Expressing Your Plans

If you are even considering applying for financing or bringing on equity investors a business plan is essential for you. Most people basically think of a business plan as a long book written about your company; this is not always the case.

It is important when writing your business plan to be concise in your writings. Length wins you no points. The point is to accurately convey your ideas and expectations so someone else can see your vision.

There is some pre-work you can do to make this process easier, seven subjects for you to ponder prior to beginning your writing. Though it may be helpful to write your thoughts down for each of these, it helps to not think about grammar or wording while brainstorming.

These steps will help you develop strategy. These are the general concepts to your marketing, design, operations, and financial solutions. You should be able to articulate the basic ideas you have for your business. You should be able to answer the current state of your business (most likely start-up), and long term goals, and how you are going to get from point A to point B.

First is your business vision. This is what you are going to do, why you want to do it, and how it relates to you. You should have a good idea of these answers if you completed your life plan, but here you can be more specific. How many hours will you operate, etc?

Secondly are your personal values and how this business will happily co-exist with what you value most. Once you have this information you can bring it together to set goals. Your goals will be defined by your business vision and your values. How big will your company grow? What is the size of your target market? How profitable will it become? All these questions should be answered with solutions that fit you (and any partners if that be the case).

After this you can start defining your market. Identify a problem, determine how badly a solution is needed and how the market currently cures this problem, and you are on your way to defining you market. Every solution that the market currently uses, including ignoring the problem, is your competition.

You can then move on to creating your business model, which is the way you will conduct business. This includes who is in charge, how many employees, and whether or not you will hire consultants. You should also answer how you will produce your product or service, as well as where you will be located. How will you get customers? In other words, what is your marketing approach?

Next you will list the resources needed, and how you will go about getting them. This includes people, equipment and facilities, and capital. Once you have all of this you can move on and tightly define your organization’s structure.

All of this information will be used to create your business plan, and will help you write your business plan faster and more precisely. Just remember, this is only necessary if you need more capital than you currently have, but is still a good idea for helping you focus your efforts.

-Rebecca