Chapter 5. Important Elements of a Business Plan

What You'll Learn in This Chapter

• Learn how to answer the essential questions of a business plan

• Learn about business plan elements

• Learn how to finance your business venture

In the previous chapter, we discussed the need to plan your business before you even consider what type of Yahoo! store you want to establish. And the best way to plan your business is to create a business plan. Now, if you are starting a Yahoo! store as a hobby or to prove out a business idea, you probably don't need to put together a detailed business plan, but you should at least document the minimum elements necessary to make your business endeavor a success. Who knows, there are more than enough examples of a hobby or wild idea turning into a multimillion dollar business down the line.

Now if you're a one or twoperson home business or a small neighborhood business with one or two employees, you don't have to write a fullblown 2040 page business plan complete with financials. But there are important elements of any business plan that you should consider and create. A good resource for business plan writing that covers more material than this chapter allows is Write a Business Plan In No Time. Also, you can find more valuable information on business plans on the Yahoo! Small Business site at smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/ under "Business Plans."

At a minimum, your plan must clearly communicate who you are, what you do, what your product or service is, what consumer or business need it solves, how you plan to implement your business, what markets you will service, and how much money or how many resources you will need to execute your plan.

So let's get started.