A couple of weeks ago, our good friend Chuck Blakeman talked about why a business plan won’t save your business. It’s a great, thought-provoking post, and I highly suggest you read it.
This post isn’t necessarily arguing for a cohesive business plan—we personally think you should at least have one, but it’s up to you—but it is an argument for looking ahead. No small business can live entirely in the moment.
So you know you need to plan, but you’re not sure what you should be planning for. Fortunately for you, we here at BizEngine have a few good tips for looking ahead to your (hopefully bright) future.
A Few Good Tips
- Every small business should sketch out when they expect big projects to land and equipment to fail. Having that plan allows you to start socking away cash for major capital purchases, arrange lending ahead of time and handle other big-ticket issues as they arise. Nothing is worse than being caught off-balance.
- Have a Plan A for when the economy is moving along well, and a Plan B for when it’s not. This is important for everything from hiring to major projects to just getting by. If the economy dips again, you want to have some kind of roughly-sketched plan in place for getting through that.
- I’ve mentioned this before, but where do you want to be in a few years? Again, it’s not something you need to have planned out in exquisite detail, given the likelihood that a few unpredictable events will throw everything off. Still, if you know what kind of business you want to be in five years and what kind of growth you hope to have by the end of 2017, you’ll be able to make decisive moves in that direction.
So that’s our list. How do you plan for your small business, if you do at all?
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