Are you an entrepreneur wanting to start your own business?
Perhaps you are an expert in what you do, or you are a creative excelling in your specialty, and you work for someone else but think that you can do it better, or that your own business would be so much more?
OK so you want to start your own business but where do you start? What do you do first? What do you have to do? The questions are starting to overwhelm the enthusiasm, right? If only there were a number of steps laid out that you could follow, and be sure that you’ve thought about everything and that you haven’t missed anything.
Well there is!
I have created an online course to take any entrepreneur or small business startup from scratch – from idea to opening their doors. Funnily enough it’s called “How To Start Your Own Business“!
Well, this week I’m going to talk about what the business planning process involves, and how you have to include the “why” of your business, why does it exist?
You see, people forget that business plans are written to be read. Yes, that’s a revolutionary thought isn’t it?
People think that business plans are boring internal documents that you write so that you can follow them step by step to grow your business. No. That’s called a to-do checklist.
Business plans are written to be read – by you, by your team, by outside investors, by supporters, by people close to you. Yes, they form the basis of what you have to do in order to grow your business – but more than that, a business plan is a story of what you have to do in order to grow your business to become the business that you want. This takes much more than a list of things that are your goals and a list of actions to achieve those goals. This means that your business plan has to be a reminder, an inspiration, it must attract people, it must make them want to be part of your story as an investor, as a team member, as a customer, as a fan.
So, let’s take a look at the why and how of the business plan process.
It’s late January – are you still keeping track of your New Year’s Resolutions?
Making resolutions is great. Making resolution sets goals, and if you are clear about your goals they become possible. But in order to make those goals real, you need plans. Once you have plans, you need to work on them – every day!
It’s the same for your business. Set your goals, make your plans – then, how do you keep them front of mind before you get lost in all the little things you have to do?
If you are a startup entrepreneur, or someone who is good at what you do and while working for someone else you think that you can “do it better” it’s useful to understands the steps you have to take in starting your own business.
Of course, once you have worked out your personal strengths and weaknesses, tested the feasibility of your idea and designed the right business model for you, you will need to prepare a Business Plan. Your Business Plan clarifies for you what you have to do to get to your ultimate goal, and it shows others (financiers, supporters) how you have thought through the business-building process.
Even if you already have a business, I think you will find a couple of nuggets there that you can use, like how to design the right Business Model for you, and the questions you ask before you choose your accountant, lawyer or IT professional.
I give weekly tips and tools to grow your business from my blog, so if you don;t want to miss out, why don’t you go to teikoh.com and sign up to get these free ideas delivered directly to your inbox.
We’ve all heard these phrases haven’t we? “Innovate” and “agile” and “disruption”, what do these trendy words mean?
Well, believe it or not, there’s nothing new under the sun. All these trendy sayings mean something that businesses have had to do for centuries – we all need to move with the times. If you settle, you go the way of Kodak and Blackberry, and in the sense of industries, you face the challenges of the taxi industry in the face of Uber or of the hotel industry when Air BnB is out there.
So you have to innovate. You have to be aware of what is happening around you, to your business, to your customers, to your industry, to your market, and find new ways of doing things or new ways to serve. Yet business success is a game of inches, not Eureka moments.
If you expect miracles, you set up your mindset for the BIG new thing to invent. This makes people feel nervous because they will find it hard to innovate at such a big leap. So they react by working on what they know, and innovation? Nothing.
You need to shift mindsets – yours and those of your team. Believe that innovation is possible but you do it through small improvements. If people are allowed to change their world with small improvements, then they are not afraid to fail because if they do fail, it’s small. When a good attempt has not succeeded, don’t label it a failure – accept that an experiment has given you a result and ask “what did we learn to do/not to do?”
And remember to measure. Take simple measurements like time saved, or cost saved – feel the progress and celebrate, then look for more.
Finally if you are reading this on one of my social media channels, you might be missing a lot of great ideas and tools and resources to help you grow your business, create effective strategy and show leadership. Why don’t you go to my website at teikoh.com and sign up to get these free ideas sent directly to your inbox (not forgetting to mark the email from teikoh.com as safe so that it doesn’t go straight to your spam folder.
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