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Your Money Map- Small business planning

Guest post by: Kaya Singer

Article Overview: Business planning and visioning made easy! Here are 5 questions to make it easier to vision, plan and grow your company.

Your Money Map- Small business planning

If your business is a solo gig that involves services that help people,you may have skipped doing a business plan and have focused all your energy on getting more clients, bringing in more money and trying to figure out how to do marketing that works.

You likely haven’t bought a franchise with a built in plan and system. You aren’t starting a big manufacturing plant and getting a bank loan. You’re using a home office, maybe renting another small space somewhere to meet clients and possibly still have a part time job.

No one is asking for your business plan, and although you know it’s a good idea you just can’t get your head around how to do it or why it is so important.

It is actually extremely important if you want to make real money, get out of a place of struggle and be able to help more people.

Your plan needs to be built from a vision. Once you know your vision, the plan puts forth practical steps toward manifesting it. It's that simple. What makes it hard is that you may not be used to thinking this way. I certainly wasn't!

I regularly ask my new clients to share their business vision and plan. Most people respond these ways:

• A description of the lifestyle they want for themselves ultimately.


• How many clients they want.


• The kind of work they want to be doing.


• The creative projects they want to develop.


• Enough money to be able to pay the bills and stay afloat.

The problem with this focus is that it is not far thinking and it is all about your desires, what you want to be doing and how you want to be living. Your business actually has it’s own life and spirit. Your plan and vision needs to be about your business and how it can grow from being a small child to a vibrant adult.

It is about creating a blueprint of your fully developed company. Here are five questions that you need to answer.

1. How much money it will generate per year in five or ten years.

2. Where they money will come from- the income steams.

3. Steps to develop each of those streams and in what order.

4. A fully developed marketing plan and strategy based on your niche.

5. Systems and organization to support the growth.

Answering these questions can be hard if you are only focused on your lifestyle desire, what you want to do and how to pay your mortgage. In order to come up with the answers above it requires using an entrepreneurial part of your brain that is not all about the service you want to offer. It is all about strategic planning and stretching your picture of what is possible.

It’s really hard to do this process on your own, and way easier to have the support of someone who is not emotionally involved. Your own self-doubt and fears will make it hard to create a healthy vision that you can use as a template for setting goals and planning. I found this very challenging so with the help of my mentor, I created a “Money Map” process that is now in Chapter 5 in my book. The standard SBA forms didn't work for my right brain mind.

Carve out a time to do your process, get help and notice how your business focus will change. It is very exciting and much like planting seeds and watching them grow. Now I find it fun and my seeds are my pie charts. I enjoy watching the numbers change and the new sprouts come forth.

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Article Tags: Business plan and vision, money map



Related Forum Posts
Re: Is A Business Plan A Waste Of Time? - Business Plan or generally work plan (to do list) improves the quality of my work at least 4 times. I have seen the positive results of planning and focus in my online business. And I know from my past experience how uneficient your business can be when you are not doing planning. So I agree that there is a relationship between entrepreneur success and planning.
QuickBooks vs. Microsoft Money vs....? - I have always used Microsoft Money to run my business - accounting, invoicing, etc. It came with my computer when I got it and integrated well with my online banking system so everything is a breeze. It only takes 30-60 minutes every quarter to do the bookkeeping (keep in mind that I have a very simple business - no inventory, very little invoicing, I do all my payments by credit card, etc). Is QuickBooks or Money the best accounting tool for small business owners? Or is there something even better?
Resources within the government - One of the first things I did as I started up was to take a few classes offered by the Small Business Administration. I'm not sure if Nigeria offers similar services, but people from the United States can tap into those resources pretty easily. The classes offered a business planning template, time to start your plan and great advice from other entrepreneurs. Best of luck!
Re: Is A Business Plan A Waste Of Time? - I feel that you don't really need one. I didn't write one down when I first started, but I have made various planning and decision-making spreadsheets along the way. I also think that a business plan is a HUGE waste of time IF you never take action. The step that most people fail on is failure to get started. Sitting around and planning won't ever get you anywhere. I would say implementation is more important than planning.
Re: 4 Home Based Opportunities For 2011 - Event planning can be a very good home based business. I have a friend who is considering becoming an event planner as she does very well with planning events, parties and other social events. She's very well organized, which is a must-have trait for someone thinking about getting into this opportunity.


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