Building a Small Business: From Idea to Plan

Building a business can be a challenging endeavour. Especially if you already have a job that pays the bills. You may not be able to quit everything and jump into this new business. If this sounds like the situation you’re in, then this series of articles are a great starting point to help you go from the spark of an idea, to building your own business.

Before you get scared, I won’t be talking about lengthy business plans and the legal complexities of setting up a business that tends to scare off first time entrepreneurs. I know just how discouraging it can be when you want to start working on an idea but feel like you have to prepare multiple documents to do that. We are simply going to jump right in and do it. Quick, dirty and practical.

If you don’t have a safety fund to cover the period it will take to get your business to profitability, then you have to carefully manage how you spend your precious time, energy, and money. Your idea has to be worth pursuing in the first place. To do this, you need to ask yourself the essential question; will people buy my product or service? 

To answer this question, you need to start by writing out your vision. This will help you assess the feasibility of your idea by spelling out exactly what you want to offer.

For example, your vision may be:

When writing out your vision statement, make sure you capture the following:

• What you offer

• Who your target market is

• Why you are pursuing this endeavour

Should you bother

Now you know what you want to do and who you want to do it for. But you need to decide if it is worth doing. The question to answer here is; doe the people you’re doing it for, need what you’re doing, how you intend to do it. To put it simply, you must understand the needs of your customers. Here are a few questions to help you frame this section properly.

• Is there actually a demand for your product or service?

• What does your target audience need?

• How do they currently solve this problem, i.e. who or what is your competition?

Answering these questions will require some personal investment of your time. You will need to leverage some solid Google search skills and your network to get yourself a “temperature check” of your potential business operating environment. Speak to friends, family, colleagues, and mentors about your idea and see how they respond. Identify your potential customers and pay attention to their emotional responses as well.

In place of a full-blown business plan, we will use a one-pager document (maybe two because summarising information can sometimes be an advanced skill). This lightweight document will be your business roadmap, helping you stay focused and organised while building your business.

Your One-pager Business Outline

Your outline will help you make a lot of your early decisions, and this is what you are going to put in it.

1. Your vision statement: Your idea and the effect it is going to have on the world. What it is, who it is for, and why you are doing it.

2. Your Unique Selling Proposition: Your research from earlier comes into play here. You know your competition, now decide your strategy. Will you lead by undercutting their price, or strengthening your quality? Deciding your USP should be guided by what matters most to your customers.

3. Your financials: While we haven’t quite delved into this section yet, no matter how lean your business is, it will incur costs. Depending on what type of business, this may be web hosting, service or equipment costs. You also need to know what your revenue model is, at least if you plan to stay in business for as long as I would like you to be.

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