Looking back I don’t think I’ve ever written specifically about business plans before and the more I think about it the more I realise why, because they’re usually a pretty boring subject.

Let’s be honest, business plans are not fun things to write or to read, so I’ve quite happily avoided the subject up to now.

So why the sudden change of heart?

Well, my view on them is a little unconventional and I figured it’s time I told you why.

Admittedly I can think of a few reasons why you might write a business plan, but I can think of whole lot more reasons why you shouldn’t waste your time on them.

The fact that business plans are quite boring to write isn’t a good reason not to write one. However, here are my top five other reasons why you shouldn’t waste your time on one:

Business Plans are Guesswork

Almost everything you write in your business plan will be guesswork. Even worse, there’ll be some pretty inflated and optimistic claims in there that won’t reflect reality at all. Here’s some reasons why you’re going to be doing a lot of guessing:

o You don’t really know how many widgets you’re going to sell until you try to sell some.

o You don’t know what price point to use until you test to see what your market will accept.

o You don’t know whether your customer even wants your product/service until you find a market and ask them.

o You don’t know how to market your business until you try various methods, split test and see what works.

o You don’t know how new tools like Twitter might transform you business, if they aren’t yet invented when you write your five year plan.

So we’ve established that a business plan is largely a work of fiction. What other reasons are there not to write one?

They Give You a False Sense of Security

I don’t mind admitting I’ve written business plans in the past for some pretty bad ideas. Yet, I managed to make the business sound really viable, enough to fool even myself.

This is a dangerous thing to do because having a plan in place which looks great can give you a false sense of security.

With all the guesswork involved you’ll have a free rein to make your plan reflect what you want to happen, rather than what is likely to happen. This can lead you to think you have a great idea when maybe you don’t.

If you use your plan to convince other people it’s a great idea then the problem can escalate. Now those you seek approval from also think it sounds like a good idea, all based on fiction.

Those who have read anything I’ve written before will already know that I believe guesswork doesn’t contribute to a good business mindset and should be avoided whenever possible.

It’s best to just take action, try it out on a small scale with minimal cost and you’ll know very quickly whether it’s a good idea or a terrible idea.

Writing a plan doesn’t make your idea any better, it jut makes it sound better.

No-one Reads Business Plans

Besides yourself while you’re writing it, who are you expecting to read your shiny new 80 page business plan?

An investor might pretend they’ve read it all but the chances are they’ll only read the salient points. They could have established these anyway with a five minute conversation with you.

If you ever have time to read your plan yourself after you’ve written it then you’re probably not spending enough time actually running your business.

You can refer back to specific sections, but these will probably be outdated and obsolete just weeks after you’ve written them.

If you do refer back to it, the optimism you had when you wrote it might inspire you, until you realise the path your business has actually taken is nothing like what you planned.

This isn’t a failure on your part to follow the plan, it’s often a good thing. Let me explain why in my next point.

Your Business Should Be Flexible, Not Rigid

Your business needs to be flexible and dynamic. It needs to adapt to your customers needs, to the changes in the market, to the economic climate, to the available technology.

It needs to evolve as you experiment with advertising media, copy, headlines, price points, offers, social networking and split testing.

As you create a market you’ll be surveying them to find out what they really want from your business and then you’ll be creating exactly that.

You’ll be creating goals that you want to achieve and tracking them weekly or monthly using a spreadsheet.

The common factors here are flexibility, experimentation and adaptation.

Now tell me where a rigid five year business plan fits into this scenario? It doesn’t, because a rigid plan is the last thing you need.

Business Plans are a Distraction

Depending on what sort of business plan you’re writing it could take from a day to a week to write. That’s valuable time you could be spending actually creating and trying out your business.

I’m all for knowing exactly what you want from your business and creating one which supports the lifestyle you want. But let’s not be getting goals and plans mixed up here.

You should definitely have goals, and you should definitely be tracking your progress against them.

However kidding yourself that you know at the very beginning exactly how you’re going to achieve them isn’t going to help, because you can’t possibly know without experimenting first.

Allow yourself to be flexible, experiment and work out what takes you to your goals the faster. That’s a much better use of your time than writing a rigid plan that’ll be out of date a week after you wrote it.

I know my views on this might be a little controversial but I feel it’s only right that I share my thoughts with you. The time you save by not writing a lengthly plan will allow you to concentrate on more important things, like making your business actually happen.

Now my guess is, if there’s one thing that’s been annoying you the most as you read this it’s probably that if your business needs external funding then you do need a business plan. I agree, if you have no choice then you have to create on, that’s obvious.

If this is the case for you then write whatever your potential investors want to hear, as long as it sounds realistic.

Don’t spend forever on it though because when your funding’s in the bag you should put you business plan in your bottom draw and start the real work, figuring out what actually works and doing more of that.

You want to start your own online business, and to begin with you must build it with limited time because of your existing job, life or family situation – sound familiar?

I was the same way – the last thing I wanted to do is use my hour each day to work on a dead-end project or worse yet, work my butt off only to put money in someone else’s pockets without putting me in a better situation.

The fact is that most unsuccessful attempts to start an online business fail because they a) Don’t follow a plan of any kind – instead taking the shotgun approach or b) Follow a faulty plan that is designed to make other people money – not you.

When I first started out online 8-years ago, we hit some dead-ends pretty fast – but in doing so found one specific online business plan that really works no matter who puts it into action.

It works mainly because YOU have a product that can be controlled and sold 100% by you – you are not relying on making someone else wealthy, but instead can leverage your product to finally achieve the time and financial freedom we all seek as entrepreneurs.

