As I reflected on my business journey, at every stage of my business development I was always planning for the future. At the earlier stages of my business the goals were to get clients and sales. I spent the first few years really learning and understanding the target client that I was looking for and understanding my competition.

Once I had a handle on that, the next stage was growth, taking the model that I developed and repeating that process, over and over again. Finally the last stage was focusing on building value, and looking for an exit partnership to take my business to the next level.

Having a plan for your business is critical. Too many times I have seen good ideas and great businesses fail because of a sheer lack of a plan. As you personally go through ups and downs in business and in life the plan will sustain you and keep you on track. Businesses are just like anything else growth is an indicator of health, without a plan you can’t sustain growth, without goals you can’t push yourself to the next level and without a sense for what you want for the business you can’t understand your final destination. Does this mean I executed and ran my business with flawless efficiency. No, far from it. I made lots of mistakes along the way and learned a great deal about business. Here are some of my tips for any new business learning from my mistakes.

A plan is good, but things change fast, re-evaluate your plan every 6 months or sooner to ensure you are pivoting and changing with the times and conditions around you.

Write down your plan. One of the biggest regrets I had early on is having a solid plan, in my mind and not writing it down in a formal way.

Learn how to write a business plan and a roadmap for your business. Think about where you want to be in 1, 3, 5, and 10 years down the road. If you can’t see yourself working at the business that far out but you love working at the business today then thats an indicator that you probably will want to plan for an exit in the future. Understanding that is important.

Realize that not every business is meant for global domination. The size of your company and profits are determined by the size of the market that you work in. The more niche the smaller your business will be, the more general or broad the more growth opportunities you have.

Having a plan, and being willing to take risks and being open to change will put you on the path to success. Understand that no matter how flawless your plan or execution you will still fail, and it’s ok, failure is part of the process and part of the journey. Winston Churchill once said “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” in business and in life that’s very much true. Never give up, persevere and you will succeed.