plan may just fit on one piece of paper. You want to outline what type of business you want to enter. Then, make notes of WHY you want to enter that business. By writing down these two things first may help you to not get into business ventures that someone else really believes you should get involved in. Even if you don't have a specific business opportunity in mind, if you write down what you want, your goals, thoughts and ideas, then when someone comes to you with an opportunity, you can take their idea and hold it against what you already know you want to do. A simple idea would be to take a plain sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle, and then label one column "Pros" and the other column "Cons" for the good and bad reasons for the proposed business opportunity.

If someone is trying to get you involved in a particular business, get as much information as possible from them, take notes, then write down what you like and don't like about the idea. You are not done yet, but this is where you start. Then, once you have the basic information written down, do your research, ask others who may be in a similar field, or go to the library and read up on the business opportunity. You can also do a lot of research on various businesses on the Internet. There is almost an endless supply of positive and negative feedback on various business proposals on the Internet. Read as much as you can about the area of interest, and make notes. Then add to your "Pro" and "Con" column. By now you should have a good idea if this is a business opportunity that you would want to consider pursuing.

Once you have decided on a business opportunity, now is the time to work on your business plan. Having the plan in your head is OK, but if you are working with a partner or spouse, they do not know everything that is bouncing around in your head. You need to write the plan down so that you and your partners are all on the same page with where you want to take the business. Doing this up front will alleviate a lot of misunderstanding and tension down the road. So, now you have a rough outline of your business plan. You have created a business idea, you may have briefly discussed what you are going to sell and you have an idea how you are going to get your hands on the product so that you can sell. You should also consider how you are going to market your business and how are you going to get the product delivered to the people who want to purchase.

Tomorrow we are going to briefly cover how to start writing the business plan by working with your initial outline and then expanding it. Do not think that once you have written your business plan you can't revise it. The goal here is to get your thoughts and ideas organized, take them out into the light to be sure they make sense and then essentially build a road map for how to get your home based business started and then how to help it grow and become prosperous.

Until tomorrow...