Before you begin

If you are not careful, it is easy for your personal financial goals and your business goals to conflict. For example, your personal financial plans might include maximizing the income stream from your business so that you can make the largest possible investment in a superannuation fund, but one of your business goals may be to re-invest profit into the development of new products or services, or purchasing new premises or new technology.

In order to avoid such conflicts, it is a good idea when developing your business plan to begin by drawing up a list of your personal financial objectives. Then as you begin to formulate your business goals you can measure them against your personal goals and make appropriate adjustments to ensure that you end up with a coherent overall strategy.