A good business begins with a good plan

I receive a lot emails from people who read this blog and tell me that they are almost ready to start their business, just starting to think about it or they are someplace in between. So today, I thought we'd discuss that monster of a task that needs to get done at the very, very beginning: Your business plan.

If you've written your business plan already, fantastic!

If you haven't, why not? What's holding you back?

Is it that you think you lack time? Well, if you can't make the time to work on a business plan, then you're not going to have the time to plan the business. :) Carve out the time. It might 30 minutes before bed. Or maybe set the alarm to wake up 30 minutes earlier in the morning every day until it's done.

Is it that you don't know the first thing about business plans? That's an easy fix... there are dozens of books out there on business plans. If you are truly starting from scratch, then start with a book such as "Business plans for dummies" (I have it, it's one that I used when writing my business plan).

Is it that you started, but it's not coming together in the way you hoped? Ah ha! This is most interesting. This happened to me quite a bit when writing my business planS. Yes, that's plans with an "S". Before starting my paint your own pottery studio, I had thought of other kinds of business ideas I'd like to try. When I had an idea, I would start writing the plan. If it didn't come together, it was because it really wasn't right. It wasn't right for me at that time. For example, while lots of folks have businesses they run buying properties and acting as landlord or flipping them, it just wasn't coming together for me when I started outlining and writing the plan. It wasn't right. I moved on and went through about 6 different ideas before thinking about my retail store. The business plan for The Pot and Bead just fell into place so easily for me at that time... that's how I knew it was right.

Here is an interesting resource for you: For a while, I ran a second business as a consultant helping people get their business plans together. I'm not really a consultant at heart, so that business, Now Plan This, only lasted a year or so. I shut it down, but I still have one of the tools I created. It's a business plan questionnaire that I'm now giving out for free:

Download the PDF business questionnaire.

It's similar to a business plan template, but instead of headings of sections to fill in, it asks the question for you to answer.

The theory is, if you're starting a business, you darn tootin' should be able to answer these questions. If you can't answer the questions, that might be a red flag before you get started in really opening the business. Note: since Now Plan This no longer exists, this is not a form to submit back to me or anyone else. It's provided free for your reference. However, if you have a specific question, please don't hesitate to ask.

More about the early days of getting The Pot and Bead into existence can be found in my book: Cute Little Store.

Thanks for reading!