Teen entrepreneurs can have some of the most innovative ideas in business today. Having great ideas doens’t mean they don’t need a business plan. In fact, a teen business plan may help them have a great chance at success.

It can be tempting to think that a teen business is simple and doesn’t really need a business plan. However, a business plan helps you think through some of the details that trip up the best entrepreneurs of any age. In some cases, those can be the very details that are the difference between a success and just a good try.

What’s in a teen business plan? It doesn’t need to be complicated or complex. Get these key elements and you’ll be on your way to being one of the teen entrepreneurs with a solid plan and a solid chance at success.
What is your business? A simple but complete description of the business is important so others can understand what your business is doing. Is it providing a service or a product? You should be able to describe and explain your business in one minute or less to others. Who will buy what you are offering? This is also called a target market, but really this is just who is going to buy what you are selling. Within this group are the people who will become your customers. A target market should not be too broad because you cannot serve everyone’s needs. It should also not be so narrow that you will run out of potential customers in the first month. What is your marketing plan? Every business needs some type of marketing. The type of business can help you determine what type of marketing you will be doing. For instance, advertising for a lawn service might rely on lots of flyers throughout several neighborhoods while a babysitting service should have more targeted information at local churches or day cares. Do you need help? In a larger business, this would be employees. In a smaller one, it could be parents or friends. It is highly likely that you will not need help immediately. In fact, if you design your business to rely on others from the outset, you should consider rethinking your plan. Starting smaller is much easier to manage for most teen entrepreneurs. You can focus on the business and customers without having to worry about managing others. How much money will it take to get started? This doesn’t need to be precise but it shouldn’t be a big guess, either. Do you need money to buy supplies to make crafts that you will sell? Will you be printing flyers from a home computer for a service business? Make a quick list and then put dollars by each item. These costs should be considered when figuring out how much you are going to charge for your services or products to help ensure that you make a profit.

If you have a good business idea, it should only take you thirty minutes or so to get this teen business plan mapped out. It may take you longer if you haven’t thought about some of these areas. However, if you find yourself struggling with these concepts in general, it may be a sign to rethink your teen business idea.

For a business to be successful, the one thing it needs initially above anything else is a solid business plan. It is impossible to get any investor funding or a bank loan without a business plan. Even if you pay for the business yourself, a business plan will help you plan things out and know the direction you want to move in. Without a business plan, the success of your business and your consignment store is uncertain.

What Goes Into a Business Plan

There are several elements that make a business plan successful. Taking the time to put these elements in will not only give you a clear direction to move in with the business, but it will make your consignment shop more successful in the long run.

1. The first part of your business plan is what is called a Profile of Principles. This is where the work experience and background of you, the owner, is outlined. You want to show in your business plan why you are experienced and ready for running a consignment store and that is why you put this at the beginning.

2. Next, you will put in a Statement of Purpose. This is where you state what the consignment store will offer and what type of business you will be running. This only needs to be a few sentences long.

3. After the Statement of Purpose, you need to put in a Market Analysis. This is the point where you address the economy in your area and in the country, and assess the market viability of the consignment store. Some things to include is a location study, an analysis of traffic patterns, what market you are targeting and what your competition is like.

4. How are you going to promote the consignment store? This question is addressed in the Promotional Strategies section. You want to explain everything you will do to bring in business to the consignment store, including all advertising and marketing strategies.

5. The next section is your Operational Plan. In this section, you outline some facts about the store, how it is going to operate, what equipment you need and when it is open.

6. In the Timetables and Schedules section, you need to set a list of goals for your consignment store. These include how long it will take to remodel it before opening, when you will open and how soon after before you start turning a profit.

7. The next section, which is the Potential Pitfalls section, is vitally important. It is here that you address some of the problems that exist with your business. Many new business owners choose not to include this because they worry about driving an investor away. This is not the point of that section. The point of it is to show the pitfalls that exist and to show how you will address them. An investor or bank would rather have an owner who knows the pitfalls and combats them, than one who ignores them.

8. The next three sections deal with the finances. Since your business has not started yet, you will have to estimate how well the business is going to do. Talking to your accountant will help ensure you get accurate results for these financial statements. These statements are:

a. Monthly Estimated Fixed Expenses: How much you will be spending on payroll, utilities, advertising and rent every month.

b. Initial Capital Investment: This is how much money needs to be put up-front to pay start up costs including new signs, advertising and renovations.

c. First Year Projections: This is where you will address what you hope to make in the first year, and how you will make that profit.

A business plan does not have to be perfect, but it does have to show that you have done your research and that you know what you are getting into with a consignment store.

In the value based business, the successful business owner or manager concentrates on the unique value that his or her business offers to its customers. This ‘uniqueness’ is discovered only through depth of thought and rigorous analysis of the reason and purpose that one is in business for in the first place.

It involves listening intently to what customers are saying and understanding their particular needs. Engaging customers at this level creates a close bond between the business and the customer. It creates opportunities for working with and through customers in a way that delivers results that are mutually agreeable.

Deep critical reflection is demanded to arrive at effective decisions that will deliver what the customer really wants, and not just what we may want to sell to them.

The three key elements that must be adopted to ensure customer focus, create value and transform both the value-based business and its relationships with customers are:

Adopt a ‘Customer Needs’ Driving Force

The mindset required for establishing a ‘customer needs’ approach must be imbedded in an understanding of the vision of the business, through a clearly articulated statement about what drives the business.

Such a driving force must be chosen by the business owner as part of setting the strategic agenda of the business. This then ensures that strategic choices are aligned to business capabilities, customers and markets and that these are properly differentiated and segmented within small business plans.

