Did you wish that there was somehow you can earn your income without having to rush to your workplace in the wee hours of the morning in a train/bus packed with tired, sweaty people? Or did you wish you could somehow earn your income without doing something you dislike and constantly be monitored or reviewed by someone who simply hated your guts?

There are actually many alternative ways to earn your income but the best way will definitely have to be running your own business. There are many benefits to running your own business and some of them include being your own boss, doing something you enjoy, being in control of your life, not having to take orders from anyone, not being afraid of incurring the wrath of any superiors and most importantly, experiencing wealth and success if your business runs well.

But how then do you go about starting a business? The first best way is to begin with a plan.

It is vital to have a plan before embarking on anything you hope to achieve and it is no different for your business. There are many different types of business plans out there but the one I will present is the version I have successfully utilised and I feel is easy to understand and implement.

So, presenting my proposed 7-step business plan.

1) Identify your core desires

It is important to the quality and enjoyment of your life that you design your business around your life and not your life around your business.

Identifying your core desires means clearly and deeply knowing what you truly deeply want to start a business on and why you truly deeply want to do it.

However, the catch when doing any business is to ensure that what you intend to promote will also be of great interest to others, in other words whether there is a target market.

2) Identify and be clear about your vision and goals

Having a clear business vision means identifying the following:

a) Visualising how long you see yourself in the business.
b) Knowing what you want to achieve with your business.
c) Picturing the degree of success you hope to achieve with your business.

Once your vision is crystal clear in your mind, you can move on to set your business goals. Setting business goals is slightly more complicated than normal goals but it is not so difficult or impossible to do.

The key point to note when setting business goals is to ensure that they are as realistic and specific as possible. As in all goal setting and achieving, you should always start with smaller business goals and then piece them together to form bigger ones.

3) Brand Your Business

There are basically 2 aspects to consider when branding your business:

a) Name
b) Logo

Always remember that you want people to recognise and acknowledge your business whenever your business name is mentioned so make sure to choose a name that is memorable and creative.

Then accompany this with a carefully chosen logo that will clearly illustrate your name and the nature of your business whenever people see it.

4) Research

Conducting research is probably one of the most crucial aspects of your business plan. It will require a lot of dedication and effort on your part but trust me when I say that it is worth every minute of your time.

Some of the aspects of your business research should include the following:

a) size of your targeted market
b) any existing market dominators
c) how quickly and easily you can dominate the market
d) which niche to focus on
e) the problems consumers in your targeted market are facing and how to address these problems

5) Finances

Finances can basically be divided into 3 components:

a) Funding
b) Expenditure
c) Income

Funding basically means the various sources of sustenance for your business – be it whether when you are first starting up or even you are already running a thriving business.

Next, comes the expenditure part. This basically involves clearly identifying what you have to spend for your business.

The last aspect of finance is to monitor the income you obtain from your business. There are many ways to monitor your income – the most obvious being how much money you earn from your sales on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

It will be wise to prepare a simple spreadsheet to monitor your funding, expenditure and income. With this spreadsheet, you can constantly monitor your cash flow and determine whether you are moving along the right track towards running a profitable business.

6) Legal Requirements

While you are working towards building your business and ultimately your wealth, be very wary that you do not get into the wrong side of the law.

Ensure that you check out the requirements in your country / state to make sure you meet any legal requirements for your business such as licensing, registration, et cetera.

7) Marketing & Sales

Here comes one of the most crucial aspects of your business plan – the marketing and sales part. Marketing and sales are the lifeline of any business.

Sales are obviously what you need to earn huge profits and generate wealth but if you do not let the world know that your business exist through marketing it, who will come and buy from you?

So this leads me to another question – how do you get the word out that you have a business? And to tackle this question, I present yet another few related and relevant meta-questions you can ask yourself:

a) Who is your target audience?
b) Why do you need to target them?
c) How can you get your target audience to find out about your business?
d) What are the types of marketing channels you can use to connect with potential customers and prospects?
e) What are your overall strategies for bringing in and retaining your business?

This concludes my explanation on preparing your business plan. But what next and how exactly do you put what I’ve explained into practice?

To find out the answers to that question, I highly recommend that you check out my COMPASS - “COntrol My Path And Strive for Success” 5-part holistic personal development system where I devote an entire module and explain more in depth about business plans, running your own business and where you will also be guided to the billion dollar formula that guarantees wealth, freedom & happiness to anyone who uses it!

Tags: wealth, rich, money, limiting beliefs, personal development, success, financial wealth