Write Your Own Small Business Plan

A small business plan is vital to the success of starting a small business, faced with writing a plan for small businesses, panic sets in. Confusion clouds your mind. Wondering where to start.

This is important. And 'the outline of how your idea will become reality. In fact, it shows they are serious and you need them, if they need funding.

Writing the Business Plan Feared

The screen is blank. Your mind is empty. Really, this is an important part of creating your business. If you can not put it on paper, how do you make a living from it? Try to think along these lines and start to outline the plan of small business. The basic elements of all plans have a small business are the following:

- Summary - one page overview of your business plan. When the business plan is complete, go through it and summarize in one page.

- Introduction - briefly talk about your vision and goals for the company. Write yourself a vision, but avoid the old cliché. Remember to have a beginning, middle and end.

- Marketing Brief - Analyzing the market is part of your business. Who is that target? Because their goal?

- Marketing Strategy - Talk about how you intend to attract customers in your demographic. What tools you will use to achieve this goal? The Internet plays a role in all this? Need a website? Newspapers, television and radio advertising?

- Plan of Operation - This is the way in which they operate and set-up of business, where it will operate from, business name, legal requirements, and anything else necessary to run your new small business.

- Management Plan - talk about how you will manage your business. Will work from home, or local hire? How will you handle this? What tools and equipment you need to support your business?

- Financial plan - How will you finance your dream? Calculate your budget and prepare financial projections for the future. This is vital to show potential lenders and investors who have a plan. It gives them a basis for judging whether to perform or pay money to finance his dream. Be realistic about your projections

Instead of fearing the old business plan, think of it as your friend. The skeleton or backbone on which to build. And, remember, this is only one element of starting a small business from scratch....