Chapter 6
Business Planning
It’s time to take a close look at your business. Now that you have a clear understanding about who you are, what you want, how best to use your resources, and how you’ll go about fitting it all in, you have to support your goals and dreams with some good old-fashioned planning. To do this, we’ll start by having you complete an adapted version of the One Page Business Plan, which was created by Jim Horan, author of the best-selling One Page Business Plan series.1 There are endless resources available about how to write a detailed business plan, and we encourage you to seek them out if, after completing this chapter, you want or need a more in-depth plan. In the meantime, consider this your big-picture plan—the one that helps you adopt the right mindset to create success on your own terms.
Of course, this is not the only business plan you’ll need if you are seeking investors or creating partnerships. The plan you’re about to create, though, is incredibly useful, and you will likely find that it’s more than adequate to get you focused and send you on your way. For those of you who have been in business for a while, completing this plan or revisiting an earlier version you’ve made will still be very useful; in fact, our clients do their planning every year. It’s great to set goals, measure your progress, and celebrate your success on an annual basis. Think of your business plan as a beacon to guide your decisions, and you will be so thankful you’ve taken the time to write it all down so you can stay on track and know how to make the right decisions for your business.
By the way, if you think for one minute that we’re going to let you forget the unique challenges of being a mom when you are crafting your business plan, you are mistaken. As you answer these questions, keep in mind not just your business but your whole life. In fact, it’s a good idea to have your answers regarding your values, priorities, motivators, and passions from Chapter 1 handy as you go through this exercise. You’ll want to think about those things as you write your answers. After all, being a mom informs every area of your life, and that includes your plan for a wildly successful business that makes you happy.
Stages of Business
A cautionary note: Based on our experience working with mom entrepreneurs on business planning, we want you to know that it is incredibly common to have some pretty unreasonable expectations for your business, especially when you are just getting started. This can result in ineffective (and often disempowering) goal-setting. Sometimes this is caused by a lack of knowledge of the industry, or of the competition, or of what it takes to run and market a start-up company. Other times it’s because you don’t have a lot of experience setting SMART goals (we’ll explain these in detail a little later in this chapter). Often, it’s the result of a mom entrepreneur not knowing what to expect based on the stage her business is in.
To help you set appropriate and empowering goals, let’s spend some time figuring out exactly which stage your business is in so you’ll know what you can expect. We have a really fun way to help you understand where you are and what you’ll need to do to move to the next stage: we’re going to show you how the stages of business mimic the stages of pregnancy and child development. After all, how many times have you heard a mom entrepreneur refer to her business as her “baby”? (Maybe you do it yourself.) We create them, birth them, raise them, worry about them, celebrate them, and then one day send them on their way without us. You’ll be surprised how much the stages of business development align with the stages of child development. Plus, we love how easy this analogy makes it to understand where you are and what you can realistically expect as you develop. Knowing where you are, what to expect, and what to focus on leads to “lightbulb” moments—at least it has for our clients, and we believe it will for you too.
Pregnancy
What to expect: This stage is full of hope and possibilities. You have an idea for a business, and your creativity is bursting. The possibilities are endless. This is the time to explore and imagine what can be. Ride the excitement, get your ideas down on paper, and let your thoughts and creativity roam where they may. You’ll come up with a list of business names—some great, some awful—and you’ll alternate moments of hyper-confidence that you’ll be the next business scooped up on Shark Tank, with periods of doubt and fear that you will be an utter failure. You may love an idea for your business one minute and then hate it the next. That’s normal. Don’t get hung up on having it all figured out at this stage. Your job here is to grow your ideas, give them air, and see what develops.
(A side note here: You’ll see that for each stage we include sample objectives for life and business all muddled together. This may seem a little disorganized, as we tend to want to put personal goals in one box and professional ones in another, but we are throwing them all in the same pot to illustrate the point that when you’re a mom entrepreneur, your priorities have to commingle. It is messy. The lines are blurry.)
