By Mark Lieberman, SCORE mentoring volunteer
Business plans have a bad rap. If your enterprise is a startup, a small business, or even a medium size business, it is very likely that you don’t have a written business plan. The myth is that only large companies with big budgets have business plans. That need not be so – here’s 5 reasons you need a business plan and where you can get help developing one.
- A business plan is a blueprint describing how to structure and grow your business. It’s a way to think through and detail all the key elements of how your business will run.
- A business plan will identify and help you reach milestones. Not having a plan is like flying blind: if you don’t know where you want to be, how will you know if you are there?
- A business plan is essential to getting funding. With the possible exception of friends and family, the absence of a business plan suggests to a lender that you are flying blind.
- There is no wrong way to write a business plan. The major obstacle to having a plan is just that you haven’t begun yet.
- A business plan is not as hard to write as you think. A single page or so will do.
It may be easier to think of a business plan as several “mini plans”. As a start think of several topics such as a sales, pricing, operations, and cost plan. It’s helpful to sketch out a budget. If a monthly budget seems too cumbersome, just create an annual budget then divide it by 12.
What matters is to review the plan either quarterly or monthly. Compare what actually happened in the period to what you aimed to do in the business plan. The review is your chance to re-evaluate your results and make adjustments as you go.
You don’t have to create the plan in a vacuum. There’s plenty of available help at little or no cost.
Here’s a few books and resources that can help:
Despite its insulting title, Small Business for Dummies will help you organize your thoughts.
Alternatively, the same shelf also contains How to Write a Business Plan by Mike McKeever, which is a good alternative.
If the above are too detailed, read the Small Business for Dummies Cheat Sheet online; it’s concise, but it’ll get you started.
Looking to get right into it? The library subscribes to Gale Business: Plan Builder, a resource that guides you through steps of assembling a business plan, gathering your information, and generating a pitch deck.
Of course, nothing replaces real live help – all of us like to have someone to talk to. The Wilmette Kenilworth Chamber of Commerce has regular meetings where you find others who can help. Alternatively, SCORE offers a free Business Plan Template. Also, a SCORE mentor is available at Wilmette Public Library for as long as you want help at no charge. All SCORE mentors are either current or past business owners who will sit with you face to face and help you get your plan together. Interested? Reach out to John Amundsen, Wilmette Public Library’s business librarian, at jamundsen@wilmettelibrary.info or call 847.256.6954, and he'll get us connected.
I’m a SCORE mentor here at the library. One of my first clients was a New Trier teacher with a plan to help high school students write college entry essays. After several years, she now runs Total Writing Enrichment, a profitable business with 4 employees.
It works when you have a business plan.