You don’t need to feel intimidated, you can write your own business plan. People easily feel intimidated by the task of writing a plan. It seems that the financial section is especially intimidating.

A plan put structure to your research to establish if your business idea can be converted into a viable and profitable business. If you have the funds available you can pay an expert to write the business plan for you, but this might not be the best option, because:

The expert may be an expert at writing business plans but he does not necessarily have the passion for your specific business idea.

If you do the plan yourself you will have a far better idea of all the challenges and opportunities involved in your business. Therefore you will be able to take a better decision on the viability of the business

When writing a plan you need as much research done as possible. Use different resources for your research. For example if you want to open a restaurant you need to speak to as many restaurants in the area that you want to do business in as possible. Do not take what the restaurateurs say for granted. Take time to observe what is happing at the restaurants. Get an idea of customer flow for different times and different days.

Use your business plan template as a framework for your research.

All the sections of the business plan are important. Do not skip any of the sections when doing your research.

You can get help from other people for the sections of the plan that you do not feel comfortable with. E.g. get an accountant to assist with the financial section. Try to learn as much as possible in the process. This knowledge will come in very handy if you decide to go ahead with the business.

A well researched plan is a very handy business management tool. It will increase the chances of business success. A poorly researched or incomplete plan can result in the wrong decisions being made and can lead to business failure.

You can follow these steps to write your own business plan:

Choose a business plan template to use. You can use the template in the e book “Strategic Plan and Business Plan Handbook” or search the internet for your own. There are very good templates available, a lot of them for free.

Use the sections and questions in the template as the basis for your research. Speak to a variety of people. Do not be afraid of conflicting opinions.

Use an expert to assist you on difficult sections e.g. the financial section.

Once you have completed the template you have a business plan. Use the plan to decide if your business idea is viable. A proper plan can have a very positive effect on success.

A simple business plan is all you need to keep your company moving along the success track.

Ask many entrepreneurs if they have a strategic/business plan/blueprint and they will nearly always say yes, but ask to see it and you’ll discover that it is often just a mental vision they have in their heads.

Writing a strategic blueprint is one of the single most important things that any company owner can do and yet, many small business owners never get around to doing it! Yes, they may have a dream for what they hope to achieve with their company but unless it is written down with goals, strategies and a plan of action, it’s really just a pipedream.

Planning is a critical part of ‘working on rather than in the business’. Many people with an entrepreneurial mindset have read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber and they are aware of the need to do this but still, there is resistance to doing it.

This may be because the typical entrepreneur is full of ideas and loves putting them in to action. Planning and strategizing is seen as boring or simply overwhelming. Where do you start when you’ve got such a huge vision for your burgeoning enterprise?

Sometimes the resistance to planning can be a plain old time management issue – it’s far more exciting to respond to urgent emails and phone calls, to solve problems on the shop floor and chat to important customers than to sit in the back office writing down goals. But allowing your ego to be puffed up by these urgent things rather than focusing on what’s really important can be to the detriment of your company.

Any business coach, advisor, banker or accountant will tell you that a plan is critical to your success.

A strategic blueprint gives you a sense of direction even when you’re immersed in the daily grind of running a company. It also allows you to make better decisions and, very importantly, it gives you peace of mind knowing what you need to do each day.

Any plan is better than nothing. It is better to have something written down on a piece of paper and stuck on your office wall than nothing at all.

Many of the templates on the Internet are long and complicated – but unless you are applying for finance they don’t need to be. A short simple business plan, of one page, that you actually use and refer to is far more valuable than a huge document that collects dust.

The goals of your restaurant business plan are not just to crank out twenty five to fifty pages of useless writing that won’t help you get funded although that seems to be what most people do. The real plan doesn’t have to be long at all but it does need to answer some basic questions and demonstrate a capacity for success in your restaurant venture.

This guide is designed for anyone who has an interest in getting started their own restaurant or bar enterprise. This range includes somebody with substantial industry knowledge who may have previously worked as a supervisor or cook to somebody who has simply no experience in either food service or bars but yet has always had the dream of being the owner of their own establishment.

This information is also useful to those who some funds to invest although not enough as well as to people which don’t possess a single cent to invest on their own but do have the prerequisite aspiration and drive to see the process right through to the finish.

The only individuals who the guide can’t help are the ones who are dreaming about a silver bullet solution or hoping to find a check at the back of the guide already made out to them. Unfortunately nothing is quite so easy and if you are just a dreamer rather than a doer you will not find much satisfaction from doing nothing more than studying the information and after that putting it on shelf someplace.

What You Should Take into Account

As you go through this process there are several items to keep in mind. First and foremost you have to
attempt to be as truthful and as precise as possible with your evaluation of yourself in what you want and in what you can do and precisely what resources you will provide for the undertaking.

If you can create a sensible picture of where you are starting from then you will be much better suited to fill in the cracks and the breaks which exist in your situation to ensure that when you go to present your case for funding it is possible to produce a total deal.

If you’re not realistic about your needs as well as your knowledge then you are likely to leave loopholes and unanswered questions that may stand in the way of your receiving the money you’re searching for.

The second factor to bear in mind is to be careful when sales and performance estimates are called
for and generous where expenses are involved. You can easily paint a positive image in writing but this can lead to underfunding and overspending along with a short-lived restaurant business. It is far better to possess cash left in reserve and sales which are better than predicted when things actually go live.

The third factor to keep in mind is the fact that even though planning can be tedious and sometimes seem to be like things aren’t really happening it is greater to spend time preparing that does not cost you money than spend money to find out you should have prepared better.

For a complete look at creating your plan follow the links below to access more articles, resources and help with your project.