Sample objectives for this stage:
Define your business: think about what you’d like to offer, who you think would most likely buy it, what sort of branding appeals to you, and how this business will leverage your strengths, skills, and style. How will it honor your priorities? How will it showcase the best of you?
Figure out how your business will fit in the market and what makes you different from your competition.
Set a target for where you want to be in your business and life in one year, two years, and five years, while considering what your family and lifestyle will be like at those points in time.
Continue great self-care.
Meet with other business owners to hear their stories, and to learn how they got started, what mistakes they made, and what they think of your ideas.
Surround yourself with supportive friends and family.
Find possible mentors to support you in this new adventure.
Read The eMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber (and any other business books you can get your hands on).
Attend workshops on starting and running a company.
Accept offers of help.
Set a launch or grand-opening date.
Create a work schedule that works for your whole life.
Birth
What to expect: The business equivalent to birthing a baby is launching your business (or new product or service). The launch requires extreme focus, planning, and follow-through to make your idea a reality. It requires all of your time, effort, and energy, and will be exhausting at times. You’ll want to focus on other things, take a break, and maybe even quit, but the launch requires you to keep going. You are, after all, following through on a huge commitment you’ve made to yourself, and the satisfaction of achieving your goal lies just on the other side of this hard work. You’ll need a carefully crafted marketing strategy, sales process, delivery/fulfillment system, customer service plan, and follow-up program, to name just a few of the critical elements of a launch. Expect that many of these will be beyond your competence to handle, so plan on dumping your wallet on the nearest countertop and asking various freelancers and experts to take whatever they need to help you get the job done. Don’t worry—paying for help at this stage is often necessary. You will learn a lot along the way so that you can cut expenses in future stages.
Sample objectives for this stage:
Commit to and practice logging off the computer and/or phone when it’s family time. Be present with your family when you’re with them, and give work your focus during your planned office hours.
Create a launch strategy to make your business visible to your target audience.
Launch your branded website with Home, About, Services/Products, and Blog pages.
Write the first 10 blog posts to populate your blog when the site is launched.
Secure a babysitter or other childcare support so you have a certain number of hours per week to focus exclusively on your business.
Commit to a monthly date night with your spouse or partner. Hire a babysitter for the third Thursday of every month (or whatever date works for you) as a standing event so you have no excuse to neglect your relationship.
Attend networking meetings, conferences, and trade shows where your ideal clients are most likely to be. It is critical at this stage for you to become visible and credible to your target audience. If no one knows you exist, it’s going to be hard to make money.
Create a comprehensive daily, weekly, and monthly schedule (see Chapter 3) so you’re clear about when you’re able to work.
Infancy
What to expect: This stage of your business is a tough one. Just as a baby takes all your time, effort, and energy and gives you nothing in return (except the occasional smile that we live for), so goes this stage of business (sometimes minus the smiles). You have to constantly feed your business, pour all of your resources (time, money, focus) into it, and you can expect very little obvious payoff. You may wonder if you’re doing the right thing and whether your efforts will ever be worth it. You’ll likely grow tired of the constant work, and even though you know things will get easier at some point, it sure won’t feel like it most of the time. This stage of business usually lasts anywhere from about six months to a year.
This stage is all about putting forth effort that will enable your business to mature. If you’re successful, your business will indeed begin to show signs of growth. It’s alive! That’s about all the thanks you get at this point, though. This is not meant to bum you out; we think it’s best to know that this is normal and necessary in order for your business to reach the next stage. Your mindset needs to be about focusing on your goals, following your plans, and staying in consistent action. You need to spend your efforts and money on being visible and credible to your market. Don’t expect to see the money pouring in just yet.
Sample objectives for this stage:
Create profiles on relevant social media networks—the ones your target audience uses.
Pick a few school activities to participate in this year and block them off on your calendar so nothing impacts them. Then ignore the rest of the requests you recieve to participate this year. You’ll have time in later stages of the business to get more involved in your children’s school days, but for now, leave the bulk of the volunteer opportunities to the parents who aren’t running a brand-new business.
