Simply Junior

Having a good small business plan will ensure that your journey to success is much smoother. All successful business owners know that having an organized, well thought plan is essential to see the results they expect. Even if the business plan doesn’t give the results that you would have thought in the beginning, you can tweak and change different areas of your process to perfect it.

I thought I would go through a step by step guide to what you need for an effective small business plan. Many people try and start a business without any true expectations for the future other then ‘oh this is going to work’. You have to know exactly what “should” happen so that the surprises are less. In most cases surprises in business aren’t positive.

You must have a plan for many different areas of starting a small business. How are you going to fund the start up fees? How do you expect to sell your product/service? How do you expect to pay your employees? How are you going to promote your company effectively? Most importantly and what most business owners don’t think about is where do you want your business to be in 5…10…20 years?

Creating the right small business plan is all about creating effective systems. A system is something that you can use over and over again in different situations to receive expected results. You at least have some idea of what’s going to happen if you have the right systems in place.

The first step to your business plan is knowing exactly how much money it’s going to take to start your company. None of this has to be a professionally written up small business plan that costs thousands and thousands of dollars hiring an “expert”. Take out a piece of paper and write down your plan. The main thing is that you know exactly how you are going to fulfill your dream of being a successful small business owner.

So what are your opening expenses? Here are some questions you need to answer to find out your estimated dollar amount:

How much money does your product or service cost you? How much money will you charge for your service/product? How much money do you require to live for two years with no profit coming in from your business (safety precaution)? How much will it cost for your employees for 2 years? What are your legal fees? What are your CPA fees? How much will getting a physical location cost you (if needed)?

Every business is going to be different so think about anything that you need to spend money on to get it running. The next step you must consider is how are you going to get this start up money. Are you going to go to a bank for a loan? Are you considering finding a partner that can cover the costs with the agreement you can buy out the company later down the road? Do you want to talk with a wealthy family member about your business? Anyway you choose to get the money doesn’t matter.

Having a thorough small business plan is going to help you get that start up money though. As long as you can show the lenders how you plan on getting a return on their investment, you will be set. It doesn’t matter if you have horrible credit or don’t know anybody that will lend you large amounts of money. You can always find a way. Think outside the box!

Alright the next step should be the simplest for you. You want to write down your complete sales funnel for how you plan to sell your product or service. Go through every step you expect a customer to go through to reach your bank account. What are you selling exactly? How are you packaging the items? Are you providing multiple services and products? What do you expect to be your number one seller? What’s your specialty?

Once you have all these areas done, you have to know how you are going to promote your business and keep the business coming in. This seems to be the biggest problem most business owners have. You know everything there is to know about your products/services, but you know nothing about marketing. That’s expected too. Marketing is an expertise in itself.

If you’ve read much of my blog, you know how I preach about smart marketing. Smart marketing is all about spending your hard earned dollar and getting more then you spent in return. In other words, big return on investment (ROI). Every market will be different and different marketing tactics will work in each of them. You have a huge list of options too.

Newspapers, Yellow Pages, Radio, Television Ads Fliers, postcards, promotion coupons Referral programs Internet marketing Email marketing Holding seminars and special events Business to business referral programs

These are just to name a few of the options you have. You can never go wrong working with other local businesses. It’s beneficial for both businesses and can be something that explodes your business quickly. It should definitely be part of every small business plan.

No matter which direction you take your marketing in, remember to always be able to track your marketing method. You always want to know how effective each method is for your business. Don’t spray and pray! In other words, don’t just buy what that marketing salesman is selling you if they can’t show you how many customers you are getting in return.

Creating your small business plan with all of these areas covered is a great start to having a successful business. You can go in deeper and deeper to have an even more effective plan and you should, but this is a great start for anyone. Once you have the plan, you just have to follow it step by step. It makes your job so much easier. You have too much to worry about already. There is no reason to have to constantly be wondering…’what am I going to do now?’ You need to know what you’re doing beforehand.

Anyone planning to start a business needs to have a plan in place. Coming up with a business plan, no matter how small the business may be, is sometimes not very easy and may call for the services of a professional business consultant. The need to have a business plan is propelled by the fact that later on in the life of the venture, one may need to present it to investors for planning or partnership.

A business plan consultant is normally in a position to tell you what key points need to appear on your document. One may wonder why such a crucial document is so difficult to write, but as earlier mentioned, it needs to capture and sustain the attention of whoever will be reading it. The content will also be determined by the amount of starting capital that is being looked into at the start of the venture. A business plan written with an aim of getting a loan of $50,000 is definitely different from one that is targeting $5 million. All the same the content should not be more than 40 pages.

As a suggestion to what the business plan should contain, the consultant will guide you through the various sections of the document. The first one is the executive summary which should capture the main points of the content. Remember that, the first impression is the lasting impression and so, what the reader draws from here will determine his general judgment about you and the business.

You need to explain how you will market your business and what your strategy for growth and expansion will be. These two factors will be faced with competition from other ventures in the same industry, so be clear about how you plan to step up your game to deal with competition. The other most important bit is the budget, in which you should capture all the requirements for the start up and their costs. Be careful with the figures, neither underestimating nor over quoting prices.

In emerging markets it might be hard to find the money to start up a business. Could cloud computing be a game changer in these markets?

The emerging markets are definitely interesting to cloud developers and providers. Cloud computing is popular because of the low running costs and low need of knowledge, but for the emerging markets, there are still obstacles to overcome.

Advantages.

One of the main advantages with cloud computing is the low cost of implementation. You don’t necessarily need a server, but can instead use of one of the many cloud providers out there. Most small and medium businesses will find that the cloud has a solution to suit their needs. Furthermore this also means that you won’t have to pay for an expensive license. As we’ve seen in both webOS’s and dedicated cloud OS’s most of the software bundled with an OS is included in the monthly subscription or even free. Furthermore if developers need more resources cloud servers are easy scalable, due to the fact that many of the providers offer pay-as-you-go solutions.

