What is your busniess competition?

Discovering who your competition is is an important part of business success, and a good business plan can help you to stand out from those competitor and gain more customers.

As part of building a good business plan you will need to consider what you will offer your customers that your competitors can't. What will you do different from the businesses that are similar to your own?

Another question that working on a business plan will help you answer is if you are going to be the only one with your type of business in the area. If that is so, then that leads to a new question: Why are there no businesses like yours already in the area? Are you in a place where there is no demand for such a business?


While looking to see what your competition is, don't forget to look for any small home based businesses that might be similar to your business. Just because you do not see a similar business in any of the local shops does not mean there is not someone doing the same kind of business out of their home in a local subdivision. Local craft fairs are a good place to see if you already have any competitors if you have a product you want to make that might be sold at a craft fair.

Step-by-Step Business Plan

Every business plan has several basic components. While they are each unique to the particular company it is for, the business plan is also generally made up in the same manner no matter the business. I will be going over what the basics of a business plan are and discussing each element in detail to help you better understand why they are important.

Each part will be broken down into a single post and I will tie it all together with the tag "step-by-step business plan".

So, come along with me and let's explore what it takes to create a business plan. In the end you should have a completed business plan that you can use for your business to help keep you on track, find investors or just let you know that you have a plan somewhere.

Business Plan

Creating a business plan is not enough, you need to occasionally look back at that business plan and modify it to make it fit the current needs of your business. That is something that I am currently doing, looking back over my business plan and deciding what needs to be changed to fit in with the changes of the past year. Sometimes I do this every few years, other times I might do it a few times a year. It is always good to keep an eye on your business plan, so that you can keep on the track that you have set for yourself and not meander so far off the trail that you get lost in the brambles.

I am currently working out what the addition of my own hosting server means to my writing and how that changes the way my business plan is lain out and what I will expect to see happen over the next year. This will help me to see where I am now and, in a year, how my current goals match what I have achieved in one year. That will help me to grow my writing business from that point, just as I have grown it from where it had been a year ago.

If you have a business plan, take it out occasionally and look it over to see if your business is progressing as you envisioned it to, if you don't have a business plan then you should make one as soon as possible to help your business take better shape and to help guide you to where you want to be in the years to come.

Business plan template

I found this site when I was looking for a place that had samples on business plans. They have a good business plan sample that talks you through setting up your business plan. Definitely worth checking out. Score.org Template Gallery

Make sure you check out the rest of the SCORE website too, it looks like it's going to be holding my attention for a while. LOL Not sure why I didn't find them sooner.