Post daily on your social media networks. Build relationships with an audience, and those relationships will build your business.
Blog weekly about topics that showcase your expertise.
Infancy is a tough stage, so make self-care automatic by scheduling a massage (or pedicure or facial) in your calendar in advance. Then, while you’re paying for the service, go ahead and schedule your next appointment.
Attend virtual and in-person networking events each week/month to meet prospects.
Rely on your network as needed for pick-me-ups and support.
Follow up with warm leads every week.
Reach a certain number of followers or likes on social media.
Obtain endorsements on Linkedln and testimonials for your Website.
Send out product samples to promotional partners.
Toddlerhood
What to expect: Ever notice how toddlers zoom around, running into walls and falling down, but never really suffer major setbacks? It’s almost like they’re made of rubber, and we moms often scratch our heads in amazement that anyone ever survives this stage of development. In your business, toddlerhood is a fun time during which you start experimenting with different ideas. You’ll tweak your offerings, your brand, and your target market as you learn more about what your audience wants from you and what you’re best able to give them. You can try new and varied approaches, products, and markets with low risk for harm. You have started making money, you likely have some happy customers, and you have the feeling that this really is starting to look like a business, if you do say so yourself. It’s not unusual to find that your business name or branding don’t seem to fit anymore. This phase is all about growing, stretching, and trying new things. Experiment with different marketing strategies or ask past customers for feedback about what they would like to see from your company.
Your job in this stage is to explore and discover the lessons your business is teaching you now. You may evolve in your business, brand, and product line at this stage, and that is perfectly reasonable. You’ll be making some money and attracting clients or customers, but probably still won’t have a steady, reliable income. The clients you do have are helping you learn your strengths and helping you decide which type of clients and projects are ideal for you—and which ones are not. Adjust your goals and branding accordingly. This stage usually lasts from one to three years.
Sample objectives for this stage:
Create a profile on a new social media channel with a marketing strategy to support it.
Find and secure opportunities to speak in front of your target audience (usually for free at this point).
Choose a leadership role in your child’s school, sport, or club so you can experience something together. Coach soccer, be the room mom, help with Scouts, take an art class together, or sign up for a fitness program you and your child(ren) do together.
Create and launch a new product or offering.
Create a joint venture with a business that is not competitive with you but has the same audience.
Now that you’ve left the infancy stage of your business, it’s time to reconnect with friends. Make some time for a girls-only dinner or maybe even a getaway.
Rebrand your business, update your logo or Website, or true up your messaging to match how your offerings or your audience may have evolved at this point.
Grow your client base.
Set a financial goal (“I will make $_________ by _______ date.”).
Plan a getaway or two. Maybe one family vacation and one couples-only, if you can swing it.
Adolescence
What to expect: This long, fun stage is a period of extremes. There will be days when you’ll love your business and be thrilled with your success, and then there will be days when you don’t like it at all and fear you’re going to go under. The feast-or-famine cycle often sets in because you have enough customers or client work to keep you very busy, given your current planned work hours each week; but you neglect marketing, so when business slows down, you have to hustle to find new work or to sell more of your product. And because self-promotion doesn’t come easily for most mom entrepreneurs, you will spend some time denying you have a marketing or sales problem and instead want to put your energy into developing new products or dreaming up new business ideas altogether.
However, just as our children have to learn the self-discipline required to allow them to take turns, sit in their desks at school, and get their homework done when they would rather play outside, all adolescent business owners need to discipline themselves to manage marketing their company while also running it and doing what it takes to make money.
Your pipeline begins to fill and stay full. You’re making more money and recovering your start-up expenses. You’ll begin reducing (or at least maintaining) your expenses while watching your income increase. You’ll attract many opportunities, so you’ll need to choose carefully to stay true to your brand rather than running with every possibility that presents itself. This is the point at which you want to check in to make sure that your business still reflects you. Once you get a bit of success, it’s remarkably easy to turn off your inner knowing and succumb to pleasing others.
