In my town I see businesses come and go so quickly I almost miss them. One week there will be a great little shop selling the most amazing hand-made items but the next time I drive past it, it houses a team of lawyers. Many businesses die within the first six months of opening mainly due to a lack of forethought and planning. How can you potentially avoid that mistake and make a success of your business? Well, before you consider setting up a business, any business you must think about budget, goals, clientele etc while at the same time being careful of unrealistic expectations. What you need is a business plan.
A home-based business differs a great deal from a regular business but that doesn’t make the planning process any less important. All the while you’re putting pen to paper, don’t get bogged down with perfecting your business plan and sticking to its rigid schedule of what may be impractical goals. Your business plan should determine what you hope to achieve in the short term and also where you want to be in a years time. You should also consider start up costs, expected profit and honestly think about whether this venture is the one for you.
Since there are so many points to consider, I’m going to break this subject down into various posts.
What should my Business Plan include?
As mentioned, there are a number of points to cover and over the next few posts they’ll be elaborated on. Basically we can look at the following:
- Business Goals
- Legalities
- Services
- Company Name & Branding
- Market Analysis
- Market Strategy
- Costs
That will give you something to chew over but don’t miss the next part as we’re going to look at the first item on the Business Plan list, “Business Goals”.
Updated in 2016: Purchase my “Business Plan Template e-Book” from the Canary Admin Services’ Victory Store.
