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Well it's election day and I'm sure we are all distracted. However, I just read through this blog post from Rob James. It's a good one and he breaks down the 8 things he wishes he had been told prior to starting his business. I especially like his paragraph about business planning.

Here's a sneak peak...

3. Have a model, not a planOk, this is a bit of a ‘bum steer’. You do need a plan, but a fully documented business plan that is 100 pages long is so, um dotcom. Nobody reads those things, and at this stage, your business is changing by the day, if not the hour. The reason you have a business plan is to show that you have thought through all the issues. Good sessions in front of the whiteboard, and scribbling in paper gets the same result. You may want to have a 2 pager, but I generally find that whenever someone asks for one, I will rewrite from scratch anyway. But I can’t stress enough how important a model is. A model is just your spreadsheet plan of how you are going to make money. Not only is it good for any potential investors, but it is good for you. Because in your grand plan, you may have not worked out how to make money out of this idea yet. Well, if you don’t figure this out, who do you think is going to do it for you? The investors? Keep dreaming cowboy! Firstly, I speak to a lot of Angel Investors, Private Equity and VC’s and they are constantly frustrated by how many people come to them this way, and its a waste of time. If the VC does see the money potential, do you think they are going to disclose it to you? Of course not! They have to think of their investors. So they will try and get into the deal for as little as possible, and then they will make money from it. The model is also going to be good for you. After putting it together, you might see that you are not going to be cashflow positive for 24 months, can you last that long? How will you last that long? Or you might see that to realise a profitable business, you need 10 Million registered users, is that realistic? Believe me, you will live and die by your model - work on it often and don’t be scared to change it!

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