A business plan guide is a great place to start when you are getting ready to start a new business venture. Perhaps you have found a book about writing business plans, or are following a template, but chances are, these materials will only focus on the steps necessary to create your written report and will fail to point out the critical mistakes that most new business owners make. So let’s ignore the step-by-step tutorial for a moment and focus on the real world mistakes you need to avoid.

1. Don’t Put it Off.

Yes, writing a business plan can be a monumental chore. It’s easy to procrastinate while you focus on the more exciting processes of your business. Many new business owners will wait until the day before their scheduled meeting with the bank — and then frantically try to write a plan overnight. You can imagine the results.

Don’t wait until you have more time. There will never be more time. You need to clear your calendar for a week and make your planning a top priority. Or if that isn’t feasible, schedule a certain period of time each day to work specifically on planning. No doubt you have heard the old saying: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

2. Don’t Confuse Profit With Cash Flow.

Unless you have an accounting background, you are very likely to define the success of your business in terms of profits. A simple definition of Profit would be Sales minus Expenses equals Profit. But in the business world, profits do not equate to cash. Your profit formula does not take into account the amount of cash you have tied up in production costs for products that have not yet sold, or the customers who still owe you money for sales that have already been made. Your business can look quite “profitable” while your bank account is over-drawn.

In your written plan, make sure you include a table that addresses cash flow. Ideally, you should detail the monthly cash flow for the first two years of the business and annually thereafter.

3. Don’t Fall in Love With Your Idea. Too many business plans blabber on for pages about the “newness” and “uniqueness” of the idea. But the truth is, investors want to invest in people, not ideas. It is only the people who can execute the systems necessary to bring the idea to life.

Instead of waxing poetically about your business idea, focus your energy, and your reader’s eyes, on the ways you plan to implement this great business idea.

4. Don’t Succumb to Fear and Dread.

If you have never written a business plan, the process may loom like Mount Everest. But, like most new challenges, writing your plan isn’t as hard as you have imagined it to be. You aren’t writing a doctoral thesis or the next great novel. If you have invested in a business plan guide, use it. You can easily find helpful resources such as books, software programs and templates. Remember, you eat an elephant one bite at a time, so start chewing.

5. Don’t Over Sell.

Skip the vague and meaningless business phrases such as “best ever”, “highest quality” and “unsurpassed customer service”. You will lose your reader’s interest and respect if you engage in hyperbole that isn’t supported by measurable facts. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, which require tracking and follow up. Focus your goals on specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and measurable milestones. Think fewer words and more numbers.

6. Don’t Engage in One-Size-Fits-All

Business plans can have many different purposes and they should be written to reflect the specific purpose at hand. You may be using your plan to start a business, or just run a business better. Your purpose may be simply to sell an idea for a new business to one particular business partner. Your plan may be intended to secure a small business loan, or it may be needed to secure millions of dollars of venture capital. Each of these purposes would require different information, presented in different ways to meet the needs of different readers. Keep a picture of your intended reader firmly in your mind and your business plan will stay focused as well.

7. Take Off the Rose Colored Glasses

Optimism is a wonderful resource. Without it, a business owner would find it difficult to summon the energy necessary to launch a new venture. However, this is not the time to engage in unbridled projections. If your company’s growth chart is based on an “industry average” of fifteen-percent annual growth, you should certainly be prepared to prove that assumption. Provide supporting data and, when in doubt, be less optimistic.

By using a good business plan guide, and avoiding these common mistakes, you can prepare a plan that almost guarantees your business success. Best of luck!

A commercial real estate agent needs a plan. In that way you can build your systems and focus on the things that need to be done.

It is interesting to note that many ordinary or new agents struggle with the entire job structure for some time until they find something that works for them. The longer they struggle the greater the frustration in getting clients and listings. They need a plan.

In this market you need quality clients and good listings. It is the good listings that will bring you better inquiry and over time that will help you with market share and completed transactions.

It is worthwhile remembering that the industry is based on relationships. Grow your relationships at every opportunity. Your relationships and your listings should feature in your plan.

So if the commercial real estate market is a bit difficult for you, or you think things can or should be better, it is time to look at your personal business plan. Here are some ideas to help you.

1. Determine where you are right now when it comes to listings, clients, market share, and knowledge. If you have any shortcomings with these things, then the gaps need to be filled with better processes and or knowledge. Practice in our industry is a good thing. That is practice in prospecting, pitching, listing, and negotiating.
2. Look around your market to determine the things that you are up against and also those things that are opportunities for you. Make sure that the market has enough growth and vibrancy to allow you to grow your income and market share.
3. What are your competitors doing? Are they any good at what they do? Can you be better than them? Your answers will help you set some priorities in your business planning.
4. Relationships and knowledge in our industry are quite important. You must have good relationships with prospects and clients, and you should have a solid base of knowledge when it comes to the local area and doing the deals. Our clients and prospects don’t like to be an ‘experiment’ in property marketing; they need to see that they have chosen a top agent that really knows how to deal with the challenges of the property. Put your clients and your prospects into your plan.
5. Determine where you are now when it comes to effectiveness and getting to the things that really matter. If you are not in control of your working day then a plan will not give you traction. Set your rules of ‘control’ and put your plan into it. Do not let others disrupt your focus and actions. Their plan or their priorities are of no benefit to you (unless they employ you).

It should be said that the critical part of planning in commercial real estate agency is in taking action. Without taking action a plan is useless. Things only start to change when you create the action that you need and you build that action into a ‘habit’.

Creating your cafe’s business plan is a project in and of itself, so make sure you understand what goes into it. These are tips for writing a successful plan for your cafe.

Outline First

Before starting to write any section in full, take a quick sweep through the outline of the entire plan. Jot down everything you know about each section within and highlight where sections pose questions for which you don’t know the answers yet (such as “Who are my competitors?”). You will finish this quick process with a much better grasp of what you know, what you don’t know, how much time will probably be required to find the answers you need, and where you should probably begin.

Make Sure Sources Are Relevant

When finding existing data on the cafe industry or coffee consumption, make sure that sources are clearly relevant to your venture and are from reputable sources. You should feel comfortable proudly display the source of the data in your plan, inviting readers to look into the original document if they choose. Data must be pretty recent to be relevant and must be from experts or organizations who have familiarity with the industry. Also, consider that the average coffee drinking in California may be very different from that of Florida or Alaska. Find data relevant to your geographic location and the demographic of customers you will have.

Would a Graphic or Chart Work?

For every long piece of narrative you write, take a second look at whether the relevant points could be expressed through a chart or graph, or supported with a photo or graphic. For example, logos of competitors or potential partners may jog the memories of readers, give them a better idea of the type of business you are describing, or at least provide some visual interest to their descriptions. A photo of the location you plan for your cafe and its immediate neighbors is another great illustration. Graphs and charts should be well labeled and unambiguous. They must make the plan simpler to read and never more complicated.