Most future business owners create at least a simple business plan as an operating guide or to help facilitate a small business loan. If you are going to invest the time to create a plan, there are many other ways this work could and should be leveraged.

It’s true that you wouldn’t want your plan showing up on the internet for the whole world to see. But does it have to be labeled top secret and kept under lock and key? This article explores some ways successful entrepreneurs leverage their business plans to help launch their new ventures.

For any of the ideas below, always give careful consideration to who your audience will be. Next, make some decisions about which sections of your plan should be revealed. Finally, think about the level of detail you would be willing to share with your audience.

The risks of handing out copies of your business plan to a broad audience are high and easily understood. (Don’t do that.) However, properly managed, sharing your plans and ideas at an early stage can be tremendously beneficial. You will suddenly find that you start to meet new prospective partners, investors, advisors and potential key employees. Let’s not leave out customers. Any time you’re talking about your business, you’re marketing it to future customers.

Here are four ideas that are available to just about anyone at little or no cost. Review the list of ideas below and see which ones are right for you.

Business Plan Competitions. Many organizations host competitions for future business owners and their business plans. The guidelines vary on which aspects of your plan must be submitted. A few minutes spent on Google will help you find local and national business plan competitions. Many even offer significant cash prizes to the winners. Rather than simply submit your plan, use the opportunity to get to know the organization hosting the competition, the judging panel and anyone associated with the event.

Venture Forums and Angel Investor Group. Most medium and large cities have one or more venture groups and angel investor groups that have monthly meetings. Their attendees go beyond investors themselves. They include people with a variety of reasons for wanting to meet future business owners. The presentations at these meetings are usually made by would-be entrepreneurs presenting some aspect of their business plan. The formats vary, but typically some feedback is provided to the presenters.

Mentoring Organizations. There are many types of mentoring organizations. When you’ve just put together your business plan and are looking to take it for a test drive, look for those whose mission is to help nurture new businesses. Your local chamber of commerce, SBA office or even your banker can probably help you identify mentoring organizations in your local area that can provide insight and feedback.

Universities. Contact the business department of a local university and find out the name of the dean of the business department, or a department closely aligned with your type of business. Contact them by phone or email. Let them know that you’ve developed a business plan and you’re looking for qualified experts who might review it. Many MBA programs look for individuals to present their plans to their classes. Still others assign a group of MBA students to work directly with the business owner over a period of several weeks. There is usually no cost for this type of assistance.

Making it Happen. These are just four ways you can leverage the work you’ve invested to write your plan. Once you start thinking about the value of promoting yourself and your plan, other opportunities will show up on your radar as well. Even if you are still at the stage and do not have your plan ready to take outside, take a look at how and when these ideas will be right for you.

By carefully and selectively looking for opportunities to present your ideas to others, you’ll meet new people, forge new relationships and fine-tune your ideas in ways that will help you succeed.

Many people open their own business without proper planning and then wonder why it ends in failure. The most important thing you can do to prevent from joining them is the one thing that many new businesses fail to do; write a business plan. This is not the formal document you read about in books that you write and then throw in a drawer and never look at again. It is a plan that will allow you to determine the potential of any business you are considering and show you exactly what you need to do to achieve success.

Make sure your plan is a living document that is constantly updated and based in reality. Many people make the mistake of being too optimistic when it comes to projected sales and almost blind when determining expenses. The best way to keep your numbers closer to what you will actually see is to get advice from professionals. Have your lawyer and your accountant review your plan and give you feedback. The money you will spend for this advice will almost certainly be the best you ever spend. They can tell you if any of your thinking is out of line and they will probably offer suggestions you had not thought of.

Finally, you will want to consult with other business owners. Try to find owners from a wide variety of businesses, not just the kind of business you are considering. Ask them what kind of challenges they had to face when they started and how they survived them. Ask them what they would have done different.

You can put yourself in a safe and secure financial position by owning your own business, but to do so you need to make sure you go about it in the right way. If you write and update a business plan based in reality and seek out and follow the advice of professionals and other owners, you stand a very good chance of finding the business success that will give you the financial independence and security you seek.