That’s what almost happened to Andreea Ayers with the handcrafted soap company she started. She had loyal customers who loved her products, but her vision of success included being able to sell her soaps in Whole Foods markets. When the opportunity to do that finally came, she decided, surprisingly, to turn it down. Ultimately, it would have completely shifted her entire business model. “I realized that I don’t want to be an employer,” she told us. “I am happy being an entrepreneur, working with freelancers and having a small workspace.” To meet the demands of having her soaps sold in Whole Foods, she would have had to shift from being an entrepreneur to an employer, and that didn’t suit her.
Turn up the volume on what’s most important to you in life and in business so that you can drown out the noise that would send you down a path that isn’t right for you. When you’re in this phase, it’s a great idea to revisit the values, priorities, and motivations that you articulated in Chapter 1. They are the voice of reason during the adolescent phase of your business—similar to a parent’s voice during a child’s adolescence. Rely on them to keep you going in the right direction. In keeping with this idea, turn away non-ideal work and non-ideal clients. Enjoy the success. You’ve earned it. This stage lasts anywhere from about two to five years.
Sample objectives for this stage:
Evaluate which tasks you need to continue doing in your business and which ones you can hire out.
Consider school and extracurricular activities for your children and plug important dates into your calendar now.
Hire an assistant or other staff so you can delegate certain administrative, fulfillment, or marketing tasks.
Plan a family vacation and at least one couples-only getaway every year. Time away from work is critical to keep you motivated and well-connected with your family.
Make strategic partnerships with the people, groups, and/or businesses that can help you reach beyond your current network of clients and prospects.
Increase sales.
Reduce expenses.
Continue scheduling self-care on a regular basis so that you’ll have the energy and mindset you need to continue running your business.
If you are a service provider, raise your fees as needed.
If you make consumer products, consider targeting a new audience.
Teenagerhood
What to expect: You know that stage when your children start thinking they know everything? Although they certainly can wow you at times with their smarts, they also have no idea yet what they don’t know. Well, this stage is a lot like that. You are quite the expert in some areas of your business, but the amount of time, effort, and energy it takes to run it yourself is causing you to let a few balls drop in other areas.
This long stage is all about improving your offerings, your marketing, and your processes. You’re likely to hit a plateau here because you are already doing everything you know how to do well. To get past this, attend some conferences or workshops (maybe it’s a good time to learn about mobile marketing, for instance), or hire a coach or mentor to help you learn what you don’t know. But don’t stray from your core platform and offerings. You’re making good money and keeping your customers happy. The goal here is to expand into new markets or try out new delivery methods while staying true to what you know works.
In the teen years, your brand is now a well-established and trusted resource, so it’s common that demand for your offerings will begin to outpace your ability to deliver them all by yourself. Say goodbye to the “I” and hello to the “team”! This is the stage in which most mom entrepreneurs are ready to begin outsourcing or bringing on employees, if you haven’t already. Consider your strengths, as we discussed in Chapter 5. What parts of your business must you do? Which ones play to your strengths, feel easy for you, and make you money? At this stage of the business, it’s time for you to “shake your money-maker” and offload other required business roles and tasks that
a. don’t make you money,
b. aren’t easy or fun for you to do (i.e., are not your strengths), and
c. could be done faster and better by someone else.
It’s time to shift your mindset from the “Chief Everything Officer” and start owning the title of “Chief Executive Officer” in your company. Your job at this stage is to be the visionary, to set the path and lead the team and the business. If you’re still trying to do it all by yourself, you’re setting yourself up for burnout and failure. You’ll experiment with learning to manage people and multiple projects. You’ll have to create processes that will allow you to successfully delegate work to those who support you. There will be successes and setbacks and a lot of late nights. It’s all part of the stage.
Sample objectives for this stage:
Expand the experts on your team and delegate certain administrative, fulfillment, or marketing tasks.
