Intro

Creating a Business Plan is crucial to running a successful business. This site is more about marketing – but if you do not have a solid business plan then your marketing plan will not be worth the paper it’s written on.

Definition

A business plan defines your business concept, philosophy, processes, organisational structure and finance forecast. It is the back bone of any business and should be used as a working document not something you write and leave on the shelf to collect dust.

Benefits

You will have direction, as a business owner it will be far easier to grow your business if everything is written down and benchmarks and targets are set using the information in your plan. Keeping everything in your head means that only you can work on your business, writing it all down opens it up to other people to follow the plan to assist in the growth of the business.

Pros

• You will know what your goals are
• You will have a structure and a plan to follow
• You will have a document to use at monthly business meetings
• You can update it at any time
• It allows you to be free
• It means your company will grow
• It will identify roles and define who does what – so you aren’t doing everything

Cons

• It takes time to create a plan
• You will need to let go and delegate tasks out – no one can do everything
• You will need to consult the plan at your monthly business meetings and ensure you follow it for it to be effective.

How to Implement this into your Business

Use our simple set of tasks to help you to identify some of the parameters of your plan – you can get access to the task list by “adding this topic to your Marketing plan”.

Then use the Template from http://www.business.gov.au to set up your plan

Hold monthly meetings and follow the plan and adjust as necessary

Tips

If you do not set up a business plan you are planning to fail. Invest the time in this important document and then USE it. If you spend all that time creating a plan and then ignore it – that is a waste of time, effort and money. Be serious about it and make it work for you so your business grows in line with your vision.