business plan | Dr. Ivan Misner®

What is your goal for your business for the next year? How about for the next quarter? Next month?

A lot of business owners don’t have goals broken down like this, but why not? It’s difficult to reach a goal that doesn’t exist, and just saying that you want to grow your business isn’t specific enough to actually help you achieve results.

To really achieve the results you want, you need to set concrete goals, and you need to write them down.

Start far into the future. What age do you want to feel comfortable retiring? What amount in savings will make you comfortable retiring? Will you pass your business to one of your children, a trusted employee, or someone else? Map out your far out into the future goal.

Now that you know the far future you need to set yourself up to hit this goal. What milestones do you need to hit in 10, 5, or 2 years that will put you on the right path? What does your business look like at these intervals? How many employees will you have at the end of these times?

One year from today, where does your business need to be to hit your larger goals? What changes do you need to make to set yourself up for long term success? Do you need to hire more help now, or can it wait? What networking groups will you join in the next year? How are you spending your time?

At the end of the next financial quarter, what changes will you have made to start inching toward where you want to be? This is a great time to start looking at the numbers of your business, and diving into what changes you need to make over time to hit your overall goals.

In just the next month, what are your plans? It takes 21 days of doing something consistently to make it a habit, so what habits do you need to hit your goals? What can you implement in your life to start with that will help you reach your goals?

I know it may sound silly to break your goals down this much, but if you don’t know what you’re shooting for, you’ll never hit your target. Long term goals can seem too far away and too massive to be goals that you can actually work toward right now, so breaking them out into more manageable time frames can be more beneficial than you could image.

What is your long-term goal? How are you working toward it? Tell me in the comments below!

I recently had several business associates ask me about finding a good model for a business plan that they can use for their franchise.

Being able to market your business is, to a large extent, based on understanding your business. Understanding your business begins by creating a plan. One of the best models I’ve seen is one that I have used and recommended for years. It’s called the “Profit Puzzle.” It was developed by a good friend of mine – Don Osborne.

Below are the key categories (or puzzle pieces) that Don uses in his system. If you need, or want, to produce a business plan for your business. I recommend you check out www.ProfitPuzzle.com. Just remember – once you have a structure for your plan – it requires that you commit a fair amount of time and effort to actually complete the plan (the plan doesn’t complete itself!). You have to do the hard work to think about what goes into each part of the puzzle.

Check out Don’s categories below. They are very thorough.