When our friends know that we are helping clients to write business plans, very often, their reaction will be: so only a start-up will approach you? In fact, to me, a business plan is not only applicable to start-ups. It is something that every business owner should be prepared for, and should be adjusted according to different timing and different market situations. At the time of start-up, a business plan is a proposal. When the company starts to operate for a while, the business plan becomes a strategy document for the company and it is indeed formed the core part of the company!

The so-called “Business Plan” is the thinking inside the mind of each business owner, and this thinking is evolving and not limited to the moment of starting up a business. Just try to throw back to the moment of starting up your business, think about the “plan” in your mind back then, how different it is from your thinking as of now? We of course understand there are many many obstacles and variance in these years. This is exactly why we said the “Business Plan” is an evolving thing. If this plan is only appearing in the mind of business owners, communicated verbally (and very likely piece by piece), would the staff be able to understand the big picture? Therefore, every company (no matter if it is a start-up or a Fortune 500 corporate) should have a comprehensive document explaining the company’s vision, direction, goal, strategy etc.

Communication Tool

At the time of starting up a business, the objective of writing a business plan could be used for communicating among the team, exchanging ideas, or a tool to invite comments from experts, or even a tool to engage with investors, business partners. So the business plan is playing a role of communication tool. When your business comes to a certain stage, you need your staff to understand the operations of the whole company, your growth direction, your 5-to-10 years plan so that you can retain the best staff in the team. If you are still using the business plan at the stage of start-up to communicate with the staff, it will not be appropriate. In reality, many small-to-medium enterprises lack such a strategy document to act as a communication tool at this stage. Business owners mainly rely on their memories and verbal expressions.

For small-to-medium enterprises, we suggest the business plan or strategy document should at least cover the following aspects:

• Core start-up team
• Company vision
• Achievement in the past few years
• Development goals in the next 5 years (in terms of business volume, geographical coverage, branding, product etc.)
• Why choose these goals
• Support required (in terms of manpower, system, operation model)
• Financial planning

Self-Reflection

When the business owner is drafting this business plan or strategy document, it is a good opportunity to challenge the plan – if this is appropriate and reasonable. This can also be a very good self-reflection. The document drafting process is going to be lengthy and painful for sure, because the items mentioned above are very much inter-linked to each other. However, once the business owner gets through this, he/she will have a very deep understanding (again) with the business and the feasibility of it. The owner will be a lot more confident whenever he/she talks about the business.

Let’s treat this as a “2nd start-up opportunity”. Keep going and good luck with your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th version of the business plan.