How I Will Be Rich

I wrote about how to get some momentum going in a new business. Joe and I have some ideas for some start up companies and we are so close to getting them rolling. One thing we need to do is get organized. We don’t plan on jumping on too many projects all at once but what we need is some business plans. There are a couple reasons why it is important to have a business plan when starting out. The first, and most important, is so that you can map out every step you are going to take along the way to reach your goal. I want to have every little detail preconceived before we ever spend a cent. I want to know before hand, the places that we are going to need to spend money so I can plan a budget to get started. I want to have backup plans if one idea doesn’t quite work out. The other reason to have a business plan is so that you can convince people to lend you money. It makes it very difficult to borrow money and obtain startup capital if people have no idea what your plan is. Investors want to see a plan of action so that they, themselves, can determine whether it sounds feasible and profitable.

Here are some things that are important to include in your business plan:

1. A Summary - Explain real quickly what kind of company you are starting, what you are selling, who’s going to manage it and how much money you’re going to need.
2. An Organized Table of Contents - This is pretty self explanatory. This will help you keep all the pages of your plan organized and help future readers jump around if they need to.
3. A Description of your Product - This is where you want to get detailed about your product. Explain everything your product can do, all possible alternative uses, what it will look like, how it will feel and any other relevant piece of information about the product you are pitching.
4. Analysis of your Market - This is where you lay out all of your research. Explain who your competition will be, who your target market is and what territories you will cater to. This is also where you give sales projections. Figure out how much you anticipate making and what the trends in this industry have been.
5. Marketing Strategy - What is your grand strategy to make it to the top. What steps are you going to take to market yourself? You are probably jumping in to an industry that is already occupied with competition. What are you going to do to stand out and rise above as the superior competitor in your industry? Explain it.
6. An Operations Plan - This is where you explain how you are going to run a company. What are your customer service philosophies? Who is going to do what? Explain how you are going to run this company.
7. A Financial Plan - Talk about the numbers. How much will things cost, how much are you going to sell for and how will you take care of accounting?
8. A Management Plan - Really dig deep and define the roles of the management. This is a very important step because you will need some sort of structure when you are first starting out. People will need to be accountable and it needs to be clearly defined in the beginning who will be accountable for what.

As you can see, writing a business plan is no easy task. There are a lot of steps and a lot of research must go in to them to do them properly. Once done correctly, however, you will have a clear set map of what’s to come. You’ll have something to show for your company and, hopefully, investors will want to take a chance on your little start up.

-M

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