Business Plan - To be or Not to be

Ever wondered if you should or should not have a business plan? I always thought a business plan was for big companies, that it was needed for the bookshelves of multimillion dollar corporations. How beneficial would a business plan be for me?

I didn't really want to write anything, simply because I was lazy, and secondly I had no idea how to write a business plan. Either way, I started to do research on HOW to make a business plan, sucked to be me at that time.

However, interestingly enough, I started to believe in the necessity of a business plan for any organization, no matter how big they were or how small, no matter what they did in life. But writing a business plan didn't come without any headaches. For example, you should have read my first business plan, it went like this "A quick service restaurant that will serve awesome food, serving everyone and be awesome!!". As you can see, I had a very clear picture of what the business was going to be...not. I truly struggled while doing the business plan. And probably not where I thought I would have problem, such as the financial projection (I am an engineer, so I have been known to fudge numbers after all!!) or marketing positioning. No, the hardest thing I had problem with was the development of the corporate identity.

A lot of us have great ideas on how to run a company or an organization, we seem to inherently know the answers to the ongoing problems of an organization. So we jump ahead and provide the solutions and say: "do this, do that, eat this, eat that..." However very few of us are able to simply state on a piece of paper what the problem is and give a step by step execution manual to rectify the problem or put the idea into motion.

If you have an idea, a project or dream, you need a plan. A business plan is simply the blue print of your dream. Take the time to write one, take the time to see how you will be able to make your dream come true. It will help you see the value of your idea. If you can't put a step by step plan...maybe your dream is not yet ready to be birthed.