Business planning; How?

[KatyMac]

I run a small business

Reading another thread today where they were talking about "succession planning" and "risk management"

How do I 'do' business Planning rather than reactively lurching from issue to issue

What other subjects should I be reading up on?

financial stability is another 'catchphrase' but how do you do it?

Where do you see your business in 5 years/ what would you like your business to achieve in the next 5 years? How can you achieve this? Do you need finance to achieve this? Extra staff?
For example I would like 25% of my clients to be bonded to my practice in 5 years time so to achieve this I have launched health plans where they pay for prophylactic treatment monthly by direct debit, I set SMART targets (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timeable) for my staff about how many people we need to recruit. I am going to do additional advertising highlighting the health plans.
This is one of my five year targets with methods of achieving.
Having an overall business statement often helps you to focus on your plan.
I have not been to some fancy management school, just to a few well choosen seminars, pumped my bank manager for info about what the lending team look for and had my business mystery shopped to find our strengths and weaknesses.

That's it - I don't know

I have tried expanding 3 times (as most old MNetters know are bored with) but failed each time

I have a member of staff on ML & 2 on sick, cover has been a major issue

Staff have SMART targets; expansion impossible due to location issues

Sounds like a challenging time for you with your staff situ.

Agree with Lizcat, guess you need some bigger picture ideas. What will a sucessful bigger business look like?

Assuming you still do childminding could you look at different income generators - evening babysitting - using your staff or different ones - local nursery staff? - or training/mentoring for those who want to start CM? - obv not those that will directly compete with you locally.

Have you got a mentor? Could you find one? Imagine it is lonely manging a small business. Would the National Asso of CM be able to set you up or could you meet somebody locally?

Maybe somebody away from your field would be good. Even if you are experienced it is nice to get away from it all and talk to an objective person. Maybe attend local business networking meetings.

I don't think there are any bigger picture ideas

I mentor already, am very glad to send the children home at 6

Networking might be a good idea

I think I am a bit down atm

Small businesses are between a rock and a hard place, mostly because of red tape involved in hiring staff.

Could you create a franchise which people buy into? Or convince some of them to go self-employed and pay you a management fee?

I can't really be more help without getting into the finer details, but really you need to systemise and automate the business to free your time so you can work on making more money at it (NB: I didn't say "expand", sometimes bigger just = more expense not more profit!)

That's true - we are bigger but no more profitable

I don't earn enough to borrow more but I have been working on doing less; so I can do something else....but I don't know what something else is yet

We looked into franchising but the value added isn't really unique enough imo

Risk management is basically looking into the future and guessing what might happen. So you need some idea about your future in order to think about what might stop you from getting there as well as potential opportunities.

If you are more interested in managing your current business better you could try taking a process point of view instead. Think about the important things your business does, and plot it out on a big piece of paper (you might want to use post its) at whatever level makes sense - so you could think about a typical day, or the process of getting a new employee up to speed, or whatever you think you need to look at because you don't think it's working quite right now. You can do this at a very basic level (just a box for each step) or you can add in decision points (where more than one thing might happen depending on the circumstances). Typically decision points are shown as diamonds, but it doesn't really matter so long as you can see where different options begin.

So once you have your process mapped out you can either then use post its for points where things currently go wrong, or you are are worried they might go wrong, or alternately for where you think you could do things better. Either way it's a way to think about what you do and how you could potentially change it. If I was helping you to done I'd get all your team involved, it's a good way to involve everyone and get new ideas (as well as perhaps a more realistic idea of how things work in practice).

For a really simple look at risk you could start with a SWOT analysis. Mindtools is quite a good site for management ideas - here's it's SWOT guide: www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm#business. The best guide to risk for small businesses that I've come across recently is Australian, but www.smallbiz.nsw.gov.au/run/legal/risk/Pages/default.aspx might be interesting - the specifics may not be relevant, but I expect the general principles are the same, and the Aussies are currently the world leaders on risk management.

OK - We are starting on a SWOT (I used to do this a lot but haven't due to a fair bit of crisis management)

I use Urgent/not urgent vs important/not important matrix to try & focus my mind; but it's hard

If you get confused about business planning and lack the required skills you can't do it properly. So, I would recommend finding an expert who will propose an effective approach needed for your business. Besides, he can advise choosing a tool like <a class="break-all" href="//url=www.ergonized.com/salesforce-configuration-customization/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">crm customization enabling to stand out from your competitors