It doesn’t matter whether you are selling odds and ends on eBay from your living room or something larger and more complex,

Business plans are excellent and necessary. Far too few of us self-employed and freelance people use them.

They force us to spell out our objectives. We have to assign numbers to our expectations and assign a time-line to our goals. They become our roadmap and keep us on track.

But I suggest that you can’t make a business plan that is worth anything until you’ve done your homework.

And that means knowing what you want to do and how you want to do it. And determining that there is sufficient demand for your product to generate enough income to cover your costs and allow a profit.

In other words, before the business plan comes research.

If a body of knowledge already exists, it makes sense to tap into it and save you some work. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics and other such sources, for example, publish a great deal of demographic information. Some of it is very useful.

But it is also likely that as a creative sole-proprietor, meaningful statistics don’t exist about your specialty.

Many micro-businesses target a very specialized niche. And many owned by creative types exist to sell a product or service that don’t follow well-worn prototypes.

It is particularly difficult for such people to find meaningful published data.

If you fall into these categories, you’ll have to generate your own information.

Don’t limit your research to purely business data. You are building a life as well as a business.

Are the demands and conditions of your proposed business compatible with the life you want to create?

For example, illustrators often work on short deadlines – meaning that sometimes they have to work far into the night to complete a project on deadline. Plus, some clients are demanding and some do not pay on a timely basis. After all of that, can you still “love it” enough?

Or, maybe your business is such that sales fluctuate during the year. How will you make it through the lean months? Can you handle the uncertainty of a fluctuating income?

So, how do you find information?

First, if other people provide services similar to yours, talk to them. You will gain a lot of information quickly. Their answers to your questions will save you a lot of legwork and open your eyes to factors you may not have considered.

Try to talk to at least five or six people so you can get a range of viewpoints.

You can find them through trade associations, schools, word-of-mouth. If the locals are reluctant to share information – perhaps because they see you as direct competition – look for similar people in a different locale.

Second, create the information you need.

Mimic and simplify what large businesses do. Reduce their methods down to a level that is practical and affordable.

For example, perhaps you want to survey potential clients and customers to get feedback.

If you are a creating a micro-business on a shoe-string, it may not be affordable nor practical to commission a focus group. But you may be able to speak to potential targets informally or use direct mail to send a simplesurvey.

Eventually you’ll have to ‘put your toe in the water.’ Try it out in a small way – so you won’t lose much if it doesn’t work – and observe the results. Then experiment and modify as needed. Once it works to your liking you can plunge right in.

This approach, known by the technical term “trial and error,” can be applied to any facet of your business.

After all, even the largest producers test market new products before rolling them out.

Put some parameters around your efforts. Decide, in advance, how much time you want to allow and how much you want to budget.

Then test, test, test.

Use trial and error for every aspect of your business. Experiment with different ways of packaging your services, different rates and prices, different types of marketing, etc.

You’ll soon find that certain approaches work better than others. Eventually your experience and data will suggest viable strategies.

And then you’ll be ready to create your business plan.

A business coach is like a personal trainer–for your business. A good business coach will help you to realize your dreams, goals, and achieve success through careful step by step planning and processes. The business coach is there to help you with resources, support, motivation, and planning of your business venture. If you already have a business, the business coach is there to help your business succeed and grow in ways that you could only imagine. You can find a business coach in a number of different ways, and in many places. The key is to find the right business coach for you and your company.

There are several things to consider when looking for a business coach. The first thing that you will be likely to consider is cost. Many business coaches are quite expensive, but there are some that are extremely cost effective. The important thing to remember when considering the cost of a business coach is the cost of not getting the business coach. Starting a business can be difficult and costly, but starting that same business can be more costly if you are not sure what you are doing. When you have a business that seems to be failing, or if your business is simply not going anywhere, you are more likely to lose money by doing nothing than by spending the money on a good business coach.

There are several steps that your business coach will lead you through to help you create a successful business. First, your business coach will make sure that the business that you want to develop is a sound business venture. To do this, the coach will take your skills, talents, experience, and resources into consideration. Once these assessments are completed, the coach will help you with your business development by walking you through the steps of a marketing and business plan. When you are ready, the business coach will help you to develop your business by implementing the plans that you made while under their care and tutelage. If any problems arise or you begin to have doubts, your business coach will be there for support, guidance, and resources.

You also want to make sure that the business coach that you choose specializes in business start ups and development, not one or the other. Someone that can only assist in business development will not be able to help you start your business effectively. Likewise, you will quickly outgrow a business coach that can help you start your business but not manage it effectively. Our business coaches are trained and educated in all aspects of starting, running, and growing a business. We are committed to building long lasting relationships will all of our clients, and taking your business from conception to perfection.

