I admit it. I am guilty. I don’t have a formal business plan. I’ve been more or less flying by the seat of my pants all these years, which might explain why I don’t have millions of dollars after 8 years of trying to turn my business into a profitable enterprise.

I started my business with one idea in mind, but over the 8 years I have been working for myself, I have jumped from one thing to the next. To give you some idea, my original Internet venture was an online art gallery wherein I tried to sell my own and other artists’ work. But I failed to make any concrete plans. I ran with my idea before I had done any research, and before long I was quitting in defeat, having sold only 1 painting for $35 dollars.

From there I ventured into online virtual communities, building a website that was to compete with Yahoo, providing users with access to everything from classifieds, to free web pages, photo albums, daily news, weather reports, personals and more. Once again I did not make any concrete plans; nor did I do any intensive research, or make any effort to fill any knowledge gaps about the kind of business venture I was attempting to get into.

Right from the start I was faced with the predicament of not being able to afford the software needed to build the web site. Unwilling to settle for inferior freeware, I set out to teach myself to program in order to develop the software myself. This of course meant I was making no money from my business, which of course meant my life was in a state of crisis as I could not pay bills being self-employed and earning no income to add to the small income my spouse was bringing in.

Necessity forced me off the course I was on and onto another. One moment the purpose of my business was to develop and manage a popular online virtual community that was to rival Yahoo. The next minute I was operating a one-man software development company, selling the software products I had developed.

Now 8 years and much drama later I am at another crossroad. Having given up 100% of the dating software that has been my best selling product to the programmer I hired to translate it from one programming language to another, I am facing the same situation that I faced years ago when I decided to close down the online art gallery.

I must now devise a new plan for how I will earn income through my business. But this time around I will not choose to fly by the seat of my pants. Even if only as a rough draft, I will write down the ideas I have in mind. I will make concrete plans for how I will go about putting those ideas in motion, and I will document those plans on paper. I will do the research that is necessary in order to identify which ideas and plans are viable and which are not. And where I am lacking in knowledge about procedure, format, legality and other issues, I will fill that gap before plunging full speed ahead.

If I have learned anything about managing a business from my 8 years of managing my own it is that you cannot fly by the seat of your pants and hope to be successful. Yes, I generated some income, at least enough to keep a roof over my head. I wasn’t able to take vacations. I wasn’t able to buy a house, a new car, designer jeans. Once the 50% I was turning over the programmer who had rewritten my software was taken out of the equation, I was making less than average income each year. In fact, I would have made more money working a regular 9-5 job that paid $10 per hour.

So now that I have come to this point where I must reassess, regroup, reorganize and basically start over, it is vital that I recognize the mistakes I made and that I do things correctly this time around if I want to avoid repeating the mistakes that prevented me from making the kind of money I should have made.

Not to have a plan written down, whether it is a formal business plan or just your ideas outlined in a notebook, is to doom your business to either stagnancy or failure. Indeed, when it comes to the Internet just about anything is possible. You can come up with an idea today and tomorrow you have your millions. Who needs a business plan then? But what is the likelihood that you will become an overnight millionaire? In the event that you might have to grow your millions over time, plan how you are going to do it; and don’t just decide you’re going to do it building a dating website. Plan how you are going to make millions from your dating website. Write it down in steps from start to finish. Then research your ideas. Make sure your plans are viable. If there are things about dating businesses you don’t know, acquire the necessary knowledge through whatever means of education procurement works best for you. Some people can fly by the seat of their pants and still succeed though they don’t have a real plan. Chances are, if you are still trying after many months, or many years to turn your business into a profitable enterprise, you are not one such person. If you don’t already have one, get a business plan written down.

It is not always, if ever it is, a day at the beach running your own small business. This is true whether you have employees to assist with the various tasks associated with running your business, or if you are your only employee and have to handle all the tasks yourself.

If you are like me you are running a business into which you are putting upwards of fourteen hours per day seven days per week of your time, and pumping energy you often have to manufacture with paper and scissors. You cut out some arbitrary shape, write the word energy on it and stick it on your forehead. You have no shortage of things to do on any given day. There’s the dating website you started in the hope of becoming the next match.com. You have 1500 hundred hard-earned members and you are trying desperately to keep them while trying desperately to get new members to join. You are spending money here and there trying to get traffic. When you do the math there does not compute to be a point in continuing to put a drop of energy or another penny into the website, but you keep hoping. Maybe with a little more effort you’ll sign up 2 instead of 1 new paying member every 6 months.

Then there’s the other website, you know the one–where you’re trying to sell your special coconut pineapple cherry delight sinful chocolate pleasure cheesecake. You keep baking samples so you can take mouthwatering photos. You spend the money for the gas bill on ingredients with all intentions to put the money back “when” you get the few sales you’ll definitely get this week. Because you’ve bought the Super Duper MegaWatt Traffic Zapper (that comes with a money back guarantee no less); and you’re assured of thousands of visitors to your website. No way at least 5 out of 20000 people won’t buy your coconut pineapple cherry delight sinful chocolate pleasure cheesecake. You yourself have quadrupled the size of your behind eating your samples but that is neither here nor there.

Then there are the notecards. The ones you plan to sell on ebay. You spend entire days designing series of notecards. So far you haven’t put any on ebay. You keep asking yourself, “Who’s buying notecards?” “Can I afford to pay ebay $3.75 to list my cards?” “Should I try to sell them to Hallmark instead?” You figure after working from 8AM to 2AM (all of 18 hours)on series 9, that no one will buy your notecards, so you get to thinking again, what can I do? How can I begin to generate income consistently through my business? And it pops into your head. A gem of an idea for a new website. You dip into the water bill money to register a new domain name for a year, adding to the list of websites you own and manage and can’t seem to turn into the money-makers you imagined they would become when you first conceived them.

Money out the door. Nothing coming in. Disconnection notices. All in the name of personal freedom.

If indeed you are like me, then you are working more hours than average every day but your job has become one of testing ideas to see if they will yield enough money to pay the bills come the end of the month. You don’t have a safety net in the form of a regular 9-5 where you are working for someone else and getting paid consistently at the end of each week. Your friends and family think you’re irresponsible if not insane because it’s long been time for you to call your self-employment status by its rightful name (unemployement), and they insist you need to get your tail out pounding the pavement to find a “real” job.

But you cannot admit defeat. You will not admit defeat. Even though you have enough stress built up that lava has formed inside your brain and the clock is ticking towards a major eruption, you still rise every day with the mindset that you have a business to run. You have a task on your hands and that task is to end your money miseries today, or die trying.

Some videos that might give you some ideas for staying focussed on your goals and continuing to fight

People IQ

Think like a giant