A small business plan outlines the purpose and goals of a business. A business plan is helpful when applying for funding for start-up or operational expenses. Before beginning a plan, individuals must identify the following: the product to be offered by the business, potential customers, and the means by which the business will be funded. Keep in mind that an effective business plan takes more than a few days to write.

There are many key components that should be included in a business plan. The first is a mission statement that details the major goals of a business. A successful mission statement will pique the interest of potential investors and clients. Secondly, a business owner should provide a detailed description of the business. This can include the types of products offered, how the company began, and how the company will realize its goals.

A successful business plan also includes a defined market for the product it offers. Business owners should think about who they expect will buy their product. They should also research the market for their product to provide evidence of a need for their goods. Next, a business owner should outline the management of the business by setting a certain number of jobs and describing the responsibilities of each.

The next steps of a business plan are to define the product offered and compare it to the competition. Product descriptions should include materials needed and the production process. Lastly, a business plan should include goals for future growth, including how growth will be funded and executed. Some business owners also prefer to follow the completed plan with a summary of their company and key parts of their plan.

Find restaurant advertising generally refers to the process by which restaurant owners find efficient ways to promote their business. Effective advertising gives a business a competitive advantage to businesses, which expands the number of customers a business receives. There are many traditional and non-traditional ways to find restaurant advertising.

One method of traditional advertising, through newspapers, varies in price according to which newspaper and what options are chosen for the ad. Major newspapers may charge up to or more than seven hundred dollars per day for any size of ad. However, they also give discounts of thirty to fifty percent for individuals who buy large ads or pay for their ad to appear on multiple pages. The rates of smaller community newspapers may be considerably lower, but the ad will not reach as many potential customers. Billboard advertising costs seven hundred to three thousand dollars per day, but they also have a tendency to reach many more possible clients.

The Internet has created new ways for business owners to find restaurant advertising. An individual may add his or her restaurant to search engine directories for as low as twenty dollars per month. Business owners may also consider paying another company or individual to design a website specifically for their restaurant. The rates of custom websites range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the complexity of the website.

Restaurant owners should also invest the inexpensive means of finding restaurant advertising. Business cards, flyers, brochures, and postcards can also be used to expand the number of customers a business receives.

Many times, people enter into business with the greatest of intentions. They have a passion or a specialize skill that they believe they can put into a business model and begin to offer their services. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs make a fatal mistake and do not go through the necessary activities to ensure long term success.

The number one mistake entrepreneurs make is not having a plan. Most think that they do not need to put together a business plan or believe that they need a long, comprehensive business plan resulting in them opting out of the exercise completely.

Most jump into their business venture with an idea and a passion and move quickly into the day to day of running a business rather than taking the time to properly plan and strategize every element of their business that would support growth and sustainability.

The simple act of developing a business plan forces entrepreneurs to think about key elements that will impact their business from defining the product or service being offered, the demographics or customer base your product or service will be targeted towards, the competition in your area, opportunities for growth and not to mention the financial projections and cost estimates.

As businesses go through the five stages of growth, a business plan will assist the business owner in making early decisions that will yield long term success.

A business plan should be an evolving process and used over and over again as a tool to support growth, creativity and resource alignment and does not need to be a long document. Many successful businesses use a one page business plan template that has proven to be quite successful. The goal is to get involved in creating a process that you revisit often.

In today’s market, there are many professional who are well equipped to assist you with putting together a plan, not to mention numerous do-it-yourself software applications such as www.businesspro.com. These plans are only as good as the information and forecast you put into it so it is extremely important that you remain objective and to use this as an opportunity to uncover potential obstacles that you may need to overcome. It is also a good idea to solicit the help of trusted advisors to review and comment. They often will uncover aspects that you may have missed or need to elaborate, or point out unsupported assumptions that need to be addressed.

A solid business plan can be the blueprint for operating your business for the first few years of business and support any requirements of creditors and lenders who may require that you have one. Your financial projections can act as your first year’s budget and a guideline for spending and investing your cash. More importantly, a well thought out plan with independent review will become the roadmap to success.