Our group of business coaches and professionals are available to you with inside information about legal matters, tax matters, registration requirements, and the best structure options for your business venture. This type of information is important and likely one of the reasons that you are looking for a business coach in the first place. Like other business coaches, we will also have information available to you about resources for funding, grants, loans, and other financial resources that you may be unaware of.

To be honest this really depends. If you are a product based business obviously you will need capital to invest in product but, if you were to start a service based business, you can often times get your business started with little or no investment plus time. You will need some capital though and there are some options available to you:

Friends and Family- Many people look to family and friends to fund their business ventures, especially if the funding required is small. Family and friends will generally offer you generous repayment terms on your business loan but make sure everything is done professionally. You don’t want to ruin relationships with friends and family for the sake of a few dollars. Also, if you get money from family and friends, make sure you allow them to share in your business successes.

Business Credit Cards- Business credit cards are another popular option that people look at when they aim to grow their business. Business credit cards can help with cash flow and, if you pick the right card, you can sign up to a rewards program and get points that can be redeemed for flights, accommodation or a variety of other rewards that may be useful to you. These rewards can be a pleasant little bonus for all of your hard work.

Investors- If your business idea is groundbreaking, or if your business plan is solid, you may be able to pitch to investors and get some investment in your company. If you expect rapid growth or you have a ground breaking product, then this may be the option for you. The problem with investors is that you may lose some of your decision making power as you give away part of your business to an investor.

At the end of the day, the most important factors for business success are clearly defined goals, the dedication to achieve them and then a marketing plan that will get your business in front of people. If you do need business finance there are options available to you. I have outlined three of these above.

When faced with existing data on customer demographics or product characteristics, companies make marketing, and indeed product development decisions, on what they think customers need-the problem being that the customer’s needs can be different at different times or different places.

Even after exhaustive market research into test marketing, collating customer feed-back, as well as interviews and surveys, the results are not necessarily going to tell the whole picture, that is: if that product or service is actually suitable for the “job” the customer requires.

The situation or ‘job’ required, as opposed to the segmentation of customers (as in age, postcode or income), should be the defining method of market suitability.

Clearly defining the ‘job’ that a customer is trying to do, will allow the product to better fit the reason it is being bought or ‘hired’. Once this understanding is in place, the whole picture of functional, emotional as well as the social experience around the purchase of the product will be more obvious, and the use of the four P’s:

Product, Promotion, Price, Place, can then assist with the development of the business plan.

The conclusion that customers don’t actually know what they want or need is often used to market products or services that are outside the accepted traditional customer base, some with spectacular results.

The success of the Nintendo’s Wii gaming machine has been due to the company looking outside the traditional market of adolescent boys, to see where they could expand their appeal.

Repositioning themselves as a health and lifestyle choice, overnight they increased their revenue growth by 89.8%.

This was due to the wider marketing approach to include almost everyone in the healthy, active lifestyle choice, (the need) while at the same time being fun (the emotional want).

This has expanded to the aged care industry, which now have Wii machines as part of their rehabilitation and recreation programs, an unexpected bonus for the residents and undoubtedly, Nintendo.

This all points to the fact that customers/consumers are not interested in the expensive Research & Development, or how clever or technologically advanced the product or service is, or how wonderful the company tells you the product or service is.

If it fails to complete a basic ‘job’ which the customer requires, then it is irrelevant and will not succeed, no matter how expensive it has been to get the product or service to the market place.

So it’s a great application of using what you know and doing it in a new way before anyone else had ever thought of it.

I think a great lesson to be learned is to be fearless in trying new things. Figure out how to hedge your risks, but then plunge forward. I wouldn’t advise diving head first into a shallow pool, but I certainly would encourage walking into a shallow pool and trying to figure out how to make best of the water.

So what is a trend spotter and what was my path to become one?

Actually, to me the word ‘trend spotting’ is anomaly. It doesn’t really apply to anything except how we go about entertaining the conversation.

I was just a sophisticated market researcher who is very good at extrapolating medium range trends – what I was seeing in society and how it was playing out numerically from survey data and our quantitative data points.

Then I would add in what I was seeing qualitatively doing journalistic interviews and ethnographic work. What was I seeing and learning that could be put to good use and every day life for business?

My objective has never been to be the kind of a crystal ball person. It’s really to build businesses; to know when to get in and when to get out.

So what I’m talking about is feet on the ground work, grabbing a lot of data from different sources and then pulling that together and connecting the dots in order to figure out what’s going on out there.