Does your job require you to travel on a regular basis? If so, discuss with your family how often this makes sense and how they can run the household in your absence. Consider hiring a nanny, if you need to. Conversely, cancel the nanny if the expansion of your work team allows you to step back into your mom and family manager roles in a bigger way.
Continue to refine your regular processes in sales, marketing, and delivery. Look for ways to automate or improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of these systems.
Create a standard operating procedure for each of these departments so you are more efficient and so you can confidently pass some of this off to your staff.
Write or update your business plan for the next year.
Book a conference, a workshop, or coaching sessions to help you determine what’s next in your business.
Take a leadership course.
Make plans to do one of those things on your “someday” list—learn to play the piano, travel to that distant isle, train for a marathon, or sign up for language classes at the local college.
Create compelling offerings for your past clients.
Increase income and profitability.
Reduce expenses.
Reinvest $X back into the business each year.
Invest in professional development and stay abreast of trends in your industry.
Commit to an annual retreat with your girlfriends.
Create at least one passive income stream.
Consider introducing new products to round out your offerings.
Maturity
What to expect: The period after the teen years and leading toward maturity in your business is a unique, rather undefined one (just as it is with children). There are many different ways for your business to successfully grow up. This will greatly depend on how you have defined success for yourself—as we’ve mentioned, that’s different for every mom entrepreneur. Some of our clients have chosen to license or franchise their companies; others have chosen to sell their mature business (or parts of it) to the highest bidder. Still others have told us they have no intention of expanding into an empire, because they enjoy the hands-on work and personal contact their business provides them. There is no right or wrong way to grow your business, and bigger isn’t always better.
Some things to shoot for: Your business is completely functional without you. Even when you are on vacation, the company still thrives. You have an exit strategy in place, as the company no longer revolves around you and is now its own entity. You can choose to continue working in or on the company, but it is thriving and paying you back for all the years of blood, sweat, and tears you poured into it. You have a nice source of income you can rely on (or you sell it completely to another entity), regardless of the time you spend thinking about it.
Sample objectives for this stage:
Work with your small-business attorney to create your exit strategy, if that’s part of your plan.
Have your business valuated.
Discuss a five-year plan with your family. How old will the kids be? Where will they be in school? Is it time to move to a larger house or to downsize at this point?
Evaluate your family’s savings, assets, college funds, and retirement plans, and set goals to achieve the results you want.
Designate your second in command, even if you aren’t planning on quitting or selling the company, and have him or her fully trained in all aspects of the business.
Look for strategic alliances that can boost sales or reach new markets.
Check in with yourself and see whether your personal life is on track. What’s next for you?
Success will be much easier to reach if you pick the right measurement for the stage you’re in. We have seen so many mom entrepreneurs feel like giving up when they’re only six months or a year into their business because they’re not yet making money. Money seems to be the only metric many women focus on. They’re doing everything they are supposed to be doing. They’re following the textbook on networking, marketing, and sales, and they consume every bit of information they can find about running a small business. But if you’re trying to measure the success of your infant company by the money you’re making, you will probably feel like a failure. The same goes with expecting to replace your former corporate income within a year via a startup company you created that no one has ever heard of. Both of these scenarios make as much sense as expecting a toddler to sit quietly and take notes during a college lecture course. And yet many of our clients have exactly these misplaced expectations of themselves and their companies.
As with raising children, it can be hard to notice when you’re outgrowing one stage and moving into another. It is definitely a gradual process, though it often feels like waking up to discover that your 3-year-old daughter has turned into a teenager overnight. Or that you’re still laying out clothes for your 13-year-old son to wear each day when he’s perfectly capable of doing that himself. What our children are capable of and what we can expect from them changes with every stage of child development. The same goes for your business. We hope this explanation will help you see both what’s possible now and what you can look forward to in the future.
