Whether you are ready to step out on your own and start a business for the first time, or you want to reorganize your small business for growth - a sound business plan is the foundation for making your dream a successful reality.

That’s a big deal right? So why is it that so many business owners function without this foundation? And if they do have a plan, often it’s just seen as a simple tool used to seek investment or communicate the company’s direction to others. Of course those are two important ways to use a business plan once it’s created, but back up a minute. The real purpose of developing a business plan in the first place is to determine if your vision is realistic and feasible for your own acceptance. It’s the framework for your thinking & your decision making process, not the aftermath. Your business plan should prove to you that your opportunity and strategy are actually viable. In addition, it should empower you and your team with a realistic roadmap to implement your dream.

Forget about filling in empty spaces on a template to the best of your ability. Instead, take the time to work through each and every business plan topic and build a systematic, multifaceted approach to achieving your goals. Think about your business as a machine, every component must be turned on and aligned in order for the machine to produce its intended product in good condition. Your business plan is your machine’s blueprint. It allows you to design the machine, build the machine, as well as run the machine. It also serves as a reference point to go back to if one component is not functioning properly. It allows you to adjust what’s necessary without reinventing the wheel.

As many of you know, one of the services offered through MangingAmericans.com is to determine the feasibility of business plans. It’s very common for us to send plans back with a laundry list of questions before we can even begin to grade the plan itself. That’s because the logic is missing; there are missing components to the “machine.” In order to speed up this process we took the time to teach the meaning of those components in our new book “Small Business Planning Made Simple: What To Consider Before You Invest.”

There are 15 Business Plan Components described in the book to guide business owners through the thinking process to develop each part of the plan so you can logically and effectively build your own working machine. We include examples, as well as explain how to use the information to make important decisions about the feasibility of dream.

There is also a section of the book titled “Common Risks & Opportunities.” Once you’ve finished writing your plan, you can use this information to go back and improve upon some areas that have a tendency to be weak points. Learn from our experience and overcome these hurdles during the planning process, rather than many businesses before you that have had to spend time and money correcting them in real life.

At the end of the book we’ve included a template to allow space for notes and jotting down ideas as you go. However, you can still use any business planning software on the market to build your plan any way you want it to look, using any format. Our goal is to teach what is important, why it’s important and how to use the information to run your business…so that you can build a sound business plan that is the foundation for making your dream a successful reality.