Step 2: Yes. You Need A Business Plan!

...Your Blueprint And Action Program

Do you have a written down business plan showing what you are going to do and how you are going to do it? Or is the closest thing you have to a direction for the business all ‘in your head’?

No it isn’t good enough to have ‘a rough idea in your head’. And no again… a working plan for your business is not the work of fiction that you might have thrown together to show the bank, because you want them to lend you money!

So ‘everybody knows’ what a business plan is. Or claim to. Really, few people actually do know what a working business plan looks like, and fewer still have one. Those who actively work to their plan and revise and update, are so rare as to be virtually mythical. Easier to find a unicorn than a business owner like that! Make that your commitment. Write up your plan, and work it. No fluff. Nothing in it that you don’t have the will to make happen, and every step written down, that you will take on the way to getting the results you lay out. Use it as a compass to keep you on track and be willing to amend it if circumstances affecting where you want to end up, should change.

Does it have to be set in concrete? No it isn’t fixed. It is like a map and you may vary your route and still arrive at the destination you want. If circumstances change, you may need to amend as you go along. Writing it down should not be confused with it being inflexible. And you change it when you have a Good Reason only.

Your plan will show your vision for the business, the current position, the position you want to be in at a set time, and what steps you commit to make happen in that time frame to get there. Leave nothing out and have every resource you will need to use, documented and accounted for. It’s your business. If it looks like nothing you’d prefer your business to look like – that’s your responsibility to make it right.