Your One-Page Business Plan
Now that you have determined which stage your business is in and what sort of objectives or goals make sense right now, let’s roll up our sleeves and plug those goals into your One-Page Business Plan. Remember, our goal with this type of business plan is to help you create a vision for the success you want to achieve and the plan to get you there. If you don’t fancy yourself a business planner, don’t get scared off. Answering the questions we are about to present will create a path to help you get the success you envision. And this is only one page long. You can do one page of planning, can’t you? We know you can. And doing so will get you in the right mindset to put your vision into action, and, most importantly, to just get started, which is often the hardest part.
This plan gives you a chance to think about what you do, why you do it, whom you serve, how the product or service is delivered, and what will make you successful with time. So let’s get to it.
Hint: As we go through this planning exercise, it’s helpful if you write down what comes to mind right away without editing yourself and then go back and spend a few minutes thinking about the question more thoroughly to see if anything else pops into your head. Go ahead and grab your pen and paper. At the top of it write “Business Plan.” Write down the following questions in bold and leave space for your answers.
Here’s an example of a completed One-Page Business Plan to give you an idea of how you answer the questions.
Sample Business Plan
Vision: What are you building? What is your business? What do you do? Whom do you serve? How do you deliver?
Mission: Why does this business exist? What is your motivation for doing this work? How does this business fill a need in the market and a need/passion/desire in your life? What does it make possible that wouldn’t happen otherwise?
Objectives: What will you measure so that you know it is successful? This could be sales, number of products sold, Web hits, Twitter followers, income, or something else. Remember to figure out which goals make sense based on your stage of business. There is no point in setting unrealistic objectives, and we have given you a lot of sample objectives to get your wheels turning. Let’s talk a minute about refining your goals so that they are as “SMART” as you are.
Most people know about SMART goals. They were introduced in the 1980s and the letters stand for:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-related
Setting a SMART goal means you’re setting specific, measurable goals rather than general ones. So instead of saying, “I want to make enough money to support my family,” you need to define what “enough” is. A SMART way to state that goal is, “I want to earn an income of $85,000 in 2015.” If we call you on January 1, 2016 and ask you if you achieved that goal, you will be able to answer with clarity that you met the goal, exceeded it, or fell short of it. More examples of SMART goals include, “Hire first three employees by March 2015,” and, “Add four new products to product line by September 2016.”
How about some personal goals? Lara has had this one on her business plan every year since 2009: “Put a healthy, home-cooked meal on the table by 6:30 p.m. five nights a week.” Remember how we said we weren’t going to forget about how your role as a mom informs every other part of your life, including your business? Well, that’s exactly why Lara puts this goal in her business plan every year. She knows that if she allows her ambition to go unchecked, it can cause her priorities of health and quality family time to slip. And because she highly values eating home-cooked meals with her family, this goal keeps her priorities in check. It isn’t exactly a business goal, but it is the kind of goal that supports the lifestyle of a mom entrepreneur. To that end, it’s also a SMART goal in that it is specific and measurable.
Recently, we ran across a coach named Deborah Grayson Riegel who has her own variation on the meaning of SMART goals. She changed the letters a bit to get to this:
Shareable: You’ll want someone to keep you accountable or someone who encourages you
Motivating: Something that excites you and everyone who will be involved in meeting the goal
Actionable: Can you do something toward the goal right now?
Resonant: Does it give you chills—either excited chills or freaked-out-but-in-a-good-way chills?
Timely: Is now the right time to get started?
Don’t forget, goals are dreams with deadlines attached to them, so always be sure to list the date you expect to complete or achieve a goal. With all the tools we’re giving you in this chapter, what objectives can you create so you can track and measure your progress throughout a specific amount of time? Read on so you understand the way Objectives, Strategies, and Actions work together in your business plan.
1. Strategies: What will make this business successful in time? For every objective you list, you will need to have a few strategies to ensure you reach the goals. For instance, if you want to book 12 speaking gigs for next year, you may need to work on building your visibility and credibility to your target audience so they are more likely to hire you. Strategies to accomplish this could include joining a speaker’s bureau, mentioning your speaking topics across your social channels and in blog posts, and having interviews with the media on your speaking topics.
