How did you write yours? I'm in the middle of mine but it, to me, is getting way too complicated. I'm a one person photography business and these templates I'm finding (even a pet portrait company one) are a ridiculous 15+ pages long.
Do what you need now. If you aren't going after a bank loan, you don't need all the details that a bank would want to see. It can be as simple as a checklist of things to do.
Something you would want to add that the templates don't have, though, is a marketing plan: Who your intended clients are, and what you will do, when, how, and why to reach them.
You also need a product plan: What you will sell, why you sell it, what it will cost you to produce.
I wouldn't start with a photography template business plan. Start with a generic one.
Business is business. What niche you are in can be defined later. A generic business plan will make you think about being in business. Most people want to start a business as an extension of their hobby, but have no idea (or care) about taxes, insurance, marketing, advertising, demographics, customer base, etc... the things that will determine if whether you'll make it as a business, or just consider it an ever expensive hobby.
I used some software: Business Plan Pro, I think - over 10 years ago. It made me really think about alot of things I would have otherwise not thought of. I'm about to go through it again - kinda renewing our business vows after 10 years to remind myself what we're missing and should or should not be doing!
Otherwise, 15+ pages is not a big deal when you consider you're planning your entire economic livelyhood for possibly the rest of your life...
They are a kind of funny thing Business plans.
To me like Hammy says they are great in making you think about a lot of things that you wouldn't have otherwise.
To do the right, there is also a lot of guess work involved which really annoys me.
I started on one for a new enterprise I started earlier in the year. I roughed it out and then started filling in the details. I did realise a lot of things I hadn't thought of but I also got to the point where I realised I didn't need to go any further with it because it had done what I wanted and that was to get things straight in my head and I could be out there getting the work instead of writing the theory.
Haveing been in the photo game for a long time probably gave me an advantage. If someone were starting out or had limited experience, then I would say you would be mad not to do one thoroughly.
The one I started writing was a template from my bank. Just found it by googling and it came up and turned out to be a workable and effective one for my business. Not like we need to consider warehousing and overseas market penetration etc.
One obvious thing the biz plan woke me up to was that it was far cheaper to hire someone to do work for me than do it myself and it also allowed me to do much more work and much more profit.
That's the beauty of business plans to me, they make you think everything through.
You start on one topic and realise you haven't addressed another. You start on that and realise there is more still you need to work out. You can never be too prepared or organized.
I started writing a biz plan for something I had thought about for years a while back.
I wasn't too far into it when I hit a realization of something that would prove an impossible problem to solve and render the whole concept useless. I thought I had this all worked out in my head but this one previously unconsidered factor made the idea something that would never be successful. I was so sure it would be a great money spinner, I was a day away from going and spending several grand on equipment I would have no other use for.
Funny enough, my son came to me a couple of weeks ago asking if I had ever written a business plan as they were given an assignment for business studies at school. He was whineing they wanted a min of 5 pages. I showed him the one I had started on which was 9 and he was amazed of course knowing what the business was. He asked what did I write about and when he started reading he said He never thought about certain aspects of it and with others recalled problems and discussions we had.
When I mentioned what wasn't in the plan because I had done that part of it before and well knew how that worked, He also realised what a key factor was in it and how much one would have to write on that for someone that didn't know what it was nor had done it before.
Suddenly he realised 5 pages was not going to be enough for a road side flower stand if you wanted to do it anywhere near properly.
I agree with hammy on the 15 pages. If that seems like a lot of work, wait till you actually get started working in and running the business.
I'd also give some thought to what you want the end to look like, in terms of retirement. What do you want to do when you retire? When do you want to retire? And so forth. If you have an idea on how you want these things to look when retirement comes, you can use these ideas to shape your business. In the end, business is about the money. If you can ballpark what you'll need to support your lifelong and retirement desires, you can better understand what you'll need to accomplish from a business standpoint. Granted this is just one aspect of it, but if the money isn't there to support what you want to do, whether that be very basic or extravagant, then you're wasting your time.
