STEP 3: ENVISION the Future

What if you DO succeed? What will your new garden look like?  

After 2 years watching what grew in our yard, I saw the ArborVitae trees, daylilies and hosta thrived, and an old quince hung in there. We’d inherited hardy survivors, including plenty of invasive weeds.  

Now, we began to envision our new garden. We wanted it to include: 

1. perennials blooming throughout the growing season

2. a safe and imaginative place to play and grow 

3. vegetable plants to eat

What would you like to have in your garden?

Envision. For the business, I imagined where I wanted to be in 10-15 years. 

In the beginning, but before I knew exactly what I was building, people asked me for my business plan. Making a business plan was daunting with so many questions still to answer. Even though I’d made them as part of my job, it was not easy figuring out for me...how many customers I’d need, the cost of getting them, how many products at what prices, and the distribution systems. 

I knew I wanted the start-up: 

1. to have a strong team 

2. to make new products and help people live more fully, healthier days

3. to fit my lifestyle

But that’s not a business plan!  What would success feel and look like? What would I be selling? Where and how would we distribute our products?  How large would we like to grow? How to build a brand?  How to fund it?  What does success mean for you and your start-up?  What tools have helped you to brainstorm in the past?

So I started out where I could picture myself selling a product I loved.  I could easily imagine selling by going door-to-door.  How do you see yourself reaching new customers?

I asked myself these questions: What would I say to a potential customer so they’d open the door for me and then buy? How much would it cost to do that?  Which neighborhoods would I choose to go to and why? And then, how to replicate that process across many communities?  How many items would I need to sell to make it profitable to keep going and what type of sales team shall I need?  A rough business plan began to take shape in my mind. Note: the US Small Business Association has helpful templates for writing business plans.