99% start up will fail without a BUSINESS PLAN. Here’s why and how you can break the cycle. [With ChatGPT Prompt]

[For Traditional Chinese version, please click here 請按此閱讀正體中文板]

Having a business plan is like using your sat nav before setting off on a journey, imagine if you're driving aboard, and you've got a dinner date to catch. Would you set your sat nav, or would you just drive with your instincts? While the latter might eventually lead you to your goal, it's fraught with uncertainty, potential wrong turns, and unnecessary delays. The journey to your destination—much like the path to business success—can be significantly clearer and more straightforward with the right guidance - essentially that means research and planning, luckily with the help of AI, everything is a lot easier nowadays. If you're here for ChatGPT prompt, please click here.

5 Reasons that business plan is a must

Especially if you're also looking for a shop.

1. Entry Ticket to Prime Location: Some landlords or agents ask for BP for initial screening - If you’re into sought after location, often landlord will get a lot of interests, make sure your proposal is extra good and plan ahead to talk about growth, and longevity of the business, otherwise, you’ll struggle to fight with established businesses.

2. Provide clarity and direction: A business plan forces you to thoroughly strategise for success with measurable and achieveable goals. It's about preemptively addressing the what, how, and why of your operational needs—marketing, inventory, staffing—to ensure every resource is perfectly aligned with your vision.

3. Market Mastery Through Analysis: Understanding the battlefield is half the war won.A thorough market analysis reveals the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, current trends shaping the industry, and, most importantly, the desires and needs of your customers. This knowledge not only informs your business strategy but also highlights the profitability and competitive nature of your market before you make your first move.

4. Financial Foresight: When it comes to spending, there could be a lot of unexpected outgoings, if you have not yet done a thorough research, this will give you a chance to make a close to actual forecast, this is extra important for initial setup.

5. Know the law: Knowledge of the legal landscape is not optional. From business, operations licence to health and safety laws, a business plan that incorporates legal considerations lays a foundation for compliance, steering clear of future pitfalls that could jeopardise your business in the future.

Basic Structure

This is just to paint an overall picture, we will soon launch a post to talk about each session in depth.

Business Overview & Business Objective - What do you want to achieve as a business, try to give yourself a 3 months goal; half a year goal; one year goal; three year goals; and five years goals. These will act like check points for your business, make sure all the goals are SMART: be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Side note: Although goals should be achievable, they should also be ambitious enough to drive your team to perform at the best.

By setting clear, ambitious goals at various checkpoints, you not only provide a roadmap for your business's growth but also create a mechanism for evaluating progress and making informed decisions along the way. This approach keeps your business agile, focused, and driven towards continuous improvement and success.

Lastly, be prepared to revise your goals based on market feedback, new opportunities, or unforeseen challenges.

Market and competitors analysis:

Target Customers & Customer potential: Detail the demographics, psychographics, and purchasing behaviour of the potential customer base. Highlight any identified needs or gaps in the market that the business intends to address.

Market & Competitors Analysis - A summary of key competitors in the industry, and customer preferences, make use of SWOT analysis, to provide an insights into what is currently lacking in the market and how the business plans to fill these gaps.

SWOT analysis - Strength, Weaknesses, Market Opportunities, and Future threat.

Strengths: What advantages does the business have over competitors?

Weaknesses: Where does the business lack compared to competitors?

Opportunities: Potential market gaps or emerging trends the business can focus on.

Threats: External factors that could pose challenges to the business's success.

Action Plan - Outline detailed strategies for staffing, stocking, and marketing. Include timelines, key responsibilities, and expected outcomes for each action.

Financial Plan - A breakdown of startup costs, ongoing expenses, and revenue streams, and also forecasts for the next 1-5 years, including projected income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets.

ChatGPT Prompt

The quickest way to draft and organise a business plan effectively would be to import all the raw data from your research, such as market analysis, financial figures, competitor insights, and more). You can then leverage ChatGPT to craft a comprehensive business plan for you.

