Business Plan Basics

A business plan sets a Company’s purpose, goals, strategies, and decision-making principles. The Plan can be a very effective tool for a business at any stage of its life, whether starting out or readily established in the market. Unfortunately, many start-ups fail to plan, and can therefore plan to fail.

Most internet guides explain Business Plan’s as a super formal, boring, and complicated “document”. Company’s will write business plans just for the sake of writing it, and ignore it as the crucial tool it actually can be. It’s not inherently bad, but it can be more cumbersome and less useful. Your operation will find more use in a plan that supports your vision with clarity and direction, rather than static jargon copy-pasted from a random template.

If you’re reading this, you’re most likely a candle maker, but these principles still apply regardless of what you do or where you’re at. Even if you’re just selling candles by yourself at craft fairs or online, you are still a business and should still have a plan (even if you make candles in your kitchen).

Why?

A well-written business plan will enable your operation to:

• Efficiently manage mission-critical resources, like time, money, and skill-sets
• Set metric-based goals for every area of growth and improvement
• Build robust strategies to achieve your business goals
• Clearly outline the purpose of your work as a foundation for making decisions about the business
• Reflect and learn on the past to continuously transform shortcomings into strengths
• Understand your market and customer so you can build systems that grow into that niche

Business Plans should be a living document for your work so they can transform as you grow. Every single word in your business plan should be useful for strategy, growth, or explanation – discard any sections or literature that doesn’t help you achieve your vision.

What to include in a business plan

A business plan for candle making isn’t terribly different from a normal business plan, except for more specific items you can include to narrow this tool to your niche.

Only include items of the plan that are actually useful. For example, remove the “Executive Summary” section if it doesn’t help you grow, strategize, or manage. This document should live and breathe with your business as you navigate each day, decision, and delivery.

The following sections outline fundamental components to include in your plan. Most companies probably need some version of these components – they are somewhat foundational to any organized business. Trim and add as you see fit, of course.

Vision & Mission Statement

Don’t craft the mission statement to be a marketing tool. That’s what a slogan is for. Instead, lay a concrete foundational vision for the work you do.

Major decisions should always support the principles and ideology outlined in the vision – it is the heart of your work.

Be oddly specific in describing the purpose of your business:

• Who are you?
• What are you doing?
• Why are you doing this?
• For who are you doing this?
• How will you do this?

Feeding America, a humanitarian charity, very clearly outlines their mission on their website:

“Our mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.”

It’s an amazing mission crafted on specific ideas and principles. They will always expand and grow in the spirit of the mission.

Current State

Understanding where you are today helps inform where you want to be tomorrow. Your benchmark for improvements starts with an honest evaluation of where you are currently at. This area of the plan could include:

• Financial evaluation – cash flow, assets, investments, budgets
• Personnel & staffing – total staff, work assignments/positions, and scheduling
• Assets – equipment, supplies, and inventory
• Community – competition, partnerships
• Product Line – services and products offered on the market
• Customers – reach, markets, and profile (the ideal customer)

Anything your record as current state should be specific and measurable, if applicable. These items represent your business maturity.

Target State

Indicate your goals for each category identified above. For instance, if you capture a revenue stream of $1,500 per week, the target state might be $1,900 per week in that same category.

Building metric-based goals (below) requires you to identify the future state of your work. The state identified in this section represents the business when you next review the business plan. The beat of this event depends on your company size and leadership styles. Smaller shops that want to grow quickly should revisit the business plan monthly.

The result of this section might look like:

Component	Current State May, 2020	Target State June, 2020
Weekly Revenue	$1,500	$1,800
Total Staff (Full Time Equivalent)	2	2

Showing you expect growth in Weekly Revenue but don’t expect Total Staff to change in the next month.

Product Line Development Strategy

Every business offers a service or product. Candle makers often stray into the world of soaps or hygiene products. Use this section to outline your current offering, including how the business will use its resources to improve it.

Sub-sections of this may include:

• Review of current market offering . A description of all products, services, price points, and marketplaces you generate business and revenue from.
• Development work. Additions to the current market offering that aren’t available yet. Include how these will serve the Mission Statement, a strategy for rolling these out, and the expected time-to-market.
• Product line modifications. Items you expect to add, remove, or update in the coming time period of your business plan (or greater, if it makes sense).

Goals & Strategies

Business goals should line up with your Target State outlined above. You can literally use those changes as business goals, or you could build more granular, “supportive” goals to meet target state.

Instead of a goal like, “Increase weekly revenue by $300“, build a more supportive, measurable directive like, “Increase weekly revenue of 16-oz container candles on Facebook Marketplace by $100″, and, “Increase weekly direct-marketing weekly revenue by $100“.

A largely ignored component of a traditional business plan is a focus on your personal efforts and health. Including personal and well-being goals in a business plan brings out the human part of your work. Real people work at companies, after all. It’s important to take care of them, even if it’s just you.

Above all, make any goals measurable and realistic. Build Rome one road at a time. At least 80% of the goals here should fit into the period of time your current and target state capture, but it’s okay to keep larger business objectives in this section too.

Most every goal should have a supporting strategy, but this is a balancing act. “Just doing it” won’t bring you tremendous success, but over-planning can lead to feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, and guilty if you build action plans that reach too high (or stretch too much).

Areas of Improvement

This can be the hardest area to write since it exposes everything you’re not good at.

Understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are is an exercise in humility and introspection. The greatest athletes constantly evaluate the parts of their game that need the most work so they can continuously improve. The same philosophy applies to business.

What do you have the largest need for? Where are your skills lacking behind your competitors? Is it product photography? Is it a niche skill? Are your supplies or equipment deficient?

List everything your business needs to improve, even if you won’t be able to improve it right away, to constantly remind you where you can grow. Then figure out what you can do about each of these items, if anything, in the review period from now to your target state.

This list doesn’t have to be public, so don’t try to convince anyone you’re better at something than you actually are. If you need help determining areas of growth, ask your customers, employees, friends and family for an honest evaluation of your work.

How to use a business plan

Having a business plan means nothing if you don’t know how to use it. Make elements of the plan highly visible to remind you where you’re going as often as possible.

If you’re a one-person operation, this might mean printing it out and posting it above your workstation. Larger companies may intentionally set time aside throughout a month to review the plan as a leadership team.

Make a deliberate effort to review the plan as your work matures. It only becomes unnecessary overhead when the value is less than the time investment. Good business plan’s give your vision clarity. Great business plan’s map the road to Success.

Remember that a business plan is the foundation of your company. It includes the deepest strategies, metrics, and descriptions that characterize the vision of your work and how you will achieve it.

Conclusion

A business plan transforms the essence of a company vision into clear, action-oriented strategies aimed at success.

Don’t write a plan just to place it on the shelf and emit guilt at you when you see it. Planning your work in such a way allows your organization (even if it’s just you) to:

• Expose the obstacles and challenges you may face to achieve the major component of work
• Build a Company Vision with granularity to inspire and remind you and your staff what your work represents
• Define systems for delivering your product or service with measurable efficiency (good metrics)
• Continuously improve the product, service, morale, and overall well-being of the company and it’s people

Members of the Armatage Candle Company Academy can have a free Business Plan template when they sign up below. It’s just a template though – write your business plan to enhance your work, not create random overhead. Also included in the Academy are regular candle making tips, business development guides, and industry news sent in a email about once a month.

Happy planning!