Planning ahead: arguments for writing a business plan early

Virtual Blue Bird, a recognized provider of management support services, often works with entrepreneurs who have just recently launched their own business. They come up with all sorts of questions asking for advice and guidance. Drawing on our vast experience of helping business start-ups survive we have learnt a lot about how and why new businesses might fail. This has pushed us to share our experiences for the benefit of all of the new business owners and budding entrepreneurs. Today we would like to discuss when you should consider writing a business plan.

In many cases, managing directors start writing a business plan long after they started the business in order to get extra funding. If you write it at that stage it might already be too late. Moreover, if you require extra funding that usually suggests that something has already gone wrong and you need the extra money to mend the problem. If you do not want it to go wrong unexpectedly, you simply must write up a business plan as early as possible. And you have to do it for yourself even more than for your investors. A business plan provides clarity and a direction for your business development. In fact, studies show that businesses that have a business plan to follow generate higher profits.

So, as soon as you got a somewhat clear idea of what your business is going to be like, start writing. While writing and answering various questions about goals, missions and penetration strategies you will quickly improve your personal understanding of what it could be like and what you might expect to happen. By carrying out simple marketing research you will find out about your competitors and will be able to see your own competitive advantages more clearly. Learning about your target audience and their needs will eventually help you formulate you marketing strategy and roughly predict the sales. Furthermore, when you start writing about cost, pricing and break-even you will see for yourself if the business can be profitable or would simply be a waste of your time.

A business plan also allows you to allocate resources for your start-up. Be it the number of staff or any other finite resources you will be able to see clearly how much of the work can be done and what you should be prioritising. Writing up a business plan will also show you which of the tasks can be outsourced or delegated.

The last but not least of the advantages of having your business plan early is the ability to make everybody aware of your future plans. In order for a team to be working in the same direction, they need to be aware of the goals you have set for the business. Inspiring a shared vision has always been one of the most effective leadership tools that the business plan helps you make use of.

Having a business plan ready before you set out on your entrepreneurial adventure will enable you with a clear vision of future challenges and a realisation of the direction that you intend to follow. Being informed will therefore save you money, time and energy that you can otherwise invest in the growth of your business.

How to delegate?

The formula is very simple: if your customer pays you £100 to do a project and your Virtual Assistant can complete it for £40, then you are making £60 profit simply because you have a good relationship with your customer. However, as we all know, making the theory work in practice is a lot harder than it seems. Or is it?

Almost all of our customers know that they cannot cope with the amount of work that needs to be done and that they simply must delegate their work. But how do you delegate something that only you can do? Furthermore, what if something goes wrong? At the end of the day, it is your business and you are fully responsible for the consequences. And where do you start? – won’t you need to explain the whole thing to your Virtual Assistants before they can even start to comprehend what you are trying to achieve?

I get asked these questions a lot, especially by those customers who have never used a Virtual Assistance service before. To answer this, I will explain how you should delegate. But first, a few truths…

Truth 1

There is absolutely no way that we will be able to duplicate you – only you know where your business is going and all of the details that surround it. However, what we can do is help you with the tasks that will free up your time, so that you can concentrate on the work that you should be concentrating on.

Truth 2

Your business is unique. Your relationships, approach and thinking are also unique. However, the list of tasks that take up your valuable time and stop you from spending it on more important aspects of your business is not unique. We work with a large number of customers from very different fields, all with very different backgrounds, personalities, approaches, thinking, ideas and strategies – and yet, the tasks that we are assisting them with are very similar. This is not because we are limiting our services, but because there is only so much that a business can delegate. We undertake these time consuming tasks, including administrative support, leaving you to concentrate on more important aspects of your business.

Truth 3

There is always a “Catch 22” scenario when customers start to delegate tasks. On the one hand, you will need to test that your Virtual Assistant is capable of doing the job and not going to cause you problems. On the other hand, if you give out too much information there is a higher risk that something might go wrong (if it works out that your VA is not capable). So, how do you get the best balance? You can do this by testing us. Our VAs can perform a small number of tasks and you can judge our performance. Only then will you see the true benefit of a VA.

Step by step plan

1. Outline the tasks that we can do for you
2. Give Virtual Blue Bird a call and let me know what’s on your list
3. We then work together to prioritise the tasks to your requirements.
4. We will complete those tasks for you in the timeframes you have set for us.
5. You review the results and decide if you would like to allocate the Virtual Blue Bird VAs with more responsibility.

If you have trouble putting this list together (for example you have never delegated work before), call me and I will be happy to help you compile this.


Kind regards,

Anya Portnik