If you’re starting a new business, it’s highly likely that you have a long laundry list of items to check off. It’s certainly an undertaking with lots of time to dedicate up front making sure everything is in order and your business is ready to launch.

While there are many things to do and prepare for before getting started, one thing too many small businesses neglect to create is a business plan. Planning is essential for every business as it helps shape the direction and focus of your overall goals and objectives. However, the size and scope of an appropriate business plan can vary greatly from one business to the next.

Business Plans Drive Strategy

You’ve likely got a great idea for a business and a rough overview of what you want to accomplish. However, you may be struggling to properly map out a logical strategy to get you to your goals.

Writing a successful business plan can include a lot of information about your company but also about the environment you’ll operate in. A market analysis helps you to better understand competitors, the potential market share available, and defining your target audience. This can help you create your advertising and other business practices. Meanwhile, financial projections also provide metrics to continually gauge success as you move forward. A successful plan will also provide short- and long-term objectives to help implement your strategic vision.

As you conduct research, due diligence, and put these things on paper, you will likely find ways to alter your ideas to make them more effective. A business plan is as much about assessing and validating your ideas as it is conceptualizing your overall business.

Don’t Get Bogged Down in the Small Details

Knowing where to start or what steps to take first can be the most daunting. The desire to have the perfect business plan can prevent some people from even getting started at all. The last thing you want is a failure-to-launch scenario because your business plan is constantly in development or ‘just not ready yet’.

Don’t get bogged down in the details. A business plan requires some detailed information but is largely seen as a broad overview of the business and its role in the market. If you are feeling overwhelmed, look at it as a process rather than a singular task. Getting started can be as simple as doing some reading on the typical structure of the document and looking at some examples. Then, block out some time to start drafting.

When working on the plan itself, always keep in mind that this is largely a broad overview of your business, the market, your strategy, and projections. It does not need to be overly detailed, at least in the beginning. While you can make sections as detailed as you’d like, do not feel obligated to cover everything at a microscopic level.

For some, simply jotting down ideas in different sections can be a useful way to get started. As you conduct research and find relevant information, make notes and add these to your outline. After a short time, you should have enough information to translate it into a structured, flowing document. Others may prefer to just tackle the plan section by section until the plan is fully developed. Style and approach is highly individual, so find what works best for you.

Business Plans are Living Documents

Always remember that change is constant. Strategies evolve, objectives change, market realities shift. As a result, business plans are living documents and should be revisited often. Even long-term things like mission and vision statements are regularly reassessed by many companies.

Understanding that change is inevitable, the best businesses are ones that can easily pivot and adjust. Therefore, you should expect your expectations to be flexible enough to keep up with trends and market influences.

Every successful business continually reflects on how small changes may lead them to grow even further.

Final Thoughts

Writing a business plan may seem like a time-intensive task. And, in reality, it is. However, it is a critical task that allows you to better structure your business, communicate your value proposition to potential partners or investors, and provide metrics to measure your performance against.

Don’t be consumed by the small stuff and try to stay focused on the big picture. The most important step is getting started.