The only other piece that is really critical is timing.

Look at George Magazine, which John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Michael Berman started more than a decade ago. In those days, politics was not pop culture. It was an idea before it’s time.

If a magazine like that would have been launched around the rise of Obama culture, it would have had a very different place, much more mainstream, and the timing would have been even more right for it.

It’s medium term trending. It’s not going out too far or too far fetched.

I don’t write science fiction, and I can’t make accurate predictions about the stock market. My work is usually oriented to what’s going to happen the next 12 to 18 months from a political standpoint, from a commercial standpoint, from a consumerism standpoint, that’s going to really create business opportunity.

How did I get to do what I’m doing now?

It was a combination of having great bosses, having a lot of guts to go in and out of entrepreneurial life back into corporate life; and then really understanding how to take these ideas, the major observations that I had developed, and translate them into positive commercial events.

It sounds very multiple disciplinary.

I’m not an economist. I’m not just a hard core advertising, hard core PR person. I’m really a marketer, looking to identify a desire and how do you put product in that fulfills that desire.

1. Find passion in what you do

To succeed in your endeavors, you should proceed with passion, and you love what you do.

To do this you must start businesses that deal with topics you passionate or, in any case, try to find a taste for what you do.

If you cannot do this, you should look to do other things, for if there is passion and energy in your endeavors, the chances of success are nil.

You must seek to do business in which fun, where you work with enthusiasm, which would be willing to work for free.

2. Take advantage of your benefits

Always get more out of your competitive advantages, i.e. those areas where you excel or highlights to others.

Your benefits may be in your knowledge, experience, skills, resources; contacts, etc.

Always use them to launch your business, and to bring them up. And always try to strengthen and maintain, for example, if you know a particular subject, become expert at it, and if you have important contacts always try to keep them.

3. Offers something different

To succeed as an entrepreneur, you must always offer something different, something unique and original, something not offered by others and allows you to differentiate yourself from them.

As an entrepreneur you should be able to offer something new and different, something that is the reason why consumers will recognize, stop buying the competition and I prefer to choose and you.

4. Start small, but big projecting

Start with small businesses, but by projecting always is great. Start with small businesses, is fluent in everything you do, then gradually began to grow.

For example, start by offering a single product or based on a single type of consumer, become expert at it, and then as the business grows, offering a greater variety of products, or start looking for new markets.

5. Future projecting

Concentrate on what you do now, but always thinks about the future. Every decision you make, you should not consider only the consequences that may have now, but the possible consequences in the future.

For example, to start a business, you should consider the possibility that it could become a big business, you see what I can give the business now, but what I could in the future.

6. Always planned

Every business you undertake is it size, you should plan and make a business plan.

A business plan does not have to be complex, should simply be a document in which to put all information that may serve to make better decisions, your goals, means and strategies that allow you to achieve those goals, and your projections or estimates.

The business plan enables you to be more efficient and minimize risk, will guide you to take your business and to operate the first months of life.

7. Do not be so optimistic

By making your projections, not too optimistic about inform, analyze things well, and be as realistic as possible.

Do not be misled by the optimism characteristic of entrepreneurs, and try to see things coolly, always consider all problems or difficulties that might happen, and keep in mind that will surely appear of difficult problems that did not get to foresee.

8. Do not focus only on money

If your only goal as an entrepreneur is to get money, it will never appear.

Before thinking about having a lot of money, you should think about doing something you love, to have freedom and control in your life, serve others, to have pride in being an entrepreneur.

Only when you enjoy being an entrepreneur and stop obsessing about the money, it just appears in abundance.

9. Minimize the risk and then act

In every business you undertake, you should minimize any potential risk, for it must inform, analyze, and enable you to plan.

But you should not obsess with it, keep in mind that more analysis, preparation or planning to make, there will always be problems and unforeseen difficulties.

So, try to minimize any risk you can, but do not try to control everything, do not let it paralyze you analysis assumes some risk and takes the decision to start your projects at once.

10. Do not be afraid to make mistakes

Every time you make mistakes or fail, are when you really learn.

Errors or failures are part of the road to success is, without errors or failures, never get success.

Therefore, do not worry too much about mistakes or failures you may have. Every time you make a mistake or fail, learn the lesson, be a better entrepreneur and move on.

11. Continuously analyzes the market

As an entrepreneur you must be constantly aware of everything that happens in the market.

Always be alert to consumers, their behavior, their habits, changes in their needs, preferences or tastes to economic events, new trends, new technological developments, competition, its new strategies, new products, etc.

Be alert to what happens in the market, the occurrence of opportunities and threats, and always try to anticipate them and anticipate them.

