Bsmart

What are the Benefits of a Business Plan?

As a Business Coach and also a Golf Coach the advantage of planning is that you can set Goals and then set targets that you need to meet in order to achieve those goals.

So let’s see how that works in practise. As a keen golfer I like to maintain a low handicap of around 2. In order to maintain that level I need to play a couple of times a week. When I have the club championships coming up or the inter club Pennant is on I need to step it up a few notches so in addition to playing twice a week I need to really sharpen my short game. That means a few hours every couple of days at the chipping range. In very simple terms I have a ‘Seasonal Business Plan’ that keeps my golf game in order and at the level I want it to be.

When it began to look like Web design and SEO could become a full time job I was asked how I planned on achieving my goals and I blurted out: “I suppose I’ll need 20 websites each generating an income.” What the question did was force me to sit down and start Planning a Business just in case one day I did decide it was something I wanted to do.

After creating a business plan some things became very apparent:

1. There was no need for 20 websites as 12 would be plenty.
2. Not all websites were going to provide the same level of income. In fact this site is more about giving something back and will likely never generate more than a few dollars a month.
3. The websites that are going to generate the majority of the income should be given a more than 50% share of my time.
4. I actually designed 9 websites for various companies but had forgotten about 2.
5. Web design and SEO were not the primary business as I had originally thought they would be. Instead making websites profitable for other companies and using that traffic to generate additional sales will generate the income.
6. There is now a time frame of 14 months which means there is no need to build any further websites for 7 months and then only one every 3 months.
7. There was a need to get each website to the same level of SEO.
8. Each website has advertising so after the first 3 months each advertising medium will be assessed for a return.

In summary the benefits of a business plan have been:

• Identifying where the business is starting from.
• Better allocation of time based on returns.
• Realisation that much of the work had been done but that little had been completed.
• A clear focus on exactly what work now needs to be done and in what order.

In having an overall business plan it has now become apparent that each website in itself is like a ‘mini’ business and each has its own requirements. In real terms the overall business plan is being broken down into smaller and smaller ‘bite sized pieces’ as we say in Australia. In having an overall Business Plan it is simple to see how each of the pieces fits into the overall plan. That means that each time work is done on one of the parts there is little wasted effort. For example there is little point in spending hours building links to a site that is only going to nett a few dollars a month. Allowing that site to generate its own links over time is sufficient. On the other hand a site that has the potential to generate a very strong income should have a strong link building program.

Regardless of the income all of the websites completed need some level of link building. By identifying that not all parts of any business are equal, having a set of targets to reach and a time frame working on each sit and balancing the work rate to the return becomes a much more precise exercise.