A solid business strategy should be the foundation of your business – without that plan, you won’t have any idea what the future of your business looks like much less make it a success. A strategy is essential, from researching your audience to defining your product, it actually addresses every aspect of your business. Here are five reasons why you need a plan.

◈ GOAL SETTING.

Creating your business plan helps you think about what you want to achieve in your business. It is a blueprint for how you will go about doing so. A business plan makes you break down your business into its smallest parts and identify what your objectives are. That could be reaching a certain amount of new clients within a certain time period to how many followers you want to get on social media. There is no wrong or right way to do this.

◈ MAKING IMPORTANT DECISIONS.

Having a business plan will help you prepare for potential obstacles you may face within your business. This is especially important because most small businesses fail within the first couple of years and if you want to be one of the successful ones you need to know what problems you may encounter. It could be how to spend capital to grow your business and more.  

◈ STAYING FOCUSED.

If you are like me and have 10 ideas per minute, it can quickly become a nightmare to try to achieve all of them. Staying focused and being able to say “No” or “Maybe later” to one of my ideas keeps me focused on my goal and avoids me running everywhere, wasting time and money. It is a great thing to have lots of great ideas but sometimes you need to prioritize what is most important and what is important you achieve first.

◈ BE ORGANIZED.

Most of us are artists, in one way or another. We NEED to organize our schedule, our days to avoid being distracted. Setting limits and deadlines is the best way we have to move forward. Otherwise, your work will just descend into chaos. Being artistic and creative is not an excuse for being disorganized even if that is your nature you could definitely benefit from having a solid business plan.

◈ BEING ABLE TO ENJOY THE VICTORIES

How do you know you’ve reached your goal if you don’t have one? How do you enjoy your successes if you are already focused on the next step? Having a goal on paper will remind you of this target, please see goal-setting above. Better yet you will be able to take a moment, open a bottle of champagne, and enjoy your victory!

Now that you have a better idea of the importance of a business plan get started creating your own. I promise you it will be one of the best things you could do for your business!