How to Help Your Kids Make a Business Plan

A lot of kids are running their successful businesses with the help from their parents and so can you too as a family. All you need is a successful business idea and an impeccable business plan. Let’s have a look at some of the basic ingredients for business plans for kids.

Write Down All Possible Business Ideas

Brainstorm all special skills, interests and passion you kids have and jot them down on paper. Ask if your kids like to sell a physical product, or provide a service to others. When you create something to sell, you are offering a product and when you perform a certain action and charge for it, it’s a service.

Consider offering products and services related to any upcoming event. For example, baking cakes and selling them as a product or gift wrapping as a service for Christmas. Select the idea that goes best with your skills.

Then, rate some top ideas as a family and see which ideas stand out the most.

Now, narrow down your ideas into top 3, and then start rate them from 1-10 with several criteria.

• How feasible is the idea?

• How fast can you complete one product /service?

• How much need are there from other people?

Based on the score you have, now choose a final idea to process to the next steps.

Decide On a Business Name

Come up with a name for your kids business that describes your business well. The name must be easy to remember and pronounce. Try to involve your kids name if you want people to know it’s a kid brand or business.

Make sure this name is also available for website domain and social media handling. You can simply help your kid find that out by going to Go Daddy, and Instagram, Facebook or Twitter to find that out.

If you guys settled on a specific name, make sure you go register your social media handling ASAP. Since they are free platforms, you can finish that quickly so you don’t have to worry that others will take it in the coming days.

Outline The Business Plan

What is a Business Plan? A business plan is actually a road map and a written document that discusses every aspect of your business on paper. It includes your product details, marketing strategies and financial information.

There are a lot of things to consider in a business, but as a young entrepreneur, simply outline several main things you need to consider building a business. The following listed some main outline, you can also go online to search for some other templates and related info for your kids.

Problem:

What problems are you guys trying to solve? If your kid is interested in providing a product or service, what value are they adding to customers? Think about this since it’s going to help you guys figure out customer's needs. Even if you guys are creating a business purely based on your kid’s interests, there must be some value the business is adding to people’s lives.

Solving a problem through your business or product is the greatest value you can add to a customer. So be obsessed with the problem you guys want to solve.

Product:

What’s the product, the price and manufacturing details for your product?

This is the main part of your whole plan. It will discuss the following things in particular. No need to be detailed just write the highlights.

• Your product/ service -what will you offer?

• Your business objective – basic goals

• When do you plan to launch it?

Cost:

When it comes to cost, many kids may shy away from setting up a good price. They realize how much the material costs, but it’s hard for them to think about other costs like storage, delivery and time spent on making. So, as you guys think about ways to calculate your cost, encourage each other to mark up a good price. Also think about the following questions when you consider cost:

• How much would it cost to launch a product or service? Including your time and efforts :)

• Who will support you financially in the beginning?

• What’s your plan to use the profit to grow the business?

Customers:

Who is your main target audience? Are you making kid-friendly products since you know your peers the best?

Always think even though the kid might be the person who uses your product, but the mom or dad is the buyer - the main decision maker who pays you. How can you convince the parents to trust you and your products?

In the product design world, we use Persona to define the exact targeted customers, and we create a user experience journey to figure out the exact need from customers. As a family, you should also practise this. Imagine the whole process of how your perfect customer avatar engages and buys your product. From there, you know each step what you want to do and figure out how to fulfill your customers needs.

Marketing Channel:

What’s your plan to reach out to customers and let people know about your business? Either you start to build an audience before you make your products, or you create a product before you market it, you have to let the world know about your offer. Think about the following questions when it comes to marketing channels:

• Are you selling in person? What kind of event or fairs can you attend, what kind of marketing materials (Business cards, brochures etc) you need to create?

• Are you selling online? If so, how do you tell people about your product? (Blogging, Youtube Videos, Indiegogo Campaign etc)

• Do you want to be featured on local news or online media? How could they help you spread your products and offerings?

Expected Results:

Always remember to write a goal or expected result for your business plan. If you are even more advanced, you can try to write down ways you want to measure your success. Think about the following questions:

• Is money the only measurement for the success of your business? How much should you earn from the first batch of product/service?

• If money is not the only measurement, what else can you expect to gain from this business? Your experience, brand exposure or potential customers signing up as subscribers?

• What would you do if you achieved your goal, and what would you do if not?

3 Rules for Writing a Business Plan

Keep it short

There are two main reasons to keep it short:

First, to ensure readability, especially for your kids who are still young. You don’t want to develop a 40 page plan that you guys won’t even read yourself after writing it. So make it short and concise, even one page can help you clarify your goals and objectives. Maybe you can even stick it somewhere obvious at home so your kid can be motivated.

Second, business plans must be revised at short intervals and a long business plan would be rough stuff to follow and also to revise. As your kid’s business evolve, the business plan can be updated from time to time.

Keep Researching

Keep your audience and market in mind. Always open to read articles related to your target audience, know what they need, search the market gap. A good product can always fulfill the need of a potential customer. The more you know the audience and market, the better you can service them and convince them to buy.

Update Often

Putting your business plan on paper might feel difficult. But you don’t have to panic. Start with a one-page business plan and then keep coming back to add details.

All in all, a business plan indeed is merely just a plan, the most important step to grow as a young entrepreneur is to take action. No matter how small the idea seems to be, no matter how small the goal you set in the beginning, simply start and try it out. You can only grow best in real experience and thrive when you face real challenges. Hopefully this article can help you get started on your business plan today!