Business Plans - James Smith Chartered Accountants Oxford

“How to…Plan a Successful New Business” is a professionally written 12,000 word, 28 page e-book written to assist business planning.

Everyone is told to write a business plan before they start, but how on earth of you actually go about it? How do you turn your idea into something real? How do you know if it will work out? How do you know if you will make a million or lose a million?

This guide has been written from a very pragmatic point of view looking at actually planning why and how your business will succeed, and how to plan around anticipated problems. This is about realistic entrepreneurial planning on the back of napkins, the process that should precede the writing of a polished "pitching plan" for the digestion of the bank manager and potential investors.

Case study examples are used to show how to think about your new business, how to assess and minimise the risks, how to identify and play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses. The point is to make you think critically about why and how your new business will work and why well before you take any significant risks with your money and time. Hopefully you should find the approach helpful in applying it to your circumstances a rather refreshing change to simply providing you with a list of tools and strategies.

The guide has been written from the point of view of advising someone contemplating starting their own business for the first time. Many of the themes discussed are equally applicable to business planning within an established small or medium sized business.

We start by looking at your own skills, and some basic business plans for a service and a product based businesses. We then look, using real world examples at some successful business strategies and why they work in practice. We look at why some business strategies have natural success built in, and why some will always be a struggle to succeed, referring back to our two example businesses.

The finance section goes through how to go about practically estimating costs and sales revenue. Crucially it considers the risk of starting a new business, and how to minimise the financial risks through proper planning and thinking about your business. Cash flow and financing issues are also reviewed.

In the last section we look at testing the business model and how to go from a plan to practically starting up a new business, concluding on a look at what is success and failure, and why a true entrepreneur never really fails.

Author

The author of this guide is James Smith, a Chartered Accountant with considerable experience in working with smaller businesses.

Availability

Delivery is via email within 24 hours of receipt of cleared funds. Please ensure the email address you give is valid or you will be unable to received the report.

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Full Contents

INTRODUCTION	2

SO WHAT ARE YOUR KEY SKILLS?	3

THE BASIC PLAN	5
Simon's Example Basic Retail Plan	5
Sally's Example Basic Services Plan	5

BUSINESS STRATEGIES	6
Competing on Price	7
Competing on Quality	8
Successful Strategies	10
Applying a Strategy to your Business	10

THE EXIT STRATEGY	13
Make it Big	13
Grow then Sell On	13
Small is Beautiful	14

FINANCIAL VIABILITY	15
Estimating Costs	15
Estimating Sales	16
Managing Risk	17
Cash Flow	19
Financing the Business	20

MAKING THE DECISION TO START YOUR BUSINESS	22
Second Opinion	22
Testing the Model	22
The Right Level of Planning	23
Making the jump from employment	24

SUCCESS AND FAILURE	26

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE	27
Suggested Next Steps	27
Where can you turn for more help?	27

APPENDIX ONE: About James Smith, Chartered Accountant	28

Keeping It Simple

Ebook - "How to...

Plan a Successful New Business"

Overview

Author

Availability

Technical Requirements:

Full Contents