Another advantage is, that the cloud can be set up anywhere with an internet access. Since it is possible to store everything in the cloud, you can practically access your systems from a bamboo hut in the jungle. Furthermore if you provide your employees with a cheap netbook, you actually don’t need to provide an expensive office. This also means that if you require a person with certain competences, but such a person isn’t available in your region, you can still collaborate on projects over vast distances. As we saw in LotusLive communication and collaboration isn’t a problem since these functions often are integrated in cloud interfaces.

Then what about finding clients? Well, since your business is already using the internet on a daily basis it is even easier for you to bring it online and by this making your services available to customers worldwide.

Basic issues.

To be productive in the cloud requires some sort of a computer device. One obvious example could be a chromebook, but they are still as expensive as an ordinary laptop. Netbooks are much cheaper and it’s easy to install a hybrid OS or use a webOS. Simmtronics have tried to make use of this and are now selling their 199$ netbook in emerging markets. This is of course positive since several organizations have stated that 200$ is the point where computers becomes widely available to the public in poor countries. It can still be done cheaper. Raspberry Pi, a UK-based nonprofit organization, are currently working on a computer of the size of a credit card. The expected price for their device is 25$. The cheapest monitor on Bestbuy.com is sold for 80$, and then you’ll need a keyboard and a mouse which is 20$. This way you’ll have a full set-up for 125$. Their system runs on Ubuntu, but another Linux distribution, TinyCore, could be configured to start up directly in the web browser.

In developing countries and also emerging markets power isn’t always stable. Since power is necessary for a computer to work, then this is definitely an obstacle. The solution to this problem could be solar power since many of the emerging markets are located in sunny locations.

Another problem is connectivity. In quite a few emerging markets the access to broadband connections is very limited. The reason why the advanced economies are so well connected is that they had a huge density of preexisting phone lines which were easy to convert in to broadband connections. But digging cables in to the ground is expensive. Wireless internet access is much more interesting for small and medium businesses in emerging markets. VSAT was one of the first solutions, but with low bandwidth and high pricing it isn’t a viable solution. Instead 3G and Wimax could be the solution for these countries, but of course wireless as well as wired connections requires investments.

Each year the World Economic Forum publishes a report on the global ICT (internet and communication technology) and measures the network readiness of each country. In this statistic education plays an important role. Education must be prioritized in emerging markets for them to evolve in to an advanced market. In relations to cloud computing the question is if they know about this great concept. Is information available to entrepreneurs in emerging markets?

Three ways to evolution.

The development in the countries which are emerging markets moves to a more urbanised society. Therefore cloud computing knowledge centers need to be established in the biggest cities in these countries. By doing this both providers, developers and users can benefit from the concept. IBM is a huge player in the cloud industry and seems to spend a lot of time on developing new markets. They could be a great provider of such a facility.

To reduce costs and improve connectivity, new businesses could start out in a shared office facility. That way the firms could share a wired broadband connection, which is often more stable and faster than a wireless connection. There are obvious advantages for governments supporting such a facility. If you make it easier to start up new companies, then even if only a small percentage of these grow bigger over the years, these companies create jobs, income, export and in the end an increase of the annual GDP.

Of course we can’t just invest in the main cities. If a country’s leading communication providers don’t continuously work to expand the country’s communication infrastructure, the government has to step in. It must not act as a service provider itself though. It would be far better to present the providers with a reward as for example an exemption of taxes on new network areas within a limited period of time.

Many people in dead end jobs constantly dream of owning a small business. Few people actually end up realizing their dreams. This is because most of the times you really want to start your own business but you let obstacles convince you that you can’t make it. What people do not realize is that having the idea is not enough, you have to be willing to take a chance. Besides this, you have to believe that your idea will change the consumer world.

When you procrastinate, your idea will either fade or be snatched up by someone else. There will always be challenges in whatever you try and do. For example you may have adequate capital, but no knowledge of how to operate the business. So when you finally feel that you are ready to run your own business, you have to be ready to make many sacrifices. Your time no longer belongs to you. You have to input as much of it as possible so that you can be in a position to know the basic workings of the business. You have to be there full time for the business to take off and for you to see your dream turn into a reality.

When you own your business, all the decisions that you make lie squarely on your shoulders. So you have to be ready and take the necessary risks with the best intention for your business in mind. There are tough decisions to be made especially when it comes to hiring and firing employees, ranking of bills etc.

You also have to know how you will market your products or services. If you are faced with massive debts you will have to be sure that the decision you make can save your small business from shutting down.

Are you considering building your very own small business? Then, these ideas are for you:

1. Choose a business. There are so many small business ideas that you can explore but I recommend that you go with the one that is closely relevant to your hobbies or areas of expertise. Why? You can increase your chances of succeeding in this field if you are knowledgeable and if you enjoy what you are doing. List down the things that you find interesting and see if you can convert them to small business. Let me give you an example; if you love swimming so much, you can offer swimming lessons to kids in your neighborhood.

2. Plan ahead. You really can’t just wake up one morning and have your own business. Setting up a business, no matter how small, will need preparation. Identify the things that you need to have to get started and make sure that they are readily available. Depending on the type of business you wish to start, you may need to create a business plan and you may need to apply for financial backing.

3. Hire an advisor. It’s easy to get lost especially if you are just starting out. That is why, I recommend that you hire a small business coach who can help you all throughout. Choose a coach who have proven track record and who is highly recommended by other people and industry leaders. This coach can help you grow your business by making sure that you will avoid committing costly mistakes and by keeping you on track.