12. Constantly looking for opportunities

As an entrepreneur you should be aware of anything that might mean a business opportunity and must be attentive to the little opportunities that arise, as they are usually out of them generated big business. And keep in mind that the best opportunities come when you least expect, so you should never stop being aware of your appearance.

13. Do not offer something you like you, but something that consumers like

As an entrepreneur, your reason for being is the consumers, you should always put in place, trying to decipher their needs and preferences, and then meet them.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that if you like something you would also have to like each other.

It may happen, but before embarking on your projects, analyze it and make sure of the needs and consumer tastes.

14. Ponder well your decisions

Making good decisions is critical in the life of the entrepreneur.

As before every decision you make, you take your time, ponder it, and analyze it well.

However, you cannot always do that and sometimes you must trust your instincts as an entrepreneur and make decisions quickly.

15. Compress time

Today, due to high competition, as an entrepreneur, you must value every second, you must work every day and every hour.

But you should not become a slave to your business, you work hard, but eventually, you must have the ability to create business systems and know how to delegate authority.

Until the day your business and not have to rely on your presence and you can spend more time with your family and do what you like, or to start new businesses.

16. Be sure to train you

As much as you know, never forgets to continue learning, either by yourself or by attending courses or seminars.

Learn about business, about new technologies, new business tools, but above all, learn all you can about that to what you do, so much so that you become an expert at it.

17. Save on everything you

As an entrepreneur you are looking to obtain the best possible sales or earnings, but at the same time, you try to do the least possible expense, not only in business to undertake, but also in your everyday life.

You always look for ways to spend less, for example, you take your time when buying something, and prices compare well, try to rent rather than buy, etc., And the time, you try to be frugal in your life daily, for example, you should avoid unnecessary luxuries, at least until you have enough money to give those tastes.

18. Surround yourself with the right people

To start your business, you know how to choose the right people, those people who are experts on topics that are not mastered, and that complement well with you and other members of your team.

If you choose to have partners, find partners that complement you, who have resources or expertise that you do not own, and have the same aspirations for growth than you.

19. Be persistent

In the way of the entrepreneur, do what you do, always appear problems with obstacles.

Therefore, as an entrepreneur must be prepared to overcome these obstacles, trust your ability and your projects, knowing that in any success, and keep going no matter what happens.

20. Be patient

And finally, the last of the tips for entrepreneurs, is to be patient.

The way of the entrepreneur is not an easy road to traverse it takes perseverance and patience. As an entrepreneur must have patience in bad times, but also well.

When things go wrong, if you really trust your ability and your projects, be patient and keep going, knowing that success could come at any time.

And when things go well, be patient and not force things, go slowly, little by little, and taking small steps, but if you find a good opportunity, only then speeds up and starts with large steps.

But before installing and implementing our business, we should take our time, and take into account the following tips:

Clearly define the target market

An important requirement before starting a business, is to identify clearly what the market or target audience which will target our products or services.

Clearly define our target market will enable us to know well the needs, tastes, preferences, habits, customs and consumer behavior that constitutes, we will focus only on him, specialized in design products that meet their needs, tastes and preferences, and strategies that capitalize on their habits, customs and behaviors, thus achieving greater efficiency.

When starting our company, it is advisable to target a single type of market, i.e., focus and specialize in one type of consumer, and then as we get older, just starting to turn to other markets.

Market research

Sewn for market research to gather and analyze information about consumers who make up our target market.

Which means getting to know and analyze well your needs, tastes, preferences, habits, customs, behaviors, and other characteristics?

Good research will allow us to design the product that best suits their needs, identifying the most appropriate price for them, establish sales channels more accessible to it, design the advertising message may have their greatest impact, etc.

Test the product or service

Before investing time and money in building our company, we recommend pilot testing to help us evaluate whether the product or service that we offer have a good acceptance.

To do this, we can invite some people to try or taste our product, we can put a small stand of gestation, we can install a small stall, and we can let our products on commission in another business.

The test our product or service before its launch, we will know if they really have a good host will tell us that we are making mistakes, we will take corrective action.

Analyze competition

Before starting a business, we collect and analyze information about our future competitors.

We collect information about how many, where they are located, what are the leaders, what their markets, what are their products, what prices, what are their strategies, what is your experience, what are its advantages, what are its disadvantages , etc.

To do this, you can visit their premises, purchase products, testing services, interview people who work or have worked with them, to interview some of its customers, etc.

Make a good competitive analysis will allow us to make better decisions and design strategies that allow us to exploit their weaknesses and to address their strengths.

