The Work-at-Home Parent’s Business Plan 101

Lori Taylor, Ph.D.
trust me, I'm a doctor

A few friends asked for pointers in writing business plans for home businesses. They were women exactly like you and me, starting in the diaper manufacturing business and wanting to be professional despite our lack of business training. Before I opened for business, I created a plan.

Writing the Plan

If you want to write a business plan, start by looking at the SBA. They want to help you, but you have to have some of the work done before you approach them at the Small Business Development Centers.

Once you have an idea what the general outline is, go to the library, a big library, and take every business plan book off the shelf. Flip through them. Keep only the ones that are intriguing. Then read the tables of contents. Discard more. Whittle the stack down to 2-3. Read a bit. Take one home. Read it through. Then write the plan.

If that sounds too easy, it is.

Back to the Beginning

You need to back up and start at the beginning. That is YOU. Are you doing what you really want to do? Keep notes from the very beginning. Get a notebook--an exam book or a spiral, maybe a 3-ring binder if you want to be able to add and subtract, and keep all of your notes and your business journal in it. Every time you sit down to read, take your notebook. Take notes. Write your thoughts about life, your brilliant paragraphs to be added to the first draft of the plan.

You need to set aside time when you will not be interrupted to read and think. Go outside. Go to a coffee shop. If your husband leaves for work at 8am, get up and 6am, leave him with the kids, and go to breakfast all by yourself. It sounds impossible, but so does building a business in your dining room. If you can do it every day, you will notice a change in yourself. If you can only do it once a week, the change will come, but slower. Take one night a week off and go away to work. If you want to build a business, your job is much more than sewing.

Your Job

Know yourself (when are you fabulous? what are you excellent at? what makes you happy?)
Know what you really want in your creative, professional life (what are you most deeply committed to?)
Figure out your role in that life (you the CEO? you the artist? you the consultant?)
Write the future (dream the dream of everything you want out of life and business)
Then make the map to get there (that's the business plan)

* Best book to prepare the ground for writing a business plan:

The Startup Garden: How Growing a Business Grows You by Tom Ehrenfeld. Author's website is packed with business start up resources.

* Best book to help a woman take her first steps in business:

The Seed Handbook: The Feminine Way to Create Business, Lynne Franks. Author's website is a community of female entrepreneurs, primarily based in Britain.

* Best book to help a woman find her public face for business:

Make a Name for Yourself, Robin Fisher Roffer. Start with her Eight Steps.

* Best book to watch a woman build her empire:

Mothers Work, Rebecca Matthias, founder of Motherhood, Mimi Maternity, and A Pea in the Pod.

You may not want to build an empire. That's why you should get to know yourself before reading about others' empires. This is the point at which I wrote my Smallering article, just to remind myself that I didn't want what Rebecca Matthias got.

Keeping Digging into Yourself, and Dig Yourself!

Get to know yourself before you start. Perhaps these can help.

Julia Cameron:
The Artist's Way
Vein of Gold
Walking in This World

Julie Morgenstern:
Organizing from the Inside Out, plus cards
Time Management from the Inside Out
Making Work Work

Read these until you really understand the concept of inside out. Listen to her tapes in the car. If you are fabulously wealthy (and who among us isn't?), hire her to organize your business space. She's available. I've seen the results of her work.

Keep reading. Get to know your industry. Read work-at-home books, home craft books, whatever there is on your industry. Really know who is doing what on a large scale so you can understand how you fit into the picture on a small scale. How are people trained to do what you do? Do they have textbooks? Can you get hold of those textbooks? Read the business plans and mission statements of others. You may find these online or in books. I want you to see the level of detail that really counts. I recall the dawning moment, reading the Celestial Seasonings marketing plan, when I realized how much detail I really needed to make a map I could follow.

Now, Go Write Your Plan

Once you've done that, go back to the SBA site and the business plan books and write what you already know.

Now, a Conclusion

My first business plans are long-winded (you can't believe that, can you) and self-congratulatory. I was optimistic. I've revised a couple of times. Now I am getting more realistic. I write them with more punch, clearer purpose. I'm sure there are many improvements ahead that I can't imagine.

You are creating a detailed map, listing every turn, adjusting when necessary. If you can map it, you can do it. If you don't bother mapping it, you might not bother doing it. On the other hand, some people shoot from the hip and seem to start out OK. Do you want that? It might work for you. If you want more, work for it.

Need Help? Contact Lori at Very Write for business plan help, small business consulting and web content development.