Anyone know much about business plans?

[Bjorn]

If there are any folks around here with experience putting together business plans, I would greatly appreciate any resources you might recommend or specific tips you've got.

My wife and I have run a successful business for going on a decade, but it grew out of a small side thing I started in college, and we never really intended for it to become what it has, it just kept growing and we went with it. So I never had to make a business plan or pursue traditional funding or anything. Now we're looking into starting something new. Our experience over the last 10 years maps over pretty well towards our new business, though the end product is radically different. But I'm self educating about writing a plan and it's a bit overwhelming at times. We're easily a year to two years out from actually opening this business, and I'm trying to approach this as professionally and methodically as I can.

Our current business has focused on a niche, online retail sales and our new business would include both a local brick & mortar store and online sales serving a different niche area.

[Justin Leego]

I don't have any immediate advice, but I was reading back through some of your old blog postings last night and am excited to see how things develop with this new business idea.

[hedgefield]

I'm mostly a business buffoon just flailing away in a manner that seems to please people enough to occasionally give me money, but do you have some sort of Chamber of Commerce thing over there? Here in Holland they are pretty cool about doing courses and giving advice about those kinds of things if you're just starting out. I mean you have tons of experience but with writing plans and doing the financing things and such.

[Bjorn]

I don't have any immediate advice, but I was reading back through some of your old blog postings last night and am excited to see how things develop with this new business idea.

 

Thanks!  I hadn't even looked back at Shoestring Theory in awhile, it seems like a past life now. spent a half hour this afternoon skimming over a couple of years of posts there.  I miss writing as much as I used to, and doing the odd freelance piece here and there.  Like I remember writing all that stuff, but I haven't sat down to write anything like that in a few years now.  If you got back to the ZKP posts, that's a project that ended up stalling out.  I actually have a design I ended up fairly happy with, but ultimately the process of doing a ton of custom art was really not something we could handle with just the two of us.  It's something I'd like to get back to at some point though and finish the refinement of it though.

 

I'm mostly a business buffoon just flailing away in a manner that seems to please people enough to occasionally give me money, but do you have some sort of Chamber of Commerce thing over there? Here in Holland they are pretty cool about doing courses and giving advice about those kinds of things if you're just starting out. I mean you have tons of experience but with writing plans and doing the financing things and such.

 

There are resources like that, and a post on Facebook today got me a personal introduction to the guy who runs the small business office at the local university, so that's nice to have a personal reference before going in to meet him. 

 

Overall this business is actually pursuing one of my wife's passions more so than mine.  Much of the last decade has been about many of my goals professionally (finishing my degree, doing some writing, growing my business), and her goals/responsibilities personally (raising her daughter, bought a house she loved and remodeled it the way she wanted it).  We're looking to flip that now though, and have her be the primary owner/manager of a business with me working to support her the way she's supported me for years. 

 

I know we really need to find a decently lawyer.  There are some unique legal and zoning laws we'll need help with, so that's high on the list.  But I'd like to at least have a basic business plan outline in hand before approaching a lawyer about it. 

 

I'm not intending on being coy about specifics, but it's one of those kind of irrational things about worrying about talking about something to specifically too early on and jinxing it.