Business Pitfall #2: No Plan

Over half the small businesses that open their doors today, will close their doors in less than a year. That’s a 50% failure rate and that’s scary. But if business owners set their mindset before opening their businesses, the failure rate could drop.

Every entrepreneur faces a plethora of mindset challenges. We’re going to look at three of the common challenges that plague small business owners in a series of three articles.

Article 1 – Business Pitfall #1: Money Paradigm

Article 2 – Business Pitfall #2: No Plan

Article 3 – Business Pitfall #3: Information Overload

Business Pitfall #2: No Plan

Let’s start with a well-known saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Without a plan you have no idea where you are going or how to get there. You do not need a 50-page thesis outlining every detail of your business. All you need is a very simple action plan.

A plan will also help you set benchmarks and allows you to celebrate your successes as you progress.

Setting up a simple business plan can be as easy as defining your:

1. Objectives
2. Strategies
3. Tactics
4. Daily To Do List

Objectives

Starting at the top, your objectives are your broad overview. They define what you want to accomplish. For example, ABC Business will gross $100,000 in sales in 2009…

Strategies

Your strategies answer your objectives. They describe how you are going to accomplish the objective you’ve set. For example, …by selling affiliate products on the internet…

Tactics

Your tactics explain how you plan to accomplish your strategies. They explain what you’re going to do in more detail. For example, …by setting up 10 websites that promote 5-10 products each and then promoting them…

Daily To Do List

And the final piece of your business plan is your daily to do list. This is where the rubber hits the road and where you take a definite action or actions, every single day. For example, …by writing one article per week, contacting ten new joint venture partners each week, and placing pay per click advertising on Google and Yahoo.

When you piece them all together you have a specific objective that will be met daily by your To Do list actions. For each business objective, you’ll have a complete path to a daily To Do list.

Here’s what your plan for the first objective looks like:

ABC Business will gross $100,000 in sales in 2009… by selling affiliate products on the internet… by setting up 10 websites that promote 5-10 products each and then promoting them… by writing one article per week, contacting ten new joint venture partners each week, and placing pay per click advertising on Google and Yahoo.

Now you have a very specific business plan with a daily To Do list. It makes it very easy to measure your progress by measuring what you accomplish each day and the results from each action you take.