www.dunwiley.co.uk

BusinessPlanning

101

Initial thoughts and questionsabout building a successful

business.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Introduction

What are you doing?

The Market, Competition and Product

Business Model, Pricing and Finance

Risks

Table of Contents

Building a business is exciting. There is so much to think about, so many aspects

to consider and lots of wonderful new ideas to explore.

In the midst of this journey, we need some structure. Starting a business always

involves risk, and in the absence of some key underlying principles, many

businesses are doomed before they even begin. Our objective is to work with

you to reduce that risk.

Each of the thoughts in this document collectively form part of the start of a

robust business plan for how you proceed with your business concept. The

objective here is to make you stop and think; to tease out important truths in an

early stage of your thinking and mitigate risks before they become issues.

I know it's a lot, but answering these questions will provide you with a lot of the

though process required to launch a robust and effective product or service. It's

a great discipline to try and answer these for yourself, and make sure you're

really clear on what you're doing.

All the best,

David Magee

Managing Director

www.dunwiley.co.uk

Introduction

Purpose

State, in one sentence, what your product or service is.

Problem

Describe the pain of the customer – what problem are you solving, and how big

is it?

How does the customer solve their problem today?

Solution

Demonstrate how you can solve the problem, and make the customer's life

better.

Provide a use case or scenario - give a typical example of somebody who would

use the product or service and how it would benefit them.

Remember - try to think in terms of benefit to the customer. What's in it forRemember - try to think in terms of benefit to the customer. What's in it for

them? How are you making their lives better? them? How are you making their lives better?

What are you doing?by David Magee

Customers and Market

Who are your target customers?

How many of them are there?

How will you reach them?

Do you have a marketing plan?

How will you use social media and video?

How will you create 'raving fans', rather than 'only just satisfied' clients?

What value can you create and give away?

Competition

Who else provides a similar product or service? Create a list of competitors and

assess their strengths and weaknesses.

Who else is successful in this industry? Do you know how and why they have

become successful?

List where you see your advantages and disadvantages compared to the

competition.

Product or Service Roadmap

How do you see your product or offering growing, changing or adapting over

time?

How will technology change your business? Will it disrupt your plans or can you

capitalise on it to enable you even further?

The Market, Competition andProductby David Magee

How will your business generate revenue? Who is going to pay you?

Will you have a percentage of recurring revenue or rely on one-off payments?

How much will it cost to a) set this business up, and b) maintain it?

PricingPricing

How much will you sell your product or service for and how will you find out

if this is an appropriate price?

Will you have opportunity to close follow-on purchases from existing clients?

Will you offer upgrades, service levels or subscriptions?

FinanceFinance

Can you project what your income will look like month-by-month, and out over a

course of 1-2 years?

What is your financial target for Year 1?

What will your month-by-month expenditure look like?

Business Model, Pricing andFinanceby David Magee

Where are the areas of uncertainty that may create problems? How will you

deal with these before they arise?

What will be the really difficult part of this business? Not the time-consuming

part, necessarily, but the hardest obstacles to overcome?

How will you address these challenges?

What happens if you can't fix these problems? What's the Plan B?

And finally a sanity check - is your plan S.M.A.R.T?S.M.A.R.T? Make sure your goals are

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound.

Head over to Dunwiley to learn more, or dropme an email at david@dunwiley.co.uk - I'd love

to talk!!

Risksby David Magee