Your business plan is literally a roadmap to your success. If you and your family were going to drive to your vacation destination, you wouldn’t just get in the car and start driving without knowing where you were going. You shouldn’t start a business that way either.

If you are planning to have a simple home business, built around the Internet, you may not think you need a business plan. You may think only high level businesses need them in order to secure corporate funding but that’s not true.

Every business needs a business plan. When you sit down to write a business plan, you are literally mapping out the path you want to take in your business. Not only will your business plan help you define what you want to accomplish, it can help you streamline your business and create focus.

Many people may be under the impression that business plans are huge documents that can be difficult to write. On the contrary, you do not have to create a huge document at all. Your business plan can consist of a single page outlining your basic goals.

The point is to put your thoughts and ideas down in writing. When you take the time to think about your business, where you want your business to go, and estimate your costs as well as your profits, you are much more likely to succeed.

Rather than working sporadically and blindly, you will be able to look at your business plan and know exactly what you need to be working on. This can serve as a great motivator and help you reach your business goals.

A common myth is that a business plan is rigid. That once you write it, you have to stick to it. As your business grows, you can change your business plan to suit your needs. You may find certain aspects of your business growing at a faster pace than others and decide to focus more on those areas.

For instance, if you have a website and a podcast, you may one day decide to focus more on the podcast and not have as much written content on your site. Or you may decide to charge a membership fee for access to the written content.

Having your business plan by your side can help you evaluate your decisions and decide what is going to add value to your business and what will take away from your business. Before you start a new project, take out your business plan and see if this new project will fit in with the plans you have already made. This can save you a lot of time, energy, and money.