Kellie D’Andrea & Associates

Having a good small business plan will ensure that your journey to success is much smoother. All successful business owners know that having an organized, well thought plan is essential to see the results they expect. Even if the business plan doesn’t give the results that you would have thought in the beginning, you can tweak and change different areas of your process to perfect it.

I thought I would go through a step by step guide to what you need for an effective small business plan. Many people try and start a business without any true expectations for the future other then ‘oh this is going to work’. You have to know exactly what “should” happen so that the surprises are less. In most cases surprises in business aren’t positive.

You must have a plan for many different areas of starting a small business. How are you going to fund the start up fees? How do you expect to sell your product/service? How do you expect to pay your employees? How are you going to promote your company effectively? Most importantly and what most business owners don’t think about is where do you want your business to be in 5…10…20 years?

Creating the right small business plan is all about creating effective systems. A system is something that you can use over and over again in different situations to receive expected results. You at least have some idea of what’s going to happen if you have the right systems in place.

The first step to your business plan is knowing exactly how much money it’s going to take to start your company. None of this has to be a professionally written up small business plan that costs thousands and thousands of dollars hiring an “expert”. Take out a piece of paper and write down your plan. The main thing is that you know exactly how you are going to fulfill your dream of being a successful small business owner.

So what are your opening expenses? Here are some questions you need to answer to find out your estimated dollar amount:

How much money does your product or service cost you? How much money will you charge for your service/product? How much money do you require to live for two years with no profit coming in from your business (safety precaution)? How much will it cost for your employees for 2 years? What are your legal fees? What are your CPA fees? How much will getting a physical location cost you (if needed)?

Every business is going to be different so think about anything that you need to spend money on to get it running. The next step you must consider is how are you going to get this start up money. Are you going to go to a bank for a loan? Are you considering finding a partner that can cover the costs with the agreement you can buy out the company later down the road? Do you want to talk with a wealthy family member about your business? Anyway you choose to get the money doesn’t matter.

Having a thorough small business plan is going to help you get that start up money though. As long as you can show the lenders how you plan on getting a return on their investment, you will be set. It doesn’t matter if you have horrible credit or don’t know anybody that will lend you large amounts of money. You can always find a way. Think outside the box!

Alright the next step should be the simplest for you. You want to write down your complete sales funnel for how you plan to sell your product or service. Go through every step you expect a customer to go through to reach your bank account. What are you selling exactly? How are you packaging the items? Are you providing multiple services and products? What do you expect to be your number one seller? What’s your specialty?

Once you have all these areas done, you have to know how you are going to promote your business and keep the business coming in. This seems to be the biggest problem most business owners have. You know everything there is to know about your products/services, but you know nothing about marketing. That’s expected too. Marketing is an expertise in itself.

If you’ve read much of my blog, you know how I preach about smart marketing. Smart marketing is all about spending your hard earned dollar and getting more then you spent in return. In other words, big return on investment (ROI). Every market will be different and different marketing tactics will work in each of them. You have a huge list of options too.

Newspapers, Yellow Pages, Radio, Television Ads Fliers, postcards, promotion coupons Referral programs Internet marketing Email marketing Holding seminars and special events Business to business referral programs

These are just to name a few of the options you have. You can never go wrong working with other local businesses. It’s beneficial for both businesses and can be something that explodes your business quickly. It should definitely be part of every small business plan.

No matter which direction you take your marketing in, remember to always be able to track your marketing method. You always want to know how effective each method is for your business. Don’t spray and pray! In other words, don’t just buy what that marketing salesman is selling you if they can’t show you how many customers you are getting in return.

Creating your small business plan with all of these areas covered is a great start to having a successful business. You can go in deeper and deeper to have an even more effective plan and you should, but this is a great start for anyone. Once you have the plan, you just have to follow it step by step. It makes your job so much easier. You have too much to worry about already. There is no reason to have to constantly be wondering…’what am I going to do now?’ You need to know what you’re doing beforehand.