Startup Guides > 3 Questions Entrepreneurs Must Answer To Become Successful

If you're a smart entrepreneur, you probably have a business plan that states what you intend to accomplish, what competitive threats are out there, your financial projections, how much money it will take to get to profitability, and how your company is going to succeed. Wait... Did you forget to include that last part?

At 40Billion.com, we help many entrepreneurs and startup businesses every day. Most of them have used our business plan presentation template or created a business plan from scratch. But, unfortunately, some forget to answer these very important questions:

- How will you succeed, and why?
- What is your go-to-market strategy?
- What are your next steps, and how will you get there?

In order to be successful in your venture, you need to answer these 3 questions and champion an actionable strategic plan that your team can rally behind. How do you do this? Here are 2 tips to help get you started:


1) Create simple goals and objectives.

Include a list of goals and objectives in your business plan, and make sure that this list influences almost every decision in your company. Include both long-term and short-term goals, which must have due dates for when you intend to achieve each objective. Long-term goals can be 1 year or multiple years into the future, while short-term goals are typically weekly, monthly, or quarterly milestones. Track your performance against each goal or objective, and celebrate with your team as soon as each one - no matter how small - is met.

2) Schedule daily briefings.

We all hate those weekly meetings that tend to be so long and unproductive. Instead, have a daily "briefing" or "check-in" for no more than 30 minutes every day. Discuss progress made towards each goal, as well as 3 thing that went right, and 3 things that went wrong or need to be fixed tomorrow. Use these frequent briefings as opportunities to update your business plan , so that your company can respond and adapt quickly to changes as they unfold.

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