Your Helping Business

Before you start you need a Plan.
The first step is to think about how you’re going to operate. Will you be seeing clients face to face or remotely? Is your treatment ‘hands-on’ requiring appropriate facilities?

Are you going to work ‘full time’ or ‘part time’ and what does that mean? So many hours a day, so many days a week? If you are a coach how many clients can you handle concurrently? Will you be working with individuals or groups? Will you be providing your services o a personal basis or working through their employers? Will you be working with business teams (sales teams, project teams etc.)?

In short, what is the ‘shape’ of your business? What is your ‘business model’ – which includes, for you, how the money works – how much to expect or need to earn and where do you expect it to come from?

Also, are you going to work ‘alone’ or do you want to team up with other coaches or therapists, maybe to supplement your services as they have qualifications you don’t?

Outline Planning
Now you’ve ‘designed’ your new business the next step is to consider how it’s going to operate. In other words, to make a plan.

So far we’ve discussed ‘who’ is involved in the business, ‘what’ the business will do and offer and ‘where’ the business is going to be located or operated from and ‘why’ the business is being created in the first place.
The next question to answer is ‘when’?

The first thing to do is create a ‘timeline’, or a series of timelines, for the business.
You’ll need to decide when you want to ‘launch’ the business, when you actually want to start trading and delivering whatever you have to offer.

This isn’t a case of just sticking your finger in the air and picking a date. You have to consider how long it is going to take you to have everything in place, up and running, so that you can actually deliver to clients – and it depends what your business is as to how long this might take.

Another thing you want to be clear on up front is the actual ‘lifespan’ you propose for this business.
What’s your ‘exit plan’? After all, you don’t want to be doing this forever – and even if you do right now, even if it is your passion right now, I can tell you from experience that you don’t! Things change, you will change.
All you need right now is to define:

• When you’ll be able to launch the business or start trading?
• When you will have grown the business to the extent you’ll be able to take on outside help?
• When will you get to a point when you want to ‘slow down’ or stop?

These questions may not all apply, but at the very least the first one will, unless of course you’ve started already!
Making your ‘Plan’

First you must have a vision of what your business will be and some goals and targets ‘pencilled in’.

You also need now to define how you’re going to manage your time, where you’re going to operate from, and if you think you need funding to get started, how much, and where might it come from?

If you’re going into business with someone else, whatever your relationship with them, it’s also essential to have formal agreements in place as to how the business is managed and controlled, operationally and financially.

You need to be agreed on how you will deal with the situation if circumstances change in any way, or you begin to disagree on the direction the business is taking.

These things happen and have to be provided for. You will probably need help with this from a lawyer who specializes in business arrangements.

And, of course, you’ll need to be very clear about what your business provides for potential clients and who in the business provides them.

Your ‘Business Plan’
What you need first to ‘get off the ground’ is a ‘Business Plan’.

Now don’t be ‘put off’ by this!
Your ‘business plan’ isn’t just a dry document that’s going to be filed away and forgotten (which is how most people think of ‘business plans’).

Your business plan IS your Business – it’s what your business does, how it works, how you’re going to do your marketing, how the money works and what are your goals and targets.

And much more than that, it’s a dynamic set of documents and records that you can update and amend as things move forward as well as being an instrument that helps you describe what your business is, what it does and how much money it’s going to make to anyone who needs to know.

‘No plan = no business’

In your Business Plan, you need to identify not only how you’re going to do the core operations of your business – what you (your Business) actually DOES – but also how you’re going to deal with three other elements of running a business, without which your business is most unlikely to survive!

The first is Compliance
This concerns making sure that you comply with all the rules and regulations that might apply to your particular business.

I say ‘might’ because it’s not always obvious!
The main compliance issues are Health & Safety, Employment Law, and Pensions, and your Business Plan must include policies explaining what you are going to do about all of these as appropriate, including identifying any rules that you believe don’t apply to your business. If you’re not going to employ anyone then one of the biggest chunks of regulation doesn’t apply. If you don’t operate from a business premises, then the vast majority of Health & Safety regulations don’t apply. If you are over pensionable age or you decide to operate as a Sole Trader rather than a Limited Company (bad idea) then the Pensions regulations don’t apply.

Compliance is important. You don’t want the Government or Local Authority closing you down!

Next up are your Finances
You must have, within your Business Plan, a clear financial plan.

Where is the money coming from to start up your business? How much is needed?

Now some people will say that you don’t need any investment to start a business.

