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You are here: Experts > Business > Small Business: UK > Home Business > business plan
Expert: Stacy Brice - 10/30/2009
Question
Hi Stacy, I, along with my mom and sister, are in the midst of starting a home-based business. Our business will be service- and retail- related; we plan on offering specialty t-shirts, personal assistance and event planning.
I have been assigned to do the business plan, but I am having some problems. My questions include the following:
1) Because my business consists of several entities, would I have to do a business plan for each one e.g. do a business plan for the event planning, do a business plan for the t-shirts, and so on?
2)Would it be much easier to purchase a business plan template, rather than doing it from sctrach? If so, could you tell me which software is best?
and,
3) If I do purchase a business plan template software, which category best suits my business? I did some research regarding such software and had a hard time determining which I should use if I were to purchase the software. Should I use the home business category, the retail business category, or the online business category (we are going to have a website for our products/services), etc.? Thank you for your time.. Any suggestion would be appreciated
Answer
Hi, Lisa :)
You've asked some very big questions--ones I could spend maaaaany hours trying to answer. For now, let's go with this:
There's a question that leaps out at me: Why are you starting ONE business, when you have three very distinct services?
Things become very easy, on all levels, when you focus in one direction. Things get muddy quickly, when you combine things that aren't really combineable. If I were coaching you, I'd really suggest three different businesses.
But if the point of this is for the three of you to work together in the SAME business (albeit on very different things), then you'll want to first see an attorney and accountant who can look at, not only the business you want to create, but also the financial pictures each of you have going on in your lives, and tell you what legal form of business you should create, and how it should be structured.
Is it, for example, a corporation, with different divisions? Or maybe an LLC? Whatever it is, the three of you will need expert legal and financial support in creating it strongly. To do anything else is truly foolish--rather like building a house but refusing to allow the builder to lay a proper foundation because what you really want is to get on with painting the walls and decorating. :)
Before you do that, though, it would be smart of you to do a market analysis on each service offering. You want to learn everything you can about each industry, the clients who use those services, where you're likely to find them, what they do in their spare time, what they read, where they vacation--anything you can discover about them. Any book on business planning should give you a good idea about how to do that.
And, do some research to see if there have been any "How to Start an _______ Business" books about the services you want to offer--and if so, buy them and study them as they should give you some valuable insights about what you guys will each need to think about in your own sections of the business. It will also help you decide if any of the sections of the business may not be a good bet for you to even start (based on saturation in the marketplace, for example, or licensing requirements that maybe you don't have and can't easily/quickly get--things like that).
You'll also want to check to see if there are organizations that provide training for providing the services you want to provide. Even if each of you has a goodly amount of experience doing them, I'm gathering you have zero experience doing them as business owners--and that one thing will significantly change what you do and how you do it. Getting industry-specific training can help you seriously shorten your learning curve, and pave the way for you to see more success, more quickly.
Armed with all of that, THEN go talk with an attorney and accountant, and take steps forward toward a more complete plan once they've counseled you on the form of business that will be best for you.
I wish all three of you the best in this!
Warmly,
Stacy
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