If I set up my business with a partner, shall we both have a business plan or combined them?

Question

If I set up my business with a partner appose a proprietorship shall we both have a business plan or combined them in the description, even if we have two part of the business?

Answer 1

You need to combine your business plans. What if he wants to take the business direction east and you want west? You need to get on the same page.

There has to be one central theme and you both need to be rowing in the same direction. You can have different talents and do different things withing the origanization, but the direction and plan needs to be in sync.

Answer 2

The business plan is for the business. Within the business plan you will have goals and strategies and operational objectives and those can be assigned to each partner as appropriate.

A wonderful business plan outline can be found at
www.startup.wsj.com which is the Wall Street Journal business site.

A business plan is vitally important because it forces you to think through your business. 90% of businesses which have business plans deviate from them in the first 90 days. That is why business plans need to be reviewed on a quarterly basis.

The business plan is a roadmap. It demonstrates that you have though seriously about important matters like the competition, the available customers, operating costs, profit margins etc.

Here's a neat approach: I call it the C/B/A approach.
Most people plan going forward using A/B/C.
This approach says start from the goal (in minute detail, for every aspect of the business).

The goal is C. So once you have the goal you ask this question:
What is the nex IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING step which must be taken which will GUARANTEE the result of C. and you keep doing this backward.

Example: C is make $1000 profit on the sale of a car.
The next immediately preceding step which must be taken which will guarantee that result is: getting paid an amount of money which exceeds all of my expenses by $1000.

It is not finding a buyer, or advertising the car. Those things have to happen but much further down the line.

Finally be very careful about taking a partner. Be sure that you have written agreement about who has what responsibilities and how the authority will be shared and the profits and the expenses.

Most every business takes longer than anybody planned, takes more money than people expected, and requires more hours of labor than anybody thought. So when your intial capital runs out who is going to put in the extra money. If one partner can't contribute any more money is he going to give up a share of the business or is the one who puts in the extra money going to get paid a good high interest rate. What happens if one of the partners get an offer in another city. etc. etc. etc.

Partnerships are very dangerous.

Answer 3

If you set up a business with a partner, you should have one combined business plan. After all you have to both be reading from the same script, right?

Answer 4

I don't think you can setup a "Sole Proprietorship" with a partner. That would be a "Partnership". Unless you setup two Sole Proprietorships and just call him a partner. If that's the case, the only reasons to have a business plan (BP) are for bank financing purposes or just to keep yourself on track.
If it's for financing, then the answer to your question is, "Who's signing the bank loans papers?" If both are signing, then one BP. If each of you are signing separate bank loans, then 2 BP's.

Answer 5

You probably should have one combined business plan, so as not to have contradictions within the partnership. If there are two parts to the business (not sure what you meant by this though), there could be subparts of the main plan that apply to each respective branch of the business.

Answer 6

One business plan

Answer 7

better have a partner in diffrent area, when thing get's big, you both has a diffrent horizon.
u don't need to totally integrate the two business plan, just be clear about who is doing what in where for whom

Answer 8

yep that's what I say combine your business plans is a must or you will just wind up working for nothing