Normally, when a person decides to create a business, they start with two key questions: what can I offer? And what needs are there in the market? However, with this initial approach it will not be enough to create a complete business plan. The foundations of your business must be firm and secure, but at the same time, they must be flexible and subject to change to adapt to the dizzying pace in which the market is evolving. To do this, Alex Osterwalder and Ives Pigneur in 2004 devised the Business Model Canvas, a practical tool that will help you capture your business model and always keep it in mind to make the necessary improvements.
The initial ideas of a business model… eureka!
To start, it is important keep track of all ideas that we come up with for our business. For this, a simple notebook and a pen will help us, or if you are 100% digital, you can use a blank document from Google Drive. The latter could be a brilliant option especially if you already have some partners in your business that you want to get involved in generating ideas.
Write down everything that occurs to you, without any complexes or judgment, as if it were a brainstorming session. And take it easy. Spend a few hours thinking about it, or just write down those crazy ideas that occur to you anytime, anywhere. The shower is usually a very inspiring place because we relax and forget about the outside world, and if you don’t believe it, let me tell you the story of a man named Archimedes (somewhat familiar) who discovered his greatest scientific discovery while he was submerged in the bathtub, and with joy he ran off shouting the word “Eureka!”, which means, “I have discovered it!”.
Once we have the initial ideas, the time comes when we must sit down to select and discard some of the proposals that we have put in our initial record in order to give them shape and meaning. For this, we have created a complete guide to make a business model that you can download for free below.
Guide to make a business model
Below, you can download a complete guide on how to make a business model step by step that includes:
- A theoretical part with:
- Initial considerations on what is and what is not a business model
- Elements of a business model
- Definition of each of the elements of the business model
- Questions that we will have to ask ourselves about each of these elements
- Reference sources with books, videos and recommended websites
- A practical part with:
- The 3 steps to develop your BUSINESS MODEL
- template to print and make a business model with post-its
- Template to do online a business model
- Amazon Business Model Example
What to do after defining my business model?: The business plan
The next step, once we have created our business model, is to develop it in more detail in a business plan that will include the following sections:
- Executive Summary
- Presentation
- Origin and evolution
- Equipment
- Idea
- Market study
- Market situation and evolution
- Customers
- Competence
- Distribution channels
- SWOT
- Marketing strategy
- Product
- Location
- Prices
- Communication and publicity
- Sales and distribution
- Production
- Applicable legislation
- Productive process
- Suppliers
- Human Resources
- Economic financial analysis
- Investment plan
- Financing plan
- income statement
- cash flow
- Balance
- ratio analysis
We hope that this post and our guide to creating a business model will be of great help to you to start your project. If you are interested in seeing more specifically how a business plan is created, do not hesitate to ask us by writing a comment on this post, and we will try to write you a new post as soon as possible where we will explain step by step how to create a business plan.