Everyone wants to have a foolproof plan when they’re running their business. Wouldn’t that be nice? To have a plan that all you have to do is follow the steps and guarantee your success as a business owner?

Unfortunately it’s usually not that easy to see issues that your business might face in the future, which is why pivoting or changing direction and making good decisions in unexpected situations is one of the most important skills you can learn in business.

There can be a big difference between what your business plan looks like on paper and how you’re running your business 12 months down the road based on economic conditions, industry trends, competitors, and other factors. The short and long term goals that you have in your business plan could be scrapped later on depending on opportunities or liabilities you see for your company.

So what items do you need in your business plan to grow your corporation or LLC? What areas need to be more general to allow flexibility so you can make the right decisions further down the road? And what parts of your business plan need to be largely open ended so you can fill in the gaps with information you don’t have yet? Let’s dive in!

Business Planning vs. Implementation

Business Planning

Here are a few key areas you want to identify in your business plan that provide the basis for a lot of your decision making. Where is your money being spent in the business? What additional expenses do you expect to incur in the next 12 months? What things are non-negotiable in your business? What platforms or technology do you need to manage or upgrade to run your business effectively? What opportunities do you see that you need to position staff and financial resources to tackle appropriately?

You also want to identify any risks that you foresee in the next 12 months. These can be related to new projects, financial goals, staffing, technology, competitors, the economy and more as you see any risks that pertain to your business locally or online. Though the way that your business approaches these challenges may change as you get more information, documenting everything you know about these potential risks can help you be better prepared to make great decisions when the time comes. So all of these areas need to be written down in stone within your business plan. How does implementing that look like in the day to day operations of your business?

Implementation

When you’re implementing your business plan, there are a number of things that should stay relatively stable (core staff, core technologies, how you handle your customers and company projects, etc.). But there are also many areas that might change drastically from planning to implementation. Here’s a list to get your brain juices flowing:

• Identifying new products and opportunities
• Creating partnerships with companies in related industries
• Promoting staff members that go above and beyond your expectations
• Bringing on new technology that helps you scale your current processes and work load
• Identifying seasonal trends in your customer behavior that impact your revenue or profitability

This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it will help you understand some of the key areas that you’ll need to be more aware of and open to new information as it presents itself in your business. While your business plan may deal with a lot more of these areas that are more set in stone, having a healthy sense of curiosity when it comes to some of these outstanding variables will help you be more competitive and successful compared to your more traditional competitors.

Scalable Resources

Another area that you want to constantly be on the lookout for is ways to scale your existing resources, both for your customers as well as your employees and company management. Essentially, “How can I do more with the resources I already have?” Let’s break this down into a couple key areas:

Systems that Grow Your Company

So what are the systems that can help you grow your company? Here’s a place to start: identify all of the tasks that your business performs repeatedly and check if there’s a system that could help you scale this process. Are you reaching out to customers individually over email? Consider implementing a CRM to help you track more of these conversations and scale communication with your database. Do you find yourself training the same types of tasks to many people in your organization? Document your employee trainings and put together a system that will help you automate the onboarding and training processes with your employees. 

Educational Tools

What are some of the educational tools that you can use to help scale your business? How can you educate your customers and people that are interested in your industry without having to reach out to them individually? Even if it’s not an official software or system, consider putting up educational videos on your YouTube channel and referencing them in your customer communications and email marketing campaigns. Do you find your prospects always asking the same 3-5 questions when they interact with you? Consider putting together a page on your website that explains the answers to common questions, advising on how you help your audience solve common problems they may have.

Marketing Platforms

And last but not least, think about what marketing platforms can help you scale your company. Are you posting educational content on YouTube? Why not split up those videos into short form content that you can repurpose across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X to maximize your SEO impact and reach different audiences around the web? Already have great content but maybe you don’t have a huge follower base? Consider hyper-targeted ads to help you reach the people that could benefit the most from your product or service. There are plenty of marketing tools out there to help you scale your content and ads, so make sure to do your own research on the industry specific tools that can help you win!

Conclusion

In order to grow, you need to have the right business plan in place. But most importantly you have to implement it correctly and make decisions on the fly. Scaling a business requires a lot of planning and reevaluation of your current processes and systems. Keep an eye out for big opportunities, but make sure your business is doing all of the basic things right to keep moving forward smoothly. For more tips on growing your business check out our business blog, or get in touch with us today! Contact us here.