Getting Started

If you’re thinking, why do I need a business plan? Great question.

Even if you just passed your insurance test and you’re still figuring out which contracts to pick up, putting a business plan in place is an important step in being successful.

Think of it like planning for a road trip.

For example, I wouldn’t jump in my car tomorrow morning and start the drive to Alaska on a whim. I’d need to make sure I had my passport, filled up my gas tank, and had sufficient money to cover expenses.

Most of us spend more time planning a road trip than the time we spend on the trip itself.

Creating a business plan can provide you with the basic steps that must be taken to make it out of your front door and to your destination.

It will require you to set realistic, SMART goals, create a manageable budget, map out the most effective strategies, and communicate all of these things along with your expectations to the members of your team, to investors, or bankers.

Putting a plan in place, even if it’s handwritten on a legal pad, can make the difference between thriving, surviving, or diving.

Your initial business plan doesn’t need to be excessively long or brimming with tables and graphs.

Your business plan should cover the basics.

And it should be reviewed and updated regularly as your goals are met or your business model changes.

Let’s talk briefly about how to create your business plan.

There are many websites, templates, and resources out there to help develop a strong, purposeful plan.

Many of them even offer free PDF downloads. We’ll be linking to ours in the resources for this lesson as well as the last lesson of the module.

Feel free to use that in your planning, as it will mirror what we talk about in the next few lessons.

But, no matter the templates style or where you gather your information to develop your plan, most resources you’ll find are based on a common format.

In this module, we’ll cover the following elements of a business plan. The executive summary, business overview, market research, management, marketing, and financial management.

Now it’s important for me to note that your business plan starts out with an executive summary. Because this section is a summary of your whole business plan, we’ll be covering that last, after you’ve considered all the other sections.

Each of these sections has nuances and subsections, and we’ll move through each one as we move through this module.

You don’t necessarily have to move through your planning in the same order as we do.

In fact, you may already have certain parts of your business plan thought out. It’s fine if you want to get those down on paper first.

But we do recommend moving through each lesson to learn their best practices.

Remember, the more detailed you can make your business plan, the more effective it will be.

After all, it’s not really about the plan in the end, it’s about the planning you do to get to that end product… a business plan for your insurance business!

Ready to dive in? See you in the next lesson!

Mentioned in this Lesson:

Knight School Business Plan Template
Watch the Next Lesson