Once one is sure that they have a viable new business idea, the next thing to do is to develop a business plan around it.
The business plan has evolved over the years – and come to be seen as a tool for securing external financing. Yet while securing such external financing is an important role served by a business plan, it not the only – and neither is it the most important – role of the business plan.
The best way to view a business plan is to view it as a the blueprint upon which you will eventually roll out your new business. For this reason then, it follows that it is you, as the aspiring entrepreneur who should be the first person to be edified by the business plan while on the way to starting your own business.
Without delving too much into the technicalities of writing a business plan(as there is a lot of literature on that), it should be pointed out that the business plan that you ultimately come up with should be very rich both in figures and facts. The figures part of the business plan has to do with things like sales and revenue forecasts, as well as capital budgets. Now figures don’t lie, and if you listen carefully to what they tell you through the ‘figures part’ of your business plan (without letting your emotions get in the way), you can use them to decide whether to go ahead with the business or what.
The facts part of the business plan deals with the specifics of how you plan to be running the business, how you plan to manage the employees (if any), how you plan to roll it out – and so on and so forth.
Developing the business plan is a major milestone on the way to starting your own business, and it is something you really have to put real effort at, if your endeavor at starting business is to be really successful.
