Ideas For A Simple Side Business Plan

One of the key events in starting a small business is making a plan

. I was surprised by the results of a recent study that found that nearly 90% of small businesses in the study failed. Of the failures, 67% had no business plan! If you've ever sought funding for your business you would have quickly discovered that a comprehensive business plan is a requirement in order to receive funding. However, as valuable as a comprehensive business plan may be, it can be overly expensive and time consuming for the individual who wants to start a small business but is starting small scale one the side and really has no business experience. Detailed accounting plans may be more of a distraction than the road map to business success that they are intended to be. So if you are just starting out, what should you have in a business plan?

A good way to start planning for you business is to first decide if you can afford to be in business. Research your field and talk with other people in the field and come up with the expenses that you can reasonably expect to encounter as you start you business and maintain your business. Then look at your personal finances (specifically your discretionary income and saving) and decide if you discretionary income can cover the basic expenses (assuming your business makes no sales or the projected baseline sales). If your business plan fails at this point, you should probably think about starting a business in that field later when you have saved more up or when you have reduced other personal expenses.

If your personal savings and cash flow is more than enough to cover the basic essentials, then the next step would be to decide on some long term goals and then set short term milestones (with how you will achieve the milestones). Write out what you want to achieve and then ask yourself what do you need to do to achieve these goals. For example in an internet business, your long term goal may be to profit $10,000 per month. What must you do to get your store to profit this amount? You need traffic. So your short term milestones may be to implement an Adwords Program with a budget of (XXX), and an SEO plan with a budget of XXX per month targeting "Keyword 1" and "Keyword 2" to begin.

With the long term goals and short term plans, fill in the rest of the business plan with milestones and if/then statements. For example, set your milestone for SEO as the first page of Google for each keyword. If "keyword 1" reaches the first page, then split the SEO budget between "keyword 1", "keyword 2", and "keyword 3". If you profit over $1000 per month, then the amount of money over $1000 will be shifted to SEO to focus on "keyword 4". Or alternatively any money over $1000 will be placed in savings until the end of the year and then be budgeted. What is most important is having a plan that will keep you focused and help you know what to do both when you encounter successes and failures.

How you setup your plan does not matter much, but what is important is that when your company makes milestones and starts making money, you need to already have planned out what to do with the money. Just like your personal finances, if you don't have a plan for your money, it ends up in the discretionary pool and gets wasted on things that don't matter. So make a plan, stick to it, and be patient.

by: JD Hoopes

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