A business plan is a complete description of a business and its plans for the next one to three years. It explains what the business does (or will do if it’s for a new business); it suggests who will buy the product or service and why; and, it provides financial forecasts demonstrating overall viability, indicates the finance available and explain the financial requirements.
A written business plan is however only an encapsulation of all of these components at a particular point in time. Your thoughts and ideas before you started in business will inevitably be changed by the experience of starting and running your business. Your business plan needs to reflect your growing experience. Use your plan to compare actual experience and results against your initial ideas and change it as often as you think is necessary.
This will enable you to stay in control and help you to plan for success.
Personal aspirations affect how you feel about self-employment and what kind of business you want to run. Are you in it just for fun - or to make money? An assessment of your strengths and weaknesses will help you to focus on what products and services your business is capable of producing, and to identify the skills you need to develop further. Researching the market in which you are trading will enable you to identify the opportunities from customers and threats from competitors that exist for your business.
From all this, it should be possible to develop a clear idea of what your business is doing, where you should be going, and how you are going to get there. As suggested above, you will also need to think about the resources that will be needed - cash, equipment, premises, people - and how they will be deployed.
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