2. Action Plan: What is the work to be done? List the actions (or to-do list) for each of the strategies you have listed in the previous question. You can just do a brain dump here, or you can be a bit more organized in your approach (which we recommend) by considering one objective at a time, then listing the strategies associated with that objective, and then creating your action plans (or to-do list) for each of your strategies. (See the next table illustrating how to break your objectives into strategies and action plans.) For instance, for the social-media mentions to attract more speaking gigs, you might have an action list including writing a blog post about your speaking topics each week and posting relevant quotes related to your speaking platform across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. It might make your simple business plan a little longer if you drill down this way, but the extra effort will be worth it.
Objective –> Strategies –> Action Plans
Let’s take the example we mentioned of the mom entrepreneur who wants to increase her paid speaking opportunities. She has an objective to book 12 speaking gigs in 2015. Follow along as we drill down on how to break that objective into relevant strategies and how to assign action plans to each strategy.
SAMPLE OBJECTIVE: Book 12 speaking gigs in 2015
An action plan similar to this is the best way to avoid being busy all the time without getting results to show for it. And we know that you don’t have time to waste. Many of us enjoy creating to-do lists and marking things off as we get them done, but an action plan like this is even better because you can see exactly how your actions are leading you to the results you want.
And, because we strongly believe that having a meaningful purpose for your work is crucial both in moving you toward your goals and in keeping you going when the going gets tough, let’s make that a part of your planning too. Review your answers from the vision exercise in Chapter 2 and, based on those or any other aspirations you have toward meaningful work, see if you need to add anything to your business plan. For example, if contributing to society is part of your vision, what strategies and actions could you include that will allow you to contribute in some way? Perhaps you could give back a portion of your profits, or you could spend a set number of hours each month mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs. Believe it or not, linking business objectives, strategies, and tasks with something you feel strongly about personally can be very motivating and help drive you toward the business you envision.
When you have answered these questions, what you have may not look as in-depth as a typical business plan, but rest assured you will have created a strong understanding of the most important aspects of your business and what you need to do to move forward. If you would like to also complete a more in-depth traditional business plan (and we think you should go through that exercise at some point), there are a lot of books, organizations, and online resources to help when you’re ready.
Congratulations, you’re done! With your one-page business plan you have laid the foundation for a successful business endeavor. Whether you sell a product or a service, whether you are a solo entrepreneur, have a partnership, or have employees, and whether you are already established or are just exploring the possibility of starting your own company, the work you do here will help you create success on your own terms.
This plan may start to feel overwhelming. When you are first starting out, either with your whole business or with a new product or service, that’s normal. Just remember the old saying, “When eating an elephant, take it one bite at a time.” We still aren’t sure why the person who originally said this chose an elephant, but you get the point: for large undertakings, you have to chip away at them. You have to take them one step at a time. And even though they’re small, baby steps will indeed get you there.
We know it’s hard. We know there are a lot of decisions for you to make, and we know those decisions have huge ramifications, which can make you feel paralyzed. We hope that this chapter has helped you get clear on the steps you need to take and the order in which to take them. These stages and their action items work for the development of most businesses, but we’d like to remind you that there are no absolutes. Because we are big on challenging the rules, especially the ones you make up yourself and then feel obligated to adhere to, we don’t want to add any more rules for you to follow. So use these stages as a general guideline for what you can expect and where you will most likely spend your time and energy. Then, of course, check in with yourself along the way to make sure what you are doing is right for you.
Bottom Line
You’ll have more reasonable expectations and be better able to meet them if you know which stage of business your company is in.
A simple business plan that allows you to state your vision, your motivation, and your goals is a powerful tool for a mom entrepreneur.
A carefully crafted business plan is a critical success factor for all business owners.
A plan ensures that your actions are aligned with your business purpose, helps you monitor your progress, and lets you right yourself or change direction if things go awry.