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E-Myth – “Why most small businesses don’t work & what to do about it”

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Virtual accountant | creating business plans


Business owners who complete business plans are 50% more likely to grow their revenue than businesses who do not have a business plan says virtual accountant. This is extremely easy way for business owners to increase their chances of success very easily. As Benjamin Franklin quote says if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Business plans can help owners quantify their marketing plans and ideas, figure out all of the things that they need to do to achieve their goals, and actually planned when they are going to do them. Great business plans not only help a business owner figure out their strategies, but can also help them get financing as well as keep them on track.

Knowing how to make a business plan is extremely important part of the process says virtually accountant. Aside from the executive summary and the company overview, which are most important to include when the business is going after financing, the next important section in the business plan is the product section. Business owners can think of this as they are many of the products and services from the smallest and most inexpensive to the largest and most expensive. While the executive summary has an average product and cost in there, this is the place for business owners to completely outline everything.

The next section will be the market risk and analysis. Even though a business owner intuitively knows the risks in their business, this is the place where the business owner can formulate a plan plan on how to mitigate those risks says virtually accountant.

After that comes the sales and marketing plan says virtual accountant. A business owner often has great ideas on how they plan on marketing their business. This is the place where business owners are going to completely plan them out. For example if the business owner has said they want to send out flyers, this is the section of the plan where they are going to figure out the dates that they are going to send those flyers, what area theyíre going to send them to, but service theyíre going to use to send the flyers in, how many flyers they are going to send out at a time, how much itís going to cost and how they are going to identify how they will know if this marketing initiative is working. Itís not enough to merely know what they want to do, but this business plan is going to detail it out in order to help the business owner follow through as well as figure out how often they need to be working on their marketing initiatives.

The business plan is also going to include an operations strategy says virtual accountant. Included in the operations strategy includes milestones. The reason for this is because milestones drive projections and without assigning dates to the milestones a business owner will not be able to give accurate projections. Examples of this is the business owner has indicated they want to have a storefront, itís important to include in the business plan when they hope to have a storefront so that that can be factored in to the companyís projections.

Often a business owner will go to their accountant completely frustrated that even though they are working very hard in their business their business has failed to grow says virtual accountant. One of the best ways that a business owner can avoid this problem in their business, is by creating a business plan. Statistics show that entrepreneurs who have business plans are 50% more likely to grow their business. The statistics do not include any information on the content of those business plans, so the business owner is able to create an amazing business plan, they will be even more likely to grow there business.

The key to creating great business plan is in knowing the information to include, and creating the time to do it says virtual accountant. The most important parts of a business plan is the projections. Not only do business owners need to include the projections, but business owners need to include the income statement projections, the balance sheet projections, and the cash flow projections because all three of those will mesh together and give business owners a clear picture of their business. Itís also important to note that virtually accountant recommends that businesses do this on a month-to-month basis in their business plan instead of a yearly plan. The reason for this is there are too many variables that can have been in the business throughout the year, they need to be on top of this month-to-month. Especially in the beginning of the business, when cash flow is so crucial to the success of that business.

In addition to knowing to the projections month to month, is also important to know how long t create them for says virtual accountant. The recommendation is no longer than 2 to 3 years because projecting more than three years out is too hard to ensure accuracy. There will be too many variables and too difficult for small business to plan for.

Another really important component of a business plan is creating a time block calendar in the plan. This is something that many business owners do not do in their business plan, but this can help a business owner nailed down how and when they are going to work on the tasks that are going to help increase their business. Tasks such as when theyíre going to work on estimates, do sales calls, send out flyers, and and marketing events. By scheduling all of this in their calendar time, it can help a business owner stay on track and be accountable to their actions. By increasing the chances of following through on the tasks, and by helping the business owner nailed down those tasks can help a business owner be successful in implementing the plan.