Thank you JD and Vee for the great advise. I hadn't thought about the local business services, but after reading Vee's post I do remember reading an article that there is a local SBA office that offers help with business plans.

I am very serious about my business, and I have decided that I am going to create one. My long term goals are growing into a business that will have an office (outside of my house) with a staff and eventually offering other services such as inventory for small to medium businesses and non-profit companies. I bought "The Complete Book of Business Plans" by Covello & Hazelgren. This seemed the most helpful for novices. I also decided to use the organizing business as a reference while structuring my plan, the way they deal with customers and the rates they charge are very similar to our business. I bought a book to use called, "How to start a home based professional organizing business" by Dawn Noble. This book has ended up being a gold mine of info and I suggest any newbies to buy this book and read it!! Since there is no books yet out there for starting a inventory business (Fred...Hint!Hint!) this was a good alternate and fits our business very well. It has provided alot of info on how start, how to deal with customers, and great marketing stratagies. Between the materials with the Home Inventory Journal business start up kit and these additional resourses I feel more confident in my plans.

On another note, I created my logo over the weekend and would like to share it with everyone but I can not figure out how to upload to the message board. Any help??

Ann

Ann,
This is one I have not tackled yet. I'm meeting regularly with a counselor from the Hawaii Women's Business Center, an organization of the Small Business Administration, and she keeps urging me to do one, primarily because it focuses you on every aspect of the business. But where does the time come from? I'll make a point of asking her about the comparisons issue next time we meet, which is the end of this month.  

I think your idea of using organizing businesses is probably the best. But maybe you (we) don't need to do direct comparisons? In setting my prices and products, I did a spreadsheet listing as many HI companies as I could find on the web, and then mentally compared the different markets as far as cost of living, etc. Possibly this could be turned into something for my business plan.

Vee

PS:  I have found the Women's Business Center to be incredibly helpful -- I didn't find one in Houston, but there's one in San Antonio. Their web address is www.stwbc.com. Here they do FREE counseling for women starting or even hoping to start a business. They also have classes and workgroups that meet regularly to write business plans, as well as other classes that are very inexpensive.