Starting Up A Business: You Need a Business Plan
Starting a business is an exciting and yet daunting time for everyone,
from the seasoned veteran to the first time start-up. Starting up a new venture
in any field is one of the most frightening steps anyone can take. Stepping out
from the known and safety of being part of another community to stand alone with
your idea sounds exciting and thrills people, but also creates a mountain of new
and often insurmountable challenges.
The excitement of starting a new business can be quickly matched (and
outshone) by the size of the daunting challenge you have set yourself. Where do
you start in turning your idea into a business? For many it is talking it
through with friends and family, seeing if it has legs, if it is a runner,
trying to find the next step in turning the idea into a business.
Hidden Challenges Facing All Entrepreneur
The next stage for many is to try to write down a plan of what they are
trying to launch. This is where most people struggle, what to plan and how to plan
what you are doing. How to turn your embryonic idea into a fully sized business
is one of the hidden challenges facing every entrepreneur.
For many creating a business plan, is too big a challenge, re-defining it
as a pointless exercise, or more realistic something they know they need to do,
but want to postpone having to do it until the last moment, or later. Quite
often planning their business is something entrepreneurs want to or try to delegate
to other people. They want to keep the model flexible, or often in their head,
I am working on it are other phrases I come across.
Putting All the Pieces Together
Yet to take any idea from embryonic idea to a recognizable business model,
requires an investment in planning all the details of your business. Not just
focusing on the core product or service, the exciting concept, but functional
aspects of how the business will operate, from where and how, what operations
have to be undertaken and by whom.
Then a business needs to answer the biggest challenge, where will the customers
come from and how. This key area is one, which entrepreneurs struggle to define publicly and honestly, relying on the old adage “build it and they will
come.” But turning an idea into a successful business requires more than hope,
it requires a clear plan, based upon a defined winning strategy driving a business
model which makes sense and explains why it will succeed.
Defining The Optimum Solution
The first step many successful entrepreneurs undertake is to review their
idea and build their strategic plan, to take their idea from embryonic idea to
a fully formed business model. From understanding your market and the size and
scale of opportunity, to working out where to position yourself and what needs
to happen to create interest in what you are offering and how you need to respond
to it.
Developing a strategic perspective is a vital first stage in developing
an agile and responsive business, by defining your strategic plan enables
entrepreneurs to fully assess the whole business model, evaluating all aspects
of your business and giving you all the ingredients for a business plan.
Take Some Action
However you decide to start your business, do look for support. Run your idea past experienced people in bringing businesses to market, look at answering the difficult questions early, while optimism is vital, so is reality as is persistence.
If you are looking to develop your business model then look at developing
your strategic plan for your business then why not look at my book Strategy: The Leader's Role by Richard Gourlay which
will help you develop your strategic plan for your business.
