Guide To Writing A Business Plan

How to use this business plan?

A business plan should be a living and breathing document. As your business environment changes, the plan's actions and strategies should evolve and adapt on a periodic basis.

The purpose of this guide is to be the first step to either developing or refining a plan for a business, division or person. You will be guided in using a set of business tools to help you clarify your vision and competitive advantage. The guide will also help focus on your key issues / strategies and finish with a One Page Plan so that you can start implementing your strategies.

Throughout this plan, we are using the setup of a caf as an example of how to use these tools. Replace this text with your own business as you go along.

1. Set your vision for the business, draw up a vision statement of where you want your business to be.

2. Your vision will then help guide you in mindmapping what you need to achieve this vision. In mindmapping you will be drawing connections between your business idea, and the practicalities of what you need when you start your business. This is the time for you to brain dump all the ideas, possibilities and potential problems that you can have when you start your business.

3. Flesh out these ideas more by developing a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) analysis. Look at your mindmap and critically highlight what are the SWOT in your business

4. Flesh out 3 top strategies that you can practically implement that would help you meet your business vision

5. For each of these strategies complete a Force Field Analysis to examine what are the factors that will make or break the success of these strategies. Draw up 3 action points that you can do.

Fill out our one page business plan template. Set strategies, assign tasks and set timelines to get going in starting your business. The one page business plan summaries your vision, strategies and tasks to be done in a handy page.