Step by step
You want to start up a business. What is the chance that your plan will succeed? In order to say anything sensible about that, insight is required into your plans, the market that your business wants to target, your personal capacities, and your financial possibilities. You can achieve clarity on these points by drawing up a business plan.
The aim of a business plan is in the first place to make the financial risks visible, both to yourself and to those to whom you apply for funding. If you go through the following stages, you already have many of the elements of a business plan.
You can obtain advice from the Chamber of Commerce, an accountant, or a financial advisor.
Making a businessplan
You have certain expectations of the business that you want to set up. Make them clear to an outsider. What service or product will you be providing, to whom, and how much do you expect to earn from that activity?
How big is the market in which you will be operating? What kinds of companies are your competitors? What kind of clients/customers are there? What kind of contact do you have with them?
Describe your training and your work experience. Why do you want to start up this business? What do you want to achieve with this business? What are your positive and negative qualities when it comes to putting your plans into practice?
What will your business be called, where will it be located, what kind of enterprise will it be, how many employees will it have, how many square metres of office space will you need, what kind of equipment and furnishings, what kind of insurance?
How much will it cost to set up your business? What do you have to invest in first? How do you expect to fund that investment?
What kind of turnover do you expect to make in the first three years? What expenses are entailed? So how much profit/personal income do you expect to generate? How much of it will you use to pay off your debts?
In order to be able to test the plausibility of your answers, an outsider wants as many facts as possible structured in a clear way on paper. That is how to provide insight into the strong and weak points of your plan. The weak points in particular deserve extra attention if you are to produce a reliable blueprint of your future business.
Step by step
