Flying Blind? Planning Is the Key to Success

By Gail Doby, ASID
CVO and Co-Founder, Gail Doby Coaching & Consulting & Design Success University

Are you the kind of designer who gets what she wants or the kind who takes what she can get? The difference is in planning. If you don’t have a plan, you are at the mercy of whatever comes—or does not come—your way.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, lack of proper planning is one of the main causes why half of all new businesses fail within the first five years. Planning involves more than just thinking about the kind of business or clients you want to have. Before you can start planning you have to do your homework. A surprisingly large number of new business owners never do the research to find out if there is a demand for their service or product within their target market. They surge ahead on the blind faith that if they open a business, the customers will follow. Often they underestimate the amount of time, capital and marketing it takes to get a new business off the ground.

To succeed you need a business plan, and that plan needs to be based on current, accurate information about your target market, your competition, and the financial realities of the business you are in (e.g., how much you can charge and how much clients are willing to spend). At minimum, you need to have a reasonably good idea of how much business you can attract in the year ahead, how much revenue that business likely will generate, your expenses and necessary outlays, how much capital you need to keep the business operating while you wait to get paid, the costs of acquiring that capital, and, finally, what kind of profit you can expect when all of the above has been accounted for.

Be realistic. For example, you should allow yourself a minimum of 10 hours a week for marketing and networking to bring in business. You will need to spend some time managing the business and some time attending to problems and emergencies. How many hours of billable time does that leave you per week? That’s your baseline.

Once you develop your plan, you can begin to make adjustments based on how your expectations stack up against marketplace realities. You may want to extend your plan out two or three years to determine how you can reach your desired level of business or profit. In any case, when you have a plan, you are in control. It’s the rudder that will steady the ship when the waters get rough, keeping you on course to your destination, rather than floundering around hoping someone will rescue you.

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