Planning a Buisness Plan?

I was wondering how I could tackle this buisness plan, and I decided that the best way to go about this would be to do a plan, for my buisness plan! I was talking to my dad, whose previous job was actually to go to companies and help them write buisness plans (financial advisor). He gave me a couple of key tips in terms of what to do when embarking on a buisness plan.

I told him I was a little lost in terms of what to be looking at when writing a buisness plan and he gave me a "Pre Meeting Questionnaire" This questionnaire was what my dad's company used to all members of staff in a company - this was done in order to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses and act as an indicator for what to put into their SWOT analysis.

After filling in the PMQ, I will do a SWOT analysis on myself, based on the questions from the questionnaire. (this will be put onto the next entry I do, but the questions follow the same tone as e.g "How do you set objectives/targets/plans? Who does this? -And- What is your appropriate product mix". I think it will be a good thing to fill in this questionnaire because it will give me a really good idea on what my standing is as a designer and then how it becomes relevant in terms of buisness.

So, Post SWOT, I want to pinpoint my key objectives, this is also called a Stragergy Link because it links the information from your SWOT analysis with the basis for the Buisness Plan and is basically a refined breakdown of the SWOT analysis. Whilst approaching my stragergy link, I need to be aware of SMART objectives. This is an anagram for :

• Specific
• Measurable (Success rate/Key Performance Indicator or KPI)
  
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Ttimed (expected results)
  

The key aspects will be:

• Financial - How much money do I have? How much will I need for X? Where can I get money from?
  
• Customer - Who is my target audience? What do they relate to? What can I do for them to benefit?
  
• Process - What do I do? How do I do it? Why do I do it?
  
• Learning/ Development - What are my weaknesses? How can I get constructive progress from my weaknesses?

After this I will then go on to fill in my Buisness plan, based on the understanding of all the information I have gathered throughout this process. By approaching my Buisness Plan this way, I will be able to collect a strong set of information in order to base an informed and able buisness plan.