The Importance Of A Focused Business Plan
Crucial Reasoning on why you should adopt a business plan approach.
Jack Foley
So you have seen a great opportunity and are about to get started.
Where do you go from here? Before you dig in, I cannot stress enough
the importance of a well laid out business plan. You might then be asking,
how do I plan and set goals if I don't have a clue what I'm going to achieve
and in what timeframe? This may be true, but your business must have
a foundation on which to start from. You are going to start your home business because
you see the potential of this opportunity. Now, to realize this potential, you should
plan on how you are going to turn this into success.
Get your diary and write down your goals, how you are going to
achieve them and in what timeframes. Be realistic with your timeframes. Nothing
when starting out in business will happen overnight but I guarantee that the
businesses that started out with a plan achieved their goals quicker than the
others. Being distracted from your initial business goals is so very common in
today's business world especially on the Internet. It is very common for an entrepreneur
to start a business and then see other areas where the business can grow.
A common theme is an entrepreneur starting out maybe with his/her own
product website on the Internet. He/She achieves a little bit of success, see's
another avenue where the business might grow and dives in without thinking.
It might work, but the odds are against it. In the meantime his initial planned
strategy is being totally neglected of resources and time. Multiply this scenario
by 3 or 4 and you've got a problem. You will end up dabbling in different areas
and not totally concentrating on one.
This goes back to my earlier point, it will not happen overnight. You have to give
your business time. You will probably work the hardest and be the most frustrated
for the first 8-12 months. If you can focus on the business plan goals for this time
period, your odds for making it are much higher. Try to ignore the other opportunities
for the time being, at least until you get your business off the ground. When you get
to that stage, then the fun starts and then you can try other things knowing that you
have built a solid business which will be there to protect you if your other ideas don't work out.
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