Why you need a business plan

Why you need a business plan

If you have decided to take the leap to be your own boss and run your own trades business, have you thought about your goals and objectives? Have you asked yourself- how you are planning on growing your business, who is your competition and what are your objectives?

If you aren’t able to clearly answer these questions, then you need to build a business plan. Creating a business plan it will help you to clearly plan for your future whilst creating an opportunity to understand how your business will evolve over time. 

A business plan can be compared to a blueprint for your business to plan ahead. It helps you to stay on track and keep an eye on your long term objective whilst meeting all of your intermittent goals. 

You do not need to write a Mills and Boon novel, it just needs to be short, sweet and to the point. So what should you add into your business plan?

You need to include your long term, short term and medium-term goals. Your goals help you to stay motivated and keep pushing through the hurdles that you will endure.

The next item to add-in is a SWOT analysis. A SWOT ( Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) This analysis helps you to think about and highlight your competition (other businesses), your unique value, who your target market could possibly be and how you could engage with them.

Don’t be afraid to talk about your weaknesses as it will help you to understand what areas of your business that you can work on to become better at. 

A clear vision and honest objectives are so important in your business plan. 

Once you have written your business plan, you will use it over and over again . It will become a handy go-to document to revisit your goals and objectives to analyse if they have changed or if you have met them or outperformed them. A business plan is also fabulous if you need to get finance for your business, a bank or financial institution will want to see a detailed plan of your business and how you hope to grow it even more. 

If you still aren’t sure where to start, why don’t you check out this page on the Business Government website- there are some templates and further instructions on how to create the best business plan for you and your business.

https://business.gov.au/planning/business-plans/develop-your-business-plan

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