When drafting your prompt:

Role play: Think of a professional that you're likely to consult for specific matters. Ask ChatGPT be that specific role.

Be Specific: The more detailed and specific the information you provide, the more accurate and useful the business plan ChatGPT can generate.

Follow-Up: Use follow-up prompts to refine each section of the business plan based on the initial draft provided by ChatGPT.

Iterate: Business planning is an iterative process. Use ChatGPT to make adjustments as your business evolves and as you gather more data.

By leveraging ChatGPT in this way, you can create a dynamic and comprehensive business plan that not only serves as a roadmap for your business but also can be easily updated as new information comes to light.

Here's a structure approach to make use of ChatGPT fully:

Business Overview & Business Objective

We'll going to deal with business overview at the end, because essentially, that's a summary of the business plan itself. So, we are going to start off with asking chat GPT to be a pro:

"You are an expert business plan writer, you are going to assist with our business plan. Based on the following data I've collected, I need assistance in composing a detailed business plan. Here are the key components and data I've gathered. You may suggest or add any value-adding information when required.

(In this session, you will need to at least include the following as a background info)

Name of the business:

Location:

Specific business type:

Legal entity (ltd, plc, sole trader)

Name of founders:

Key ability and qualification of each founder:

Business Objective and goals

Target customers

Key player in the industry

Please make use of the above data, and generate a business objective Include specific goals for the next 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years. Ensure these objectives are measurable and aligned with the overall vision of the business."

Target Customers:

"Now move on to identify and to analyse our target customers: [ describe your target customers here]

Detail the demographics, psychographics, and purchasing behaviour of the potential customer base. Highlight any identified needs or gaps in the market that the business intends to address. "

Market and competitors analysis:

"A summary of the industry trends and customer preferences. A list of direct and indirect competitors, with notes on their strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning. Insights into what is currently lacking in the market and how the business plans to fill these gaps."

SWOT Analysis: "Make use of the findings above, compose a SWOT analysis for me, to compare my company to other players in the market. Please give detailed analysis on Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threat.

Action Plan:

"With the above finding, outline the strategies for staffing, stocking, and marketing. Include timelines, key responsibilities, and expected outcomes for each action. Please make sure theses strategies are in line with our business objectives [paste all your business objectives here to remind ChatGPT]

Financial Projection

"In light of the above findings, provide a detailed breakdown of startup costs, ongoing expenses, and revenue streams. Financial forecasts for the next 1-5 years, including projected income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets."

Business Overview Once you're happy with everything, copy all the answers to chatGPT ask ask it to provide a business overview for you.

Last not but least,

1. ChatGPT is best as a analytic tool rather than research tool atm, in order to provide an useful plan, I'd recommend to do most of the researches on your own, because surprisingly, not all data on actually online.

2. You can always ask ChatGPT to provide alternative solution / insights to your problems/ question. But once you've done so, please copy all the relevant data, and ask ChatGPT to consider the new set of data instead, otherwise it can go wild.

Author: K. Lo

Co-founder of Tabula Rasa Group Ltd

Business and Life coach

London School of Economic and Political Science graduate

[正體中文板]

Business Plan 的重要性【附ChatGPT提令】

想像一下你正在海外駕車，並且有一個晚餐預訂要趕，你會設置導航嗎？還是僅憑本能駕駛？雖然後者最終可能也會到目的地，但它充滿了不確定性、潛在的錯誤轉彎和不必要的延誤。

通往目的地的旅程 - 就像通往商業成功的道路，幸運的是，時代的進步令一切都變得容易。

如果是因為"ChatGPT指令"閱讀此文章，請點擊這裡，請留意ChatGPT的指令會是英文的，因為此中文板文章的目的是幫助在英港人創業時所面臨的問題，如果有需要，你可以在ChatGPT出答案後，複製到另一個對話視窗， 然後輸入"Please translate into Traditional Chinese, to be read by Hong Kong people"，但用英文去和ChatGPT互動出來的結果，會遠比用中文的成果再翻譯更為準確。

