Roadmap For Starting Your Own Business

First things first: Your plans will change over time, so you are not expected to write them in stone. You’ll be using a pencil, or better yet, use your Mac to write things down. There are various reasons to write or not to write a business plan. Businesses have succeeded and failed with or without a business plan. There is no guarantee. Business plans give a sanity check for you and your investors.

When it comes to starting your own business you’ll need a roadmap, a business plan. You’ll need a business plan to define how you intend to make it happen or “get ’er done” for you and your family.

This section discusses business plan basics. It is best to consult more authoritative and specific business plan books, or seek out professionals. There are too many variables for each potential business for this book to cover.

There are three levels of writing business plans:

Basic plan (completed over the weekend and 1-2 pages in length) for startups. This is where you take a weekend or more to write up an outline of who, what, where, when, why, and how you intend to make money. It will take a few paragraphs to a few pages. Once it is written you could begin the following Monday. This plan is for those that have a simple idea that will be easy to start, such as a freelance writer or a personal trainer. You can start a business with just a few hundred dollars and putting in the time and effort.

Bootstrap Plan (4-6 Weeks to complete, 5-20 pages in length) for Larger Startups and Established Businesses. A plan such as this needs more thought, research, and more money to start-up, into the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars that will need to be invested. While startups can use this level of business plan it is also used by establis...

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...ers to your data questions, not about how it looks. That’s for the next area to discuss.

Summary or display area, you can rearrange the results to fit your message or the business plan’s “look and feel.” The summary cell can reference a results cell, but can display the information completely differently, especially if you are including charts or are mixing various sources of data results to arrive at your message.

“The Million Dollar Idea.” One of the I Love Lucy shows named The Millionaire Idea is where Lucy and Ethel go into business together selling Lucy’s Aunt Martha’s salad dressing. Problem is, they did not do any calculation of how much they’d get. Ricky comes in as does it for them and figures out after all of their work they’d be making only pennies. Doing a business plan helps figure this out and prevents wasting valuable time and money and reputation.