Whether or not someone works inside or outside of business, they can tell you that business is complicated. If businesses were easy to create and sustain, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wouldn’t have found that 75% of new businesses fail in the first 15 years. One of the most essential parts of creating a business is having a good business plan. A business plan is simply a document outlining the business’ main areas of operation, its goals, and its plan for completing those goals. A good business plan is as important as a good business idea. If you need good business ideas, check out this site.
While creating a business plan may seem easy, there are a few things that will make your business plan less likely to fail. Let’s go over a few.
1. Fits the business
Every business is different. There isn’t a single plan or method of creating plans that will work for every kind of business. Write out your goals first, and then build the plan from there. Look at what other similar businesses do and ask yourself how your business should be different based on the differences in your market.
2. Realism
While lofty goals sound good to marketing, it’s important to be realistic when you make your business plan. No matter what your goals are, there are almost certainly going to be challenges and trials that you couldn’t have known about beforehand. There’s a joke that the last 10% of a project feels like it takes 50% of the time. So, when you’re making your business plan, set goals that you’re sure you can accomplish, and then give your business a little extra time on each goal.
3. Clear and communicated
A good business plan is useless if no one knows what it is. Not only should the business plan use clear language and make the most important information obvious, it also needs to be communicated to your employees and partners so they know where the business is going.
4. Often Revised
This point may seem counterintuitive. After all, if a business plan needs to be constantly revised, doesn’t that mean it’s not a good plan? The reality of the business world is that it’s always changing. No one is going to be able to account for every change in a market over a period of years. For this reason, it’s important to revisit your business plan and ask yourself and your team what in the plan has been working and what you might need to change to account for new information.
Creating a business plan might seem simple, but there are a lot of considerations to make as you write and rewrite your business plan. It’s important to tailor your business plan to your particular business, set realistic goals, communicate the plan clearly, and revisit your plan often as the business and its environment evolve overtime. There are, of course, hundreds of other things to consider when making a business plan, but I hope this article has given you a few ideas on how to get started.
Bibliography
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/bdm/us_age_naics_00_table7.txt.