Adopting a ‘customer needs’ driving force results in products and services being developed by the value-based business around the current and future needs of its customers.

Build Strong Customer Relationships

Helping others get what they want builds strong customer bonds.

Use your business capabilities to help your customer strengthen their position in the market. This means tailoring your products and services to the needs of the customer, within the bounds and context of a mutually beneficial and trusting relationship.

This approach also applies to the internal environment of the business. The value chain of the business that extends to customers in the external environment begins in the internal environment as a series of processes.

People accomplish these processes. Seeing employees as customers, along a continuum of service, focuses business activities at the highest level in all its dealings with each other and external customers.

“What do you want to achieve?” and “How can we help you achieve what you want?” should always be the first words out of our mouths in addressing the needs of the people around us, both in our business and to the customer in the external world. Such questions display a degree of emotional intelligence in business.

Customer requests, feedback and complaints provide the opportunity to improve products and services by incorporating the valuable information that they contain.

Develop Strategic Partnerships, Alliances and Networks

Successful business owners join up processes between their companies and those of their customers in order to build an interdependent network of relationships that delivers greater returns to everyone.

When we work with and through others, we add value to what is on offer. This continuum of service and product delivery expands the reach of the value-based business and the customer.

Strategic partnerships, alliances and networks must never be entered into lightly. They must be built on a firm foundation and a shared value base. This is critical to ensure that products and services that are offered are not degraded or watered-down, in any way.

When forming such relationships it is paramount that the Mission, Vision and Values of the business are not compromised in any way. A partnership matrix framework that aligns these elements between prospective partners must be generated, as part of the business policy development process.

Business alliance and partnership relationships must be evaluated diligently before they are entered into. They require sound skills for negotiation and must be reviewed regularly as part of the business planning cycle.

Business plan is the written explanation of a business model. Those concerned in the planning development and management are the most likely to employ it. they are also used when approaching potential lenders or investors that have an interest in a particular business venture.

Imagine it as being like answers to questions that others might ask about your own business. If you want money for starting a business then you definitely need a business plan. Because the investors giving you the funding would like to know that what you want to do. They want to know how will money come into business and how will you make money. Very first question is what is Your Service or products?

Tell them which industry you are belonging, your market and your customers, and why you have chosen it. Who are Your Customers? And so that is the very next thing that should be written. You should include your business area here too. What formulate you special? You need to speak what the important factors are that create your business dissimilar to other businesses.

You need to include all start up expenses like equipment, decoration, planner, rent, legal expenses, staffing services and other day to day expenses. Break it into small parts according to expenses and profits for one year. You can represent your expenses and profit figures into graphical form. That gives you clear idea.

If you feel that you have not learned anything new thus far, there is a whole new realm of information in the rest of this article.

it should demonstrate you making sufficient of a profit every month to exist – if you does not, then it will be considered unfeasible by anyone you show it to. Do not confuse with it what do or not. The best thing you can do is go to internet and check all available plans out there. Check these plans and add what you want.

There is no formula for developing a good one. But there are certain common sections in every business plan. Your business plan should divide into four major parts: Description of the business, Marketing section, Finance section and Management section. Knowing the ins and outs of this topic will help you to fully understand the importance of this entire subject.

Small business owners mistakenly believe that the size of their business negates the need for strategic planning but the opposite is actually true. Its inherent size is actually what makes strategic planning more important because it can be means for a small business to gradually evolve into a huge and thriving multinational corporation.

What Small Business Owners Need to Know about Strategic Planning

Planning is one of the five important functions of management, but it’s arguably the most important of all because it’s the first function that any manager or business owners should focus on. Planning sets the goals, mission-vision, and direction for the company. Without it, the other functions may be impossible to achieve.

A business can’t, however, benefit from just any kind of planning. It must be strategic in essence to be effective. Strategic planning is a methodical process of deciding where you want your company to be in a given time frame and what you propose to do to get there.

There are different ways to let your company benefit from strategic planning so don’t worry about following the so-called rules. Whatever works for your company is good enough.

Elements of Strategic Planning

Internal and External Assessment of Strategic Planning – A coach of a basketball team won’t be able to map out an effective play if it doesn’t know its players well, which team it will be playing against, and other related factors. The same can be said for any business manager. Before you can start working on the details of your strategic plan, you must first focus on compiling data about the external and internal environment of your company.

Outside your business, politico-legal, economic, and socio-cultural factors can affect how your business will fare in the next few years. Inside, factors such as management style and the type of workforce you have can also help or hinder your company from attaining your goal.

Setting Your Company’s Goals – Small or big, the important thing is for your business to have goals. If you’ can be satisfied with small and short-term goals then that’s good; if you secretly desire for bigger goals then that’s even better. To know if the goals you plan to work on are indeed workable, determine if they adhere to the SMART rule – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Rule of Majority – Of course, as owner or manager of a business, you reserve your right to approve or naysay any suggestion but as much as possible, allow the rule of majority to stick. Plans can only come to fruition if everyone in the company works together and you can assure yourself of their cooperation by showing them that you care about what they think.

Devising an Action Plan – Finally, it’s time to concentrate on the nitty-gritty of your strategic plan. List down possible and specific courses of action then choose what all of you deem as most suitable. Make sure that you set a definite schedule or timetable for everything but give allowances for unexpected delays and concerns. Set a budget as well.

The Ever-So-Popular Plan B – Last but not the least, devise a Plan B in the event that your first plan doesn’t work and list down indications to know when’s the right time to put Plan B to action.

Good luck on strategic planning for your business!