The path the being a successful entrepreneur is fraught with many obstacles, which is probably why so many small businesses fail before they reach their fifth year. Working for yourself is hard, so you need to ensure you give yourself every possible advantage in order to find business success. Before you start down the path of owning a small business, take time to plan your route so that you have some sort of direction in your endeavor.

Young Entrepreneur has an excellent article that discusses how to write a business plan. There are many ideas of how to write a plan for your business, from a simple outline to a detailed plan of attack. The Young Entrepreneur article tends to lean towards the latter way of planning your business, with a fairly detailed list of things to consider in your business plan.

There are many things to consider when you are planning your business, such as:

• What does your business do, and how does it do it?
• Who is your target customer?
• How are you going to reach your customer and what type of marketing do you plan on using?
• What equipment is needed as you start your business and how many employees will you need?
• What licenses and permits will you need before you start?
• How are you going to pay for all of this?

The above list just barely scratches the surface of what the Young Entrepreneur article outlines. One thing that they do touch on, which I think is extremely important, is what makes your business different than the competition? What is your competitive advantage?

It isn’t good enough to create a beautiful business plan, outlining everything from what your business does to what small business services you are going to use along the way. You also need to fully explain, and understand, what makes your business different. How is your company going to stand out from the dozens, to hundreds, of competitors? If you are going to be a copycat company, then you are probably destined to fail.

Spend a lot of time considering what your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is. In other words, how your company is different from the competition and how you are going to convince customers that your company is the one to choose.

In order to give yourself a leg-up, spend a good deal of time thinking about your business, planning it out as best as possible. Of course, as you get things going, your plan will most likely need change. Revisit your business plan on a regular basis to make necessary course corrections as you better understand your company and your customers.