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In the meantime, start building your store with a free 14-day trial of Shopify. You’ll start receiving free tips and resources soon. If you’re looking for a structured way to lay out your thoughts and ideas, and to share those ideas with people who can have a big impact on your success, a business plan is an excellent starting point. To find relevant competitions in your industry and area, try Googling “business plan competition + ” and “business plan competition +. There are many business plan competitions offering prizes such as mentorships, grants, or investment capital. If you plan to approach other companies to collaborate, having a clear overview of your vision, your audience, and your business strategy will make it much easier for them to identify whether your business is a good fit for theirs-especially if they’re further along than you in their growth trajectory. Your business plan is one of the easiest ways to communicate your vision to potential new hires and can help build their confidence in the venture, especially if you’re in the early stages of growth. To write a business plan, you’ll need to research your ideal customer and your competitors-information that will help you make more strategic decisions. If you’ve got multiple ideas in mind, a rough business plan for each can help you focus your time and energy on the ones with the highest chance of success. Writing out your plan is an invaluable exercise for clarifying your ideas and can help you understand the scope of your business, as well as the amount of time, money, and resources you’ll need to get started.
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But there are several compelling reasons to consider writing a business plan, even if you don’t need funding. Investors rely on business plans to evaluate the feasibility of a business before funding it, which is why business plans are commonly associated with getting a loan.
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Jordan Barnett, Kapow Meggings Why write a business plan? Laying out a business plan helped us identify the ‘unknowns’ and made it easier to spot the gaps where we’d need help or, at the very least, to skill up ourselves.
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We had a marketing background but not much experience in the other functions needed to run a fashion ecommerce business, like operations, finance, production, and tech.
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