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Step 1
Come up with a mission statement. Before you do anything write down your mission statement. In other words what is the mission your are trying to accomplish with your product or service.
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Step 2
Write down your business idea. If you are selling a new product write down what it is.
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Step 3
Write down what need your product or service addresses. Whatever it is you sell it must fill a need otherwise no one would buy it. Define the need that it fills.
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Step 4
Define how exactly you are going to sell and/or promote your business. Are you going to be a brick and mortar storefront or sell and advertise over the web. Don't worry about financials of either right now. In this process we are trying to define your businesses purpose and who your customers are.
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Step 5
Write down what makes your product or service different from all of the other similar products out there.
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Step 6
This step will require some research. I recommend going to the library and asking a librarian to help you out. In this step you need define how big your market is for your product or service and how much your customer is willing to pay for it. Based on this information define how big your market can grow. If you sell woman's suits that appeal to the 35 to 45 year old crowd, you can obviously come up with your growth and market numbers.
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Step 7
Define what your role will be in your company. Are you sales? Marketing? Accounting? Maybe you are all of the above. You need to define your role.
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Step 8
Will anybody be helping you? Do you need to hire additional help? If your new business will require help from others here is where you will write that down. Define what you need and what their roles will be.
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Step 9
In this step you need to write down how your customers will pay you and based on your market research in the previous step, how much you product or service will cost your customer.
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Step 10
This also requires some research. How much money will you need to get your product based or service based business off the ground? Write down everything it will take to get your product from design, through production and into the customers hands. If is a service define the cost of getting this service to the customer, the tools you usea and so on.
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Step 11
Define where your startup money is coming from. Now that you know how much you need, where is it coming from? Friends, family, banks, savings etc.
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Step 12
Define your success. In order to know whether or not you are succeeding, you need to define what it means to you to be successful. If your goal is to sell a million dollars in suits, write that down. Maybe you want to sell 1,000 suits, write that down. Whatever is success to you, then you need put it into the plan.
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Step 13
Write down your milestons. Every business has a milestone. Whether it is getting your first customer, making your first dollar or selling your first product, these are all type of milestones. Date each milestone and that will hold you accountable to your plan.
