I have my business idea… Now, what? We, Mompreneurs or MomEOs or WAHMEOs value our time. We don’t want to waste our time. Sometimes, I personally think that there are not enough hours in a day. I hate wasting time and during those lull times (like waiting in the doctor’s clinic, or going through traffic) during the day, I get to review the checklist in my head and panic. I panic because instead of accomplishing these things, I’m stuck in this situation.

The same mindset is usually observed when one wants to start a mompreneur business. We just either, one, go ahead and start the business, by creating the products or marketing the service, or two, just set it aside since we have other things that we need to accomplish first in our checklist. For the former, it is great that we get the passion and the drive the start the business right away. The danger though is that we haven’t really sat down and thought about our plans for the business and its feasibility. For the latter, setting that business idea aside and just moving along with our daily tasks might lead us to never getting it done anytime soon or even anytime in the future.

Why is it that we never get to write business plans before we start a business? Here are several reasons that I could think of (and have thought of and used in the past *guilty*):
– Uhm, hello? This is just a hobby. I don’t plan on making this (whatever it is) big in the future.
– Business Plans? Gawd… those are just a bunch of papers that no one reads.
– I don’t know how to create a business plan -_-
– I’m not looking for investors or venture capitalists. Do I really need to make one?
– I’ll create it after I’ve launched my business.

Yes, I am guilty! I have used some of those reasons before. But, believe me, the best way to start a business is really to have concrete plans of how you want it to be set up now and how you see it to be in the future. Why do we need to create business plans? Here are some reasons I could think of:

– Think and make plans on how you would want to earn from this business or “hobby” (I’m sure that even if it is a hobby, you might very well want to earn back at least what you have spent for). This is what you call your business model.
– It helps you calculate and check on how much would you need to start the business and how much you would be able to earn and at what rate
– If your business flies and investors want to come in, you will have a document that you would be able to show them
– It will help you set the direction for your business, like answering your own personal concerns/issues on hiring additional manpower, when to expand the business, who to market to and who else to market to if target market is not responsive, etc.
– To help you create an effective marketing strategy and to guide you when you do actual implementation
– To remind you about your strengths and weaknesses versus the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. To remind you about your competitors, period.
– To guide you on how to deal with potential problems in the future.

I know that there are tons of reasons why I think all of us Mompreneurs and MomEOs need to have business plans before we start our own businesses. Could you think of other reasons? Do you agree with me?

In my future blog posts, I will help you create your own business plan.

Bye for now!