One reason for burnout is incongruency between the life you want and the life you’re living. Most of that problem is due to a lack of planning. Keep reading to learn How to Develop a Realistic Business Plan in order to help avoid burnout in your business.
Many small business owners think that if their business is a home business or a small business that they don’t need a real business plan. After all, they think I am not going to get a business loan, so why do I need to do all that planning?
The truth is if you want to succeed, and you want it to be repeatable, and you want to avoid the potential for burnout, you must develop a business plan. A business plan will help you structure, run, and grow your business realistically and sustainably. Plus, creating a business plan isn’t even hard to do. Let’s learn how to make a one-page business plan for your home business right now.
Your one-page business plan should include the following. However, keep in mind it doesn’t literally have to live on only one page. You should include as much information as you need in your business plan to help you develop a guiding document for your business. If one page works for you, that’s fabulous!
Describe the Problem
You’ll want to write a well thought out description of the problem that your customers have that you can solve along with any relevant data that describes how you can do that to show proof.
Your Product or Service
This is the solution to the problem above, so you’ll want to go through each product or service you offer and describe the solution in terms of how it solves the problem that the customer has. If you have more than one solution, this is the area that might end up taking more than one page. However, going through this can help you with marketing later.
How You Make Money
This is considered your business model. How will you make the money, how much will it cost you to make the money, and what is the price the customer will pay for the solution and how will they pay it?
Describe Your Customer(s)
Understanding your target market is an essential component of your business plan and your business planning needs. Include a customer avatar through the buying journey. Talk about how many customers there are, and how much you can earn from each customer throughout their customer life cycle.
Describe How You’re Different
It can help to describe how you’re going to differentiate yourself from your competition. This is called your “competitive advantage” in business. It’s how you use your differences to stand out from the competition and create customer loyalty.
Describe Your Team
Even if it’s just you, it helps to write down all the tasks and roles that need to be accomplished to make this business work. However, even if it is just you, it’s not just you due to the technology you can use, such as email marketing software, funnel software, and other automation.
Also, if you plan to outsource anything, write that down too. Maybe the first year you’re doing it all yourself but include financial metrics that trigger outsourcing or major software purchases.
Include Key Financial Metrics
You need to know what your budget is for marketing, software, outsourcing, and so forth. This is often called a Financial Summary in a business plan. You’ll want to include figures for now, and your future as you forecast potential sales. Finally, you’ll want to add what funding you need right now to get started or to move forward with your business.
As you go through this, just focus right now on writing a summary of each section so that you see what needs to be done in one easy to read page. As you move forward, you can add more information to the plan, which may make it grow past the one page, but it will be a helpful exercise to help keep on moving toward your goals.
As you move toward your goals, you’ll be a lot less likely to experience burnout when you’ve set up your business realistically in balance with your entire life. Writing down the business plan helps you see it more clearly and plainly, thus allowing you to really accomplish what you set out to do rather than keeping it as a dream.
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