Business Planning - Common business plan mistakes and how to fix them

Announcer: Balance Business Coaching. More time. More control. More growth. Anthony: Hi, Anthony here. In this video, I want to talk to you about business planning common mistakes. I've just got four things I want to run through with you, and I think the first of those is using the wrong plan. So if you're in an existing business, you really want to be focused on the most important things for you to achieve inside the next 12 months. You've already started up, you've chosen the industry, the markets that you're going to serve, and you've positioned your business. You're really sharpening it up. You don't need 20 pages of text plus 20 pages of financials to present to a bank. You're doing a business plan for yourself to maximise your growth and your control. So make sure that you get the right format plan. The second most important thing I think is really biting off more then you can chew. So, if you've only got a limited amount of resources, inside the next 12 months you really need to choose to focus on what are the priority projects and just do those well. If you say that you're going to work on 40 different projects throughout the next 12 months, I think you've made a mistake. I think that you've bitten of more then you can chew. So try to hone it down to something that you can really focus on and do it well. So, is it 12, is it 15 projects? I'm not sure what your resources are. So I can't tell you exactly what the right number is, but try to be focused on doing a fewer number of things and doing them really, really well so you get great results from it. The third most common problem is about starting a business plan and then not finishing it, and really that's about accountability. I will tell you to try and do one section of your business plan per week. Have someone holding you accountable. It might be your partner in business, or it could be your partner in life. But please try to be accountable for someone and just aim for making small bites. I think that's a good approach to getting it done. And then the fourth one would really be about fudging research. I've seen some real doozies of business plans, and I think what's fundamentally lacking is proper research based on statistical data. Lots of people make grand assumptions in their business plans, and there are all of these sales projections that come off that. So get the foundations right. Look at sources like your local council data. They have census data. A&T Bank have a great insights package. Look at Google. Google will tell you what keywords are trending. Google Trends and Google Insights are particularly of good use. Just get out there and talk to prospective clients and customers and talk to them what do they want. So try to get some real research done and don't make your assumptions rubbery. So I hope that gives you some good ideas for business planning. Please leave me a comment down below if that's been of some help to you, and I look forward to talking to you soon. Thanks very much. Bye-bye. Announcer: Thanks for watching. Why not call Anthony from Balance Business Coaching now on 0400 639 899, or email anthony@balancecoach.com.au.