qprev_HBB Manual 2.qxd - Small Business BC

Once your business starts to successfullygenerate sufficient income to meetyour personal financial needs, quit yourfull-time job.• The part-time job route – Find a part-timejob to provide you the base income required tobuild up your home business. Ideally thiswould be in a field related to your business, sothat you have the chance to developideas and contacts or client potential,but you should be on the lookout for apossible conflict of interest. Once the point isreached that your business net incomeis equal to your base part-income, you couldquit the part-time job.Produce A Business PlanThe next step is planning the nature of thebusiness itself. Most people have a lot ofexperience with planning, even if they don’tthink of planning as separate from life or worktasks. This means that most people already haveskills that can be used in planning a business.Reasons for Doing OneA business plan is a system for organizinginformation about the many aspects of abusiness. This is used to organize the informationin the research file. Using this same framework, aformal plan for how the business will operate canbe written.Do you really need a business plan? Yes, you do.One major cause of failure for new home-basedbusinesses is the lack of an adequate businessplan. Planning has many functions in business.A business plan will:• force you to think through your business idea• help you judge and evaluate a business idea sothere is less risk• show where you need help or information• organize and present information about yourbusiness so you can progress logically and notget off track• increase your self-confidence• lessen the risk of oversights and errors• organize ideas so you can communicate themto others• increase chances of business success onceestablished• remind you of good ideas and ways to savetime or money, which will be especiallyimportant as you get busier• help you to obtain necessary financingPreparing a Written Business PlanThe order of preparing sections in a business planis straightforward. Start with the businessconcept (What will you sell?), work throughmarketing (How will you reach customers?) andoperations (How will you run your business?),and concentrate on finances (Will you makemoney?). Write a summary last – even though itis placed at the beginning of the written plan –and call it the Executive Summary.Business plans are prepared for differentpurposes, and sometimes for different readers. Ifyou are hoping to arrange financing with acertain lender, get information before you prepareyour business plan about whether a particularbusiness plan format or outline is preferred bysolutions for small business home-based business 27