Your financial plan is so important to the success and ongoing operation of your business, I wanted to revisit this topic again right away.

Let's look more closely at the elements of your financial plan, specifically the parts that make up your Income Statement.
 

There is no question that change is guaranteed. It will never go back to the way it was before. It does not matter if it is the economy, environment, technology or politics.

Understanding how your competition is responding to change

The value of studying your competition is obvious but what insight can you gain from looking outside of your own direct competitor and your own field?

Plenty of insight. Why?

Because what happens in other markets is often an indication of what will happen in your market. Sometimes this can give you enough time to prepare or to take advantage of it before your direct competitors are even away that the change is happening.

Many times I have seen businesses of all sizes articulate their goals in terms of money. I am not suggesting here that you focus on the money. In fact, it is important to focus on the value that you  will deliver to your prospects to turn them into customers.

Money is a fact of life and is neccessary for all of us to pay the bills. So to say we have a business means we have to take in revenue that is more than the expenses that we have. We all have to pay the bills and in my opinion it is disrepectful to expect people to do things for free even if they are a friend.

A critical piece of developing your business Dream (aka your business plan) is to really understand who your customers are.

I was helping out a start-up company a few years ago, and they made a typical mistake. The CEO wanted to launch their new product "world wide". Well this is just too broad an approach. The key of business is to create systems for doing the same or similar activities over and over again. If you are recreating what you do every single time you do it, then you are probably a knowledge worker and you are guaranteed not taking advantage of leverage to get the most from your business, deliver great value and still have a balanced life for yourself.