In the last post, we concluded by listing few steps you’d need to take, in order to finance your dream via a partnership.
Before you can engage a potential business partner in the process, you must be ready in terms of your plan and strategy of developing the capital to reach the intended result.
According to Wikipedia.org, “A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.”
In our case, there’s only one “goal”, which is the intention we clearly defined. Next, you need to explain “the reasons you believe that intention is attainable”.
There could be different reasons to different people. Imagine your potential partner asking you this question: “Why do you believe that you are able to grow this “X” amount of money into, say, one million, over the course of the plan”?
Here, one should look closely at his/her skills and talents related to managing money, and financial assets in general.
If you feel you don’t have what it takes to succeed at this task, don’t be disappointed, you’re not alone. That’s why lifelong learning is so important, not only for our bank accounts, but also for our physical and mental health.
Keep things simple, pick one or two methods from the ones we’ve covered here. Make sure you understand the ins and outs of each one, then use that in answering the above question.
Let’s assume you were interested in building an online store. After reading and fully understanding the article, expand your knowledge further. Do more research. Try to actually build a simple online store and see if your interest was still the same, more or maybe less. Take all of that into consideration while writing your business plan.
Once you’ve answered that question, the rest is much easier. You want to do your best to prepare a plan that is precise, presentable and convincing. Include a step-by-step action plan that specifies the activities, the desired accomplishment from each activity, the time-frame, and the resources you may need (financial, human, etc).
A good way to start would be to use a “template”. This is available online. Pick one that you understand and can fill out effectively, in light of our discussion above.
The following points cover major areas of a business plan as described on the BDC™ site (Reference: http://www.bdc.ca/EN/articles-tools/entrepreneur-toolkit/templates-business-guides/Pages/business-plan-template.aspx):
- Business overview: A brief description of your company and where it stands in the marketplace;
- Sales & marketing plan: The sales & marketing strategies that will be used to target your customers;
- Operating plan: A description of the physical aspect of your business operations;
- Human resources plan: Details on your key staff, HR policies & procedures;
- Action plan: The planned actions of the business over the next 2 to 3 years;
- Executive summary: A summary of the reasons you are seeking financing, together with a summary of your business operations;
- Financial appendix: The facts and figures that back up what you say in your plan.
All the best,
The Wealth Maker
The Wealth Maker 