During my 12 years of being in business and talking to many, many business owners during that time, I’ve found that when it comes to creating a strategic business and marketing plan for their business, these business owners generally fall into one of these oven camps:

The perfectionist camp. These business owners plan everything in detail and won’t dive in until everything is perfect. They constantly adjust, change and revise their plan. The problem with this approach is that it will never be perfect. Your business plan will never be perfect, so you better start now and get going. You can always modify/change/update as you go.

The BSO camp. These business owners are constantly distracted by Bright Shiny Object Syndrome, never finishing one project before moving on to the next. The problem with this approach to running your business is that you never get anything done. Nothing is ever implemented. You never see results (or very mediocre results). Then there is no real business growth and everything becomes confusing and overwhelming.

The boxing arena for myself. Then there is the business owner who will not create a business plan because if they do, they feel they will lock themselves in and miss out on opportunities that arise. The problem with this approach is that by not having a business, you don’t have a real roadmap to grow your business; nothing is done in a very strategic way. And the irony is that you end up missing opportunities because you don’t have a point of reference for anything you do.

Camp I don’t know what to do. And finally there is the business owner who just doesn’t know what to do. They are very confused by all the different elements of online business management and don’t really know where to start when it comes to running their business. They don’t know what their starting point should be. Because they don’t know where to start, it’s really hard for them to create a strategic business and marketing plan that works for them.

Despite all these different scenarios, there is one thing in common. Without a strategic business and marketing plan, it will be very difficult to grow your business and maintain it in the long term. Opportunities will be missed. Income will be lost. And you won’t have a benchmark against which to measure your success.

That’s why it’s so important that you spend a little time planning what you want for your business. And I recommend business owners who have never created a plan before to start with a 90-day business plan first. Even by creating a plan that focuses on a shorter period of time, it will provide them with much-needed structure to grow their business.