在英創業，5個必需Business Plan的理由：

1. 租鋪要求：一些業主或地產會要求新成立公司提供商業計劃，以作初步篩選時之用。

2. 方向明確：商業計劃強迫你徹底為成功制定策略，具有可衡量和可實現的目標。

3. 分析掌握市場：了解戰場是贏得一半戰爭，徹底的市場分析可以令我們快速了解本地巿場，揭示競爭對手的優勢和弱點，以及最重要的，目標客戶的需求。

4. 財務預見：如果你還沒有進行徹底研究，這將給你一個機會做出接近實際的預測。

5. 了解法律：香港和英國的營商環境，和法律要求也完全不一樣：運營許可 (liecensing)、 健康和安全法 (Health and Safety)、和Council申請等等，均需預留一個長時間去和各政府部門進行溝通。

以下來的帖子旨在提供一個基本結構給大家，未來會再出blog文去一一詳細分析，特別是和Council交手。

基本結構

業務概覽和業務目標 Business Overview & Business Objective - 簡單來說，就係設立SMART的目標，以確保團隊可於預定時間內到達不同的位置，一般來說，可以3個月的、半年、一年、三年、五年的時間線去制度目標。

SMART 的意思是指：具體（Specific）、可衡量（Measurable）、可達成（Achievable）、相關（Relevant）且有時間限制（Time-bound）。

P.S.雖然目標應該是可達成的，但建議設立較有野心的，以驅使你的團隊表現出最佳狀態。

最後，根據市場反饋、新機會或預料之外的挑戰準備修訂你的目標。

市場和競爭者分析 Market and competitors analysis:

目標顧客和顧客潛力 Target Customers & Customer potential: 詳細描述潛在顧客基礎的人口統計、心理圖像和購買行為。強調業務打算解決的市場中識別出的任何需求或空白

市場和競爭者分析 Market & Competitors Analysis - 行業主要競爭者的總結，以及顧客偏好，利用SWOT分析，提供對市場目前缺乏什麼以及業務計劃如何填補這些空白.

SWOT分析 - 優勢、劣勢、市場機會和未來威脅。

優勢 Strength ：競爭對手有什麼優勢？

劣勢 Weaknesses：相比競爭對手，你缺乏什麼？

機會 Opportunities：可以專注的潛在市場空白或新興趨勢

威脅 Threats：可能對業務成功構成挑戰的外部因素。

行動計劃 Action Plan - 概述招聘、入貨和市場營銷的詳細策略。包括每項行動的時間表、關鍵責任和預期成果。

財務計劃 Financial Plan - 啟動成本、持續費用和收入來源的分解，以及包括預測收益表、現金流量表和資產負債表在內的未來1-5年的預測。 

有關利用ChatGPT的小tips:

角色扮演：想像你可能會咨詢具體事宜的專業人士，於指令一開始便指示ChatGPT以該角式來思考

具體性：你提供的信息越詳細和具體，ChatGPT生成的商業計劃就越準確和有用。

後續問題跟進：使用後續提示根據ChatGPT提供的初稿細化商業計劃的每個部分。

迭代：商業計劃是一個迭代過程。隨著你的業務發展和你收集到更多數據，使用ChatGPT進行調整。

通過這種方式利用ChatGPT，你可以創建一個既作為業務路線圖又可以輕鬆更新以獲取新信息的動態和全面的商業計劃。

以下是充分利用ChatGPT的結構化方法：

請點擊這裡，請留意ChatGPT的指令會是英文的，因為此中文板文章的目的是幫助在英港人創業時所面臨的問題，如果有需要，你可以在ChatGPT出答案後，複製到另一個對話視窗， 然後輸入"Please translate into Traditional Chinese, to be read by Hong Kong people"，但用英文去和ChatGPT互動出來的結果，會遠比用中文的成果再翻譯更為準確。

最後，預祝各位生意興隆

小編K