I’m sorry but there’s no other description for that statement other than that it’s a complete lie.
You cannot start a business on nothing – but you can start it on ‘a shoestring’.

You don’t need a lot of money to get your own business off the ground, but you must invest some.

If you’ve completed a training course as a coach therapist or healer, you’ll already invested some money, maybe quite a lot of your own personal funds. This is now your investment in your business and as such can be reclaimed when your business starts to earn money

How are you going to raise enough ‘working capital’ to keep it running without going into debt, and how are you going to ‘manage’ all that money!

As well as stating your policies about how you are going to collect payments, what you’re going to do in the case of non-payment and a number of other considerations

One of the key features of your financial plan will be a Cash Flow Forecast.
This is a forecast or at the very least a guess about how much money is going to flow in and out of your business each month for at least the next 12 months.

It’s really important as it becomes one of the key instruments you use to measure and manage your business.

Then there’s Marketing and Sales

Is there a ‘market’ for what you plan to do?

Have you done your market research? Who are your target market, the people to whom you expect to provide your services – your potential clients?

This is an aspect of business that really ‘terrifies’ a lot of people when, and before, they start.

Have you considered how you will get your product or service ‘to market’, how you will you ‘sell’ it to your potential clients.

People are not going to beat a path to your door even if you have built a better mousetrap!

Building the Plan

Once you have a good idea of how you’re going to deal with all this you can start to build up your Business Plan.

This is not a case of just filling out a form or template that a Bank might give you (sometimes even if you just want to open an account) but the first steps in the creation of your ‘Business Manual’ that details everything about how your business works.

But before you start on that you need to be aware of what could ‘go wrong’ and why.

We need to distinguish here between your plan for your business and a ‘Business Plan’ of the type that is sometimes requested when you need to borrow money or obtain other funding or help for your operations.
These ‘business plans’ are often defined by the potential funder and essentially ask specific questions to which they wish to know the answers – as such they can often be by no means comprehensive.

Your business plan, your plan for your business, does have to be comprehensive and the Personal Business Creation System will take you through it all in detail, but essentially there are five elements to the ‘plan’.
First there is an outline describing the purpose of the business, what you expect it to achieve, and the reason why you are setting it up.

Then we get into the body of the plan, consisting of how the business is going to operate, how it is going to be marketed, how it is going to be financed, and how it is going to ensure compliance with the various rules and regulations that affect it.

Operating Plan
Your Operating Plan covers several topics. What is your service and how is it going to be delivered and by whom? You need to describe how you are actually going to operate – how you are going to deliver your service. Next, who is responsible for what, training and development, qualifications of owners and staff, premises, location, and so on.

Marketing Plan
The Marketing Plan is sometimes seen as a separate entity, often by potential funders who ask for it alongside your Business Plan, which they see as purely financial.

Your Marketing Plan covers identification of your target market, market research, strategy and analysis, how you are going to find potential clients, how you are going to engage with them, and how you are going to turn them into long term clients of your business.

It will include topics such as pricing strategy, service offerings and levels and so on.

It’s not about how you get your offering to market, that’s Operations, it’s what you do with it when you get ‘there’ and of course defining where ‘there’ is – in other words, your target market.

Financial Plan
Your Financial Plan covers everything to do with money. Where you get the money you need to get your business to launch, how much you need and why.

It covers how much working capital you need to keep your business running, what profit you expect to make, how you are going to keep records and importantly your Cash Flow Forecast.

Compliance Plan
Your Compliance Plan will identify clearly which rules and regulations you believe affect your business and with which you need to be compliant. You should also make it clear which regulations you believe do not apply to your business to show that all legislation has been considered.

It is important to take advice from an independent commercial lawyer with experience in personal businesses in the ‘helping industry’ (not one from a company who provide compliance services!) just to make sure.

Exit Plan

Another aspect which may form part of your Business Plan is your ‘Exit Plan’. How do you foresee the conclusion or ‘wind down’ of your involvement in the business? Will you sell it (or it’s client base) to someone else, let it run ‘automatically’ on its own, or will you just ‘close’ it? When will you do this and why?

t all depends of course on the nature of your specific business but you do need to think about what happens at the ‘end’, when that will be, and how you will recognise it.

Policies

Finally, terms of trade, conditions of engagement, and policies covering activities, including a Privacy Policy, together with any disclaimers can be attached to your Plan in an Appendix.

Then you have everything about your business together in one place.

The Personal Business Creation System will take you through all this, step by step, in detail.