What to put in your business plan

Have you been struggling with your business plan? Many people do. I am currently going through a very vigorous business planning exercise that is forcing me to demystify the process.

Many entrepreneurs will relate to the inability to put their dreams, plans, actions and rationale in a way that can be understood by others. Here are a five things you can do to get started.

Articulate the vision: What do you see happening with your business? Do you see your kindergarten becoming a primary and secondary school?

Maybe the kindergarten spreads to other towns or markets. Nobody can tell you what vision to have.

They can prompt some level of thinking but ultimately, you have to own the vision. Vison can also incorporate the values that you want the business to have or the experience/impact you want to see happening. It will scare you because you will not be able to logically see how this will get done. Vision never seems possible.

Business rationale: What is the business opportunity? Why do you expect your business to make money? Maybe there is more demand than availability of schools. Maybe a certain target market has not been catered for. Why does your business make sense? What problem exists that you are solving? This should be put in a way that anybody can understand.

Goals. Your vision has to turn into specific goals. If your aim is to get to the mountain, there will be specific landmarks, towns, signs that will tell you that you are on the right track.

These are the goals. Goals get us to really become clear about what is going to happen. If you wanted to have your school in multiple cities, the goals would break this down to where and by when. For example, open a second kindergarten in Nakuru by June 2019 or start offering lower primary classes by January 2021. Vision is great but our minds need something more tangible to latch on to so that we can be more focused.

An action plan” Goals have to be further broken down into activities. To launch the school in Nakuru there are certain things that would need to get done e.g. finding venues, teachers etc. Give each of these actions a deadline as well. Without intentional effort to do something different, you may find yourself in the same boat three years from now. Goals will be achieved if there is intentional time spent on doing different activities, many of which will not have results today but in the future. Being clear about what you need to do will help you consciously allocate time to that.

A financial plan. Very simply put, what amount of money do you expect to make and how do you expect to spend it? People become very unrealistic with this part of the business plan because they want to impress others or convince themselves how they will make loads of money. Have an argument for increased revenues; don’t just pull numbers from the sky. It is also OK to project losses.

The financial plan doesn’t need to show increasing profits always. There could be a bad season e.g. what many businesses faced during elections. Planning ahead would help you figure out what to start doing.

These projections help you also think about what resources or expenditure you might incur. You cannot claim to triple revenues without investment in people, systems, marketing, etc.

Based on the plan, you will be able to provide a basis for funding. You may also want to get into strategic partnerships and can use this plan. It’s an excellent way to communicate the agenda of this business to your teams. Most of all, it is a working document for you to keep improving as you learn and discover new things along the way.

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Waceke runs a course on business planning. Get in touch with her on [email protected]|Facebook/WacekeNduati| Twitter@cekenduati