Steps for Becoming an Entrepreneur 5: Planning

For today’s post on the steps need to become an entrepreneur, we will be talking about the planning and preparation required to be successful. We have to become the best entrepreneurs out there and one of the aspects to accomplish this, is following best practices and minimizing risk. Planning ahead of time is one of the items required to accomplish this.

Before I start to talk about the subject of today’s post, let me be clear. Planning is very important for any entrepreneur and basically for any project. However, planning alone doesn’t guarantee success. However, if you plan and you analyze your risk there will be a higher change of being successful.

In the past articles of this series I’ve introduced the topic or preparation. Today I want to dig in deeper and analyze further aspects of this topic. Preparation is something we have to start doing from the moment you have a great idea for a project and you want it to become a reality. However, this is an ongoing task and you have to be preparing yourself all the time for new challenges and situations.

When you begin the entrepreneur road, you must plan what you’re going to do at the beginning of this journey. For example, in the first months or probably years, you won’t be receiving a steady income. It would be great if you could start a new entrepreneur project and in the first months it would become an instant success. However, this rarely happens, and the first months and years are quite complex. So you have to plan how you will survive this time, with no income and still many things to pay for.

At this early stage, you also have to make some commitments. For instance, until your income is steady, you might decide that the best option is to cancel premium cable TV services and other luxuries.

As part of the early planning stage, you will probably want to write a business idea and a business plan. Here you must layout the general events of how you’re going to make it. Also, it’s great if you create a financial model and make the projections for 3 scenarios: optimistic, normal and pessimistic. By doing this you’ll have a comparison point and you’ll be able to take action if this is required. All this items have a time line constrain, so it would be great if you had a timeline to keep track of your advances.

As planning is a continuing task, it is advisable that every couple of months you analyze your progress. You have to prepare for what’s coming ahead. Some task will be simple, but other will require a greater effort. Make this analysis for what you’ll be accomplishing at the short, medium and long run.

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