Is it better to pay someone and have a business plan done for you or is it better to do it your self.
Do it yourself. You need to know your business inside and out, including unfamiliar aspects.
I intensionally set on doing it my self how ever though since my business plan is for a website and not a product being sold I am finding it quite difficult…
First off, any (competent) company you hire should find out your overhead and margins, as well as have access to the industry average. And if you differ from the industry, some context as to why. Just because you have a certain expense structure, or do things the way you do it now, doesn’t mean that’s the way to go forward.
Businesses tend to become stagnant and stuck. Everything they do and come to believe becomes the only way it could ever be. Self-fulfilling prophesies become self perpetuating myths. That’s a plan for staying right where you are. Competent business plan writers aren’t specialized typists. They show you alternatives. They try to get to know what you want out of the business.
That said, most go out of their way to avoid competence in hiring out a business plan writer.
One things you may have trouble with is the marketing plan. You need to figure out what your competitive advantages are (or develop them). A target customer (for growth), not everyone with a few spare bucks to spend.
A service business should be the ultimate product. Instead, a great many services businesses become a conglomeration of so-so mediocre practices brought on by monkey-see monkey-do. They say the word branding, but they don’t brand. They don’t differentiate. They don’t compete.
yes Proudirish, I’m agree with u. I also know three very successful business people who have a very clear understanding of “the direction or methodology your business should take” but they have never written a business plan and would not know how to write one.
All these posts recommending that you write your business plan yourself, have any of you actually written a formal plan and obtained funding with it? If you are just writing yourself a ‘plan to do business’ than sure, write it yourself. If you are going to submit the plan to investors, you should get help unless you are VERY well versed in these things.
Yes.
This is what I was trying to say too, that there are two distinctly different reasons for generating a business plan.
I’d agree that you should at least write the first version of your business plan yourself. Also write it for yourself, i.e. keep it as realistic as possible and don’t write it to impress anyone else that might be reading it. You will learn a lot from writing the plan and it will give you a lot of clarity as to where you want to take the business. You might find one of the templates below helpful;
If you are seeking investment at a later date you can tweak it then or have it written by a professional.
I agree with that. However, I know two very successful business people who have a very clear understanding of “the direction or methodology your business should take” but they have never written a business plan and would not know how to write one.
All these posts recommending that you write your business plan yourself, have any of you actually written a formal plan and obtained funding with it? If you are just writing yourself a ‘plan to do business’ than sure, write it yourself. If you are going to submit the plan to investors, you should get help unless you are VERY well versed in these things.
There are free workshops and incubators that help with this. There are consultants, books, Cd’s, software applications, etc. offering help. Market research is available for purchase. This is a huge industry.
I have participated in quite a few business plans and there are some parts that I wouldn’t touch - especially the marketing numbers (the hardcore language about market penetration and research analysis). If you are going for 30 million of seed money is makes sense to spend a few bucks on a great plan.
If you are just planning your own work, it doesn’t. But, we should be clear on what a formal business plan is.
I can’t speak for everyone else but I do happen to agree that it’s a bad idea to entirely write it yourself, I would however be very worried about someone who doesn’t have the intensive to actually underline the core basics on their own and then seek outside assistance as and when it’s required to gain support and insight from those who would be able to ensure that the plan itself is investor worthy. While you’re correct in questioning the idea of writing one yourself (unless you know what you’re doing), I certainly wouldn’t want to assume to the OP’s reasoning or need for a business plan (he never mentioned investors) and it’s important to have at least a fundamental knowledge of what is required to undertake planning and to be equipped to deal with it (I’ve done what would qualify as a business plan - of sorts).
I am surprised no-one else has said what I’m about too. If you’re not the kind of individual who has an idea as to the direction or methodology your business should take (which is pretty much the basis for a business plan - setting goals), then surely you would be better off working for someone else and just being one of the many workers who follow instructions. Getting someone else to prepare a business plan for you is like asking someone to tell you “what your business should be”. As for your worries about it being web related, it doesn’t matter whether you are producing something physical or virtual, the general concepts are still the same. You state your business, what you intend to accomplish, what achievements you would like to make at each timeframe, what direction your business wants to go in, how you intend on turning a profit (if it’s a for-profit service) and anything else you feel is relevant in giving your brand an identity.
That really only applies if you are using the business plan as a tool to plan your business - a plan for yourself, not for an investor.
If you are looking for investors, the business plan is primarily intended to explain and sell the business to outside investors. Those investors should be able to read the plan, understand the business (in the way that they need to), see the opportunity, and invest.
You should have a business plan you wrote yourself. Make sure you complete the project of writing the plan, and schedule a regular review. This exercise helps you keep your business focused and on track, heading in the direction you want it to go.
If you’re looking for venture capital or other investors, your business plan is kind of like your resume when job hunting. Your plan needs to sell your business on first read by the prospective investor. For coming up with this kind of plan you probably want to involve outside professional help.
You know what, I was just thinking about this the other day. All of the stuff I’ve read about for marketing and business plans seems to be geared toward traditional manufacturing companies that are selling a packaged product in a specific location to potential customers. That lends itself well to established market research based on ZIP codes and demographic data, but what about websites? They do not easily fit into a single location, nor do they fit the traditional business model.
I’ve come to the conclusion that your website does not need to be compared to a traditional product manufacturer in a certain location. Instead think of your website as a gas station along the interstate highway. That gas station probably did not run a marketing analysis on the specific location (population does not exist, or it is rural surrounded by farm lands, etc). I’ll bet they decided to build their gas station based on the estimated traffic levels of automobiles and trucks, and their proximity to similar resources such as rest areas, truck stops, and other gas stations.
Let me recommend that you think of your website in those terms, for example taking into account traffic levels (perhaps keyword and search terms popularity, search engine optimization, etc) and your own advertising methods that would increase the chances of a customer stopping by for a brief visit. You will need to adapt whatever you’ve read about traditional business plans and marketing, so it will fit into your future plans to grow the website.
When I hear someone talking about hiring someone to write their business plan, I think of all the clients I have had over the years who threw good money down the drain thinking that they could sit back and hire someone with very little guidance to prepare a business plan. Many so-called “business plan experts” will even make claims that they can do exactly that.
In every case where the client expected to have minimal involvement, it turned out to be a disaster.
There is nothing wrong with hiring a writer to help you put your plan into words. Some great entrepreneurs are terrible writers. But it has to be your plan - your thoughts on your product, your thoughts on your market, your thoughts on your competition, etc…
If you have poor writing skills, writer’s block or simply are a painstakingly slow writer, by all means consider hiring someone to assist you on the writing. But if you are hiring someone because you don’t have the time to devote your thoughts to the content of the plan, do yourself a favor and save your money.
Most of the value you derive from a business plan is the process of preparing it, not the actual plan itself.
By all means get some help/training on how to do it, but you really need to do it yourself for it to be of any value to you.
We have a business coach come in for an hour a week to deal with whatever we have in mind - we bounce ideas around, look at figures, identify areas for growth or improvements in methodology - whatever. I’d suggest trying that path. A coach could walk you through the steps involved in doing it and give you an “outsider’s” perspective, without actually going away and doing it for you.
If you don’t know how to do it, then you need to either learn how to do it or hire someone. There are plenty of excellent business plan experts who will help write it for you, and lots of great books and resources to help you learn how to do it yourself. Pick one depending on how you want to spend your time and money.
