First things first: Don’t overthink your business plan. You don’t need to have a 50-page document in order to start a successful business. (Promise.) Your business plan simply serves as a roadmap towards your goals and objectives. Some of the biggest assumptions of a completed business plan is the viability and validity of the solution, plus the path to some pre-defined goals.
Even if it’s a paragraph, pull out what’s in your head and write down your answers to the following questions:
- What Is The Problem I Am Trying To Solve?
- How Big Is The Problem?
- Who Are My Direct And Indirect Competitors?
- Who Has The Most Urgent Need For A Solution?
- What Is My Proposed Solution?
- How Will My Solution Be Different?
- What Is My Validation Plan (aka Growth Plan)?
- Who Do I (or Do I) Need To Recruit?
Taking it one step further, our friends over at 21Ninety shared some mobile apps to help you simplify what could be a tedious and time-consuming process: SBA, Enloop, LivePlan, and Business Plan Premiere.
Regardless of how you start putting pen to paper, remember that your answers and your plan is all based on hypotheses until validated. Update your answers as you move from one stage to the other. At the end of the day, what matters is creating a product or a service that people use and pay for.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below in the comment section!
