Business Planning

Business Planning

Deciding to start your own business is a big step. You may have that ‘golden idea’ that will make you a millionaire overnight, but writing a solid plan that will convince banks or potential investors to put money into your idea is not always so easy.

Business planning is crucial for turning a successful business idea into a successful business. Quite often people steer clear of business plans for fear of the level of work that goes into writing them. However writing a business plan does not have to be something too difficult. Here are a few reasons why business plans are so valuable to any successful business.

Recognise the purpose of a plan

To help you remain focused on the goals of your business and to evaluate the steps you need to take to reach them.
To secure future finance and possible investment.
To organise all the key areas of your business in an easy to read format.

Reap the benefits

A well written plan can guide you through difficult times - allowing you to see which areas you can work on.
A working tool - the plan is never static and thus will change to suit your changing goals and standards so don't feel restricted by a business plan.

You don’t need a huge budget to write a fully functioning business plan but you do need to use it. If your idea is to have any hope of doing well its crucial that it remains a working document and is used for everything from research to funding purposes. However don’t make the mistake of becoming so engrossed in the planning or your business that you can’t become active in the “doing” of your business. One has to strike a fine balance between planning and action in order to see true results come to fruitition.

Risk vs Reward

According to Wikipedia - Risk is a concept that denotes the precise probability of specific eventualities. Technically, the notion of risk is independent from the notion of value, and as such, eventualities may have both beneficial and adverse consequences. However in general usage the convention is to focus only on potential negative impact to some characteristic of value that may arise from a future event.

Too often we hold back from actions and new ideas becuase of the convention to focus on risk as a negative rather than a positive. Yet throughout history some of the most successful people are those who take a risk...a calculated risk but a risk nonetheless. Some would argue that there is no such thing as a calculated risk; risk is a fixed ideal and perhaps one could use the example of the current collapses of major institutions to illustrate that fact. The fact that even calculated risk can lead to a possible negative impact in the future. But not I use the term POSSIBLE - life is full of endless possibilities which we can take advantage of at any time.

I am a big fan of risk-taking; much preferring to live life to the maximum and seek out all possibilities than to remain stagnant but safe! That is not to safe that I go crazy; and act without thinking things through, weighing up my options. But I do believe that the only way to experience success in all areas is if one faces the possibility of risk adversity head on. The greatest rewards can come from taking that leap of faith and hopefully those risks can lead to major rewards.

By Aderonke Lawal

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