A Business Plan is a Number One Requirement.

Without a business plan you start out with high expectations.

Without a business plan you start out with high expectations. You dive right in and start going in a straight line full speed ahead.

Then the questions come fast and furious, suddenly you are like a rudderless ship. You find yourself going in a dozen directions at the mercy of the source of the questions.

So what is a business plan? It is like a map that you lay out to show you the way. As an example lets say you are in a strange town. You know that you have to go to city hall to get a business licence. All you know is that city hall is downtown, however, you are somewhere on the out skirts of town but you don't know exactly where.

So you head for what looks like a major street that should go downtown. You find that it goes all round town and you suddenly find yourself back where you started. So you ask someone how to get down town. They say take that street over there it will go right into downtown. You arrive downtown and find it is all one way streets. After asking a lot of people where city hall is you finally arrive. But the office you need to go to is closed for the day.

This may sound farfetched, but I have seen this same basic scenerio happen time and time again.

So what is a business plan, it is the road map that shows the direction your business is going. Without a well laid out business plan, you will find yourself running around in circles and wasting valuable time.  

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