The First Step to Success is…

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:05:37 +0000

The First Step to Success is Your Business Plan

It all starts with your business plan.
Your business plan is the foundation and blueprint for your success.

Your business plan is not something that you write as an exercise and put in a drawer.
It is a living, growing, developing and changing document that you must constantly keep in mind, re-visit, edit and add to.

If you want to have a business that grows and succeeds, you simply must start with a business plan.

If you don’t have a business plan you don’t have a business.

It doesn’t have to be complicated and it doesn’t have to take you a long time to create.

But if you don’t have one, you don’t have a business.
At best, you have a job.

How to write your business plan
Keep it simple and don’t worry about it or make it complicated.
It’s your plan and you can always change it.
Remember, it is a living, growing document.

Product or Service

First, you want to clearly define your product or service.
And you want to define exactly who your target market is.
You want this specific and clearly defined.
“Who am I selling to and what am I selling to them that they WANT and need?”

If you try to be all things to everyone, you won’t succeed.
You need to identify and define a specific target market or niche that you can provide and sell a product or service to that they want and will pay you money for.

An example of what this is not: “My target market is elderly women and I’m going to sell them tatoos.”

Answer this question, “What does my business deliver to my clients/customers that has value and worth what they pay me?” or, “What exactly do I give my clients or customers in exchange for what I get paid?”

Examples:
For an entrepreneur or business owner: “A growing, profitable business.”
For a real estate agent that sells homes: “A home sold at the best price in the least amount of time” His target market might be a geographical farm, senior residential owners, etc.

Metrics

These are the key things that your are producing in your business that are measurable.
These are your statistics – numbers you can put on a graph and see if things are going uphill, downhill or sideways.

Statistics are like the dashboard in a car. It’s how you know how fast you are going or what you are trying to accomplish. Baseball players keep statistics. Most companies do it. You have to treat your business like a business and one of the ways you do that is to monitor key metrics – statistics.

Figure out what the key statistics are that you need to monitor. Try not to have more than 4 or 5 at the very most because you don’t want to be overwhelmed by the number of statistics you have to keep.
Examples:
Income
Net Income
# of prospects
# of customers
# of appointments.

Vision

You now want to get a clear, specific vision of what your business will be when you have built it out to a level higher than it is now. We aren’t looking at the ultimate here. Just a picture of what it will be like when it has reached a specific achievable level above what it is now – maybe a year from now. A vague goal such as, “I want to get rich” or “I want to be really successful” will not get you where you want to go. It is too general. You need to have a very specific detailed outcome that you envision. Know your outcome and begin developing a plan to get it in the planning steps. This should be something that you KNOW deep down and deeply believe is achievable.

You want to visualize it as if you are there. “My business is now doing $40K a month. I have one employee. My clients/customers are routinely pleased beyond their expectations… etc.”

Write this down.

This gives you a comparison point for looking at your business as it is now. It will give you some ideas for what specific steps you need to take to move toward your goals.

Goals

Next is your goals.
You are 100 times more likely to achieve your goal if you put it in writing rather than keeping it in your head.
These can be one-year goals, three-year goals or five-year goals.
For example: “In three years, I want to have a million dollar a year business.”
You can then figure out sub-goals that are steps toward achieving your long-range goal.

Purposes

Then figure out what your purposes are.
Your purposes are on-going.
You should be able to see that you are working on or fulfilling your purpose every day.
These are the reasons you are doing what you are doing.

This is not “To make me a lot of money and give me a lot of free time.”
It is the purpose for your business.

Examples:
“The purpose of my business is to exceed my clients’ expectations.”

A real estate agent: “To help first-time buyers get the best house for the best price.”
A dentist: “To help my patients get and maintain optimum oral health and a beautiful smile.”
A merchant services agent: “To help merchants save money and make more money with merchant services.”

Plan
Now you are ready to write your plan.
It doesn’t have to be complicated or take a long time.
Remember, you can always revise it or change it or even throw it away and make another plan.

This is your system or scheme of how you are going to accomplish your goal, fulfill your purpose and produce, sell and deliver your product or service. This is where you work out and write down how you are going to reach your goal and accomplish your purpose.

You can even sketch it out on a napkin.

This is the layout or design of your business – your business model.

Program

Now you want to write out a series of steps to achieve your goal or a sub-goal.
Your goal might be something that you want to achieve in five years.
Breaking it down into chunks, or sub-goals, you can see the major things you have to achieve on the way.
The sub-goal you want to go for to start out might be a milestone you want to hit in one month or three months.

Summary

Look over your business plan on a regular basis to make sure you are making progress on the steps of the plans and programs you set out.

You might need to course correct or change a few things as you go along. Nothing is cast in stone.

Let’s say you are launching a space shuttle toward the moon. You have a certain trajectory but the people at Houston are constantly changing the speed and direction of the ship as it is going toward the moon because it doesn’t stay on course exactly. So they have to do a booster here or a booster there so that it is going to hit its mark.

Come up with your big plan. Then break the it down into small do-able steps. And those are your program steps.

I could go into a lot more detail for each of these steps but here are the simple steps:

1. Clearly define your product or service and your target market.

2. Write down a few, key metrics to keep.

3. Write down your goals and sub-goals.

4. Write down your purpose.

5. Write your plan.

6. Write down a step-by-step program to achieve your first sub-goal.

7. Get to work on your program.

8. Keep a log of your metrics.

9. Re-visit your business plan often. It is your blueprint for success.

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The First Step to Success is…