Make a business plan

Another important tip to consider before starting a business is to develop a good business plan.

In a business plan will establish our objectives, means and strategies that will enable us to achieve these objectives, the resources they need, the processes we use, our projections of expenses, etc.

All of which will establish the feasibility of our project, the investment required, the potential profitability of the company, will guide us to build and manage our business, we will minimize the risk, and allow us to make better decisions and be more efficient.

Spare no expense

By creating our company, we must ensure that investment is the smallest possible, looking for lower costs or expenses, for example, to take our time to choose the supplies or equipment of the company, or who will choose the right suppliers.

However, low rates of investment should not mean neglecting the quality of inputs or products to buy, not to the point of projecting the image of austere company, for example, widely used to buy equipment, or having poor decoration.

Whenever we start a new company must give the image of a thriving company with a good future, we must consider what it calls poor, and that consumers will not buy from companies like austere.

Avoid debt

By creating a company, it is advisable that the total investment, or at least most of it, is made up of equity.

It is advisable to take debt as quickly, but to start with equity, then, as the business grows begin acquiring new debt that will allow us to grow it further.

If you do not have enough money to invest, an alternative is to borrow from family or friends, but always making sure the loan amount is not excessive and that, after obtaining the money, we are not going to feel so depressed at having to return on a deadline.

Have an emergency budget

When starting a business, it is common that expenditure always end up being higher than budgeted, i.e., in the end the investment required, because some costs or hidden fees or contingent, always end up being higher than originally estimated.

As a council before starting a business, is that when preparing our budgets, always reserve a small emergency capital, which can be used for any eventuality, unexpected or inconvenient.

Beware of companies

If we consider having a partner to build our business, we must try to find partners that are complementary to us, who have skills or to provide something we do not have, for example, financial resources, market knowledge, business contacts, experience or knowledge a particular item of business, etc.

We also seek partners that have the same aspirations for growth that we who are as motivated as us to create and bring up the company.

On the other hand, we also have to be careful in society, we must make clear, preferably in writing, all agreements and measures to be taken for any eventuality, for example, will split the profits, which will be functions each, what measures were taken in the event that one partner decides to withdraw, etc.

Patience

The last advice to consider before starting a business, is patience.

Patience means being able to create a business is not easy, but rather a complex, full of obstacles, uncertainties and drawbacks.

Patience also means knowing that success does not come at any moment, but something that takes time to achieve, and requires hard work, effort and dedication.

Patience also means going slowly, slowly, starting small, but projected on grade, started selling a few types of products, comprising a few types of markets, and then little by little they grow up.

A good business plan has two main objectives: The first is to use it for internal management and planning while the second objective is to help convince outsiders into investing in their company based on the information contained in the business plan.

Though it is widely perceived in commercial circles that these business plans very soon become outdated, nevertheless the Business Plan is a tool for planning your business success, which in turn helps managers to better comprehend the business objectives and then choose wisely from among a set of competing options.

Business plans are dependent on the area of expertise within the organization that one wants to focus one’s attention upon. There are Business plans for Marketing, Finance, Production and Human Resources. Each delves deeply into the technicalities involved and arrives at a suitable Business Plan relevant to that particular field.

Though the business plan has many different forms, there are, however, certain formats that do address their particular needs. They contain information regarding the following topics:

- Executive summary
- Company Background
- Marketing
- Production and manufacturing
- Finance
- Human Resources

As mentioned earlier, this document is aimed at serving two purposes. It acts as a guide from inception until fruition. It functions as a blueprint that will smoothly keep you running on the right track at all times. Having expended enough time and energy into planning for the future, the chances of avoiding hazards and experiencing frustrating times are greatly reduced. It also serves as a useful guideline to potential investors, who glean their knowledge about the company from the business plan before deciding on investment options. The subject matter must be concise as well as hold all necessary information required in this context.

Creating a good business plan is not an easy task. It requires thorough knowledge and patience and a lot of endeavor. It can run into scores of pages. It need to be structured carefully and in fact, should be broken down into sections. Support it with supportive documents that spell out any additional information.

You would most certainly start with a cover sheet, which is the title page of your plan. It will contain the Name of the company, Company address, Company phone number (with area code), Logo (if applicable), names, titles, addresses, phone numbers (with area code) of owners, month and year in which the plan is issued, Name of preparer. Next is the mission statement, information about the business, products and services, location, management, personnel and method of record keeping, insurance and security.

In addition, the business plan will state the marketing plan of the company in full detail. Another aspect covered is financial statements that spell out past, present and future finances. The entire document should be professional in format and appearance. Making a favorable first impression will set the company on the right path from the very outset.