There are 10 steps to this proven online business plan, and while this may seem like a great deal of work, the fact is that you can master this entire process in as little as 6-weeks while still working away at your current job.

So here is the plan.

1. Uncover a hot desire within a target market by visiting forums, discussion groups, blogs and social networking sites that clearly indicate a niche market with an interest in a subject area. Then, pull out the biggest frustration, challenge or desire from within that market – this will tpyically be a question like “How do I keep 10-pounds off for more than 6-months” or “What investment plan should I follow given today’s highly volatile economy?”

2. Publish a blog on your topic posting daily for a few weeks to build traffic. By blogging and submitting to various blog directories as well as social networking sites you will get more traffic along with some backlink advantage from authority sites improving your search engine position over time. You are “putting up your sign” for your new online business.

3. Start building your list right away by putting an opt-in forum with a bonus download on your main page(s). List building is so important because…

a) 8 out of 10 visitors will not buy on first visit to your site

b) You can double (and often triple or more) your conversion of visitors to sales by exposing them multiple times to your sales page

c) You can survey your list for further ideas, case studies, or sell them other people’s products and make affiliate commissions

d) You’ll have an eager group of customers highly motivated to buy from you in the future

4. Create your own book, ebook, manual, course, guidebook or formula in the form of either a digital written, audio or video product OR in the form of a physical print or Audio/Video shipped on CD or DVD. Address the major desire you researched in step 1 and structure the information as your own solution system. You can see an outline on how to structure your information product business in the complimentary video: http://www.infomarketerszone.com/public/254.cfm?sd=2

5. Write your compelling sales letter by targeting specific desires within your marketplace and turning those desires into benefit statements. For each compelling question your market has explicitly asked or is thinking about you should have a solution in your infoproduct and a benefit statement on your sales page.

6. Generate traffic by using multiple techniques such as writing articles submitting them to high authority article directories, publishing to your blog on a daily basis, advertising using pay-per-click, becoming active on leading social networking sites and emphasizing your affiliate program.

7. Seek out JV partners and super affiliates. Setup your affiliate program using the capability built into Clickbank or using other affiliate tracking software – then actively seek out top affiliates within your marketplace. Make it a part of your system to seek out at least 3-4 top JV partners each month.

8. As you begin selling your products (or giving away early review copies) work with your customers to build PROOF that your information and system works. This will build momentum and result in many more ebooks being sold. The entire process of building proof around your product should be built into the original design – for example, you can’t hope to get proof if you haven’t structured your infoproduct as something that is testable or usable.

9. Monitor and improve by building in an ongoing testing and monitoring function into your business system. What is working, what is not and make adjustments. For instance, you may be getting a TON of traffic, but conversion sucks – so you make changes to your sales letter. Or, you may suffering for traffic, so work a little harder at writing more (or better) articles, blog posting, and recruiting affiliates who can flood your site with traffic. It’s a plan-do-review process that leads to top selling sites.

10. Finally, structure your communications to your subscribers and customers in a way that they guide your business toward the best opportunities. By allowing comments to blog postings, surveying your subscribers and customers, speaking with your customers 1:1 and running frequent brainstorming or coaching calls your customers will tell you exactly what they want giving you the biggest advantage of all to stay ahead of your competition.

We know this plan works, we’ve applied it to multiple markets and have coached using this system for the last 5-years and now you can apply it to your own desire for an online business plan.

Every commercial property office has its unique commission challenges and listing opportunities; and that is in any property market and economic circumstances. To help with this a wise property sales agent will set some best practice guidelines and rules to keep the agency office and its staff on track to clearly established targets. A business plan for the commercial property office is essential to the process.

Whilst the buyers and sellers of property will undergo change and pressure, they still need to do property sales and rentals. It is the agency momentum and activity to capture that activity that is critical in the performance of a commercial real estate office.

The agencies that must close their doors when the market is poor predictably have no significant marketing and prospecting models. They simply take listing opportunity when it walks in the door. When the market slows and changes, that walk in business does not occur. This property office has no mechanism to grow market share when times are tough.

Many agencies operate with a code of practice or best practice business model to enable them to serve both the clients and the customers professionally. Some real estate franchising groups and marketing groups also offer this level of practice professionalism in their business model to which the agency can operate within.

You can structure your own code of practice and set some rules that will help your business down the path to success. Your business plan should involve and include the following criteria:

• business planning for the next 5 years with a great focus on the next 12 months
• income, and expense targets based on a staged growth model
• listing targets for each month of the year
• marketing strategies for the office and for the listings you generate
• internet and website initiatives plus a website that is optimized for your market and location
• database tools and strategies to grow your market intelligence and future opportunities
• a clearly defined target market from which you will attract listings for the office
• staff growth plans to implement as changes in the market occur
• performance guidelines and job specifications to ensure quality work targets
• ethical standards for sales, and property management staff
• documentation systems and rules to implement and track contracts and associated forms or processes in sales, rentals, or property management
• staff goals, objectives, targets, and processes that can be measured by KPI
• privacy and confidential business processes that apply with members of the public and clients
• quality assurance procedures that keep the office functioning within guidelines
• strategic plans that give stability and growth a priority in your business plan
• occupational health and safety rules that protect your staff and clients in situations of property activity
• financial targets and commission structures that reward good people and performing sales staff

These elements can and should be implemented in your real estate business plan. Once the plan is set it becomes your roadmap to a better and more stable office in any real estate market. This means better commissions and listings in any property market. Survive and thrive is a fundamental rule in real estate best practice, and this is in any market and at any time.