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Wow there are just two days left till Christmas ... all the presents have been bought ... and I'm beginning to slip into wind-down mode. There are a few jobs left to do for regular customers and some work to do for some post-Christmas sales in one of our online shops but apart from that we're beginning to get into holiday mode.

Of course while we may look like we're in holiday mode and we may be doing holiday things like hitting the beach (it's summer down here in Australia) and playing with my new telephoto lens for my camera it's hard to detach our brains from our business. We've got some big plans for something new in 2011 so that's where our thoughts will be.

Any small business person ... whether it's the local plumber or a webmaster who derives their income from selling porn ... needs to be thinking about their business and planning for growth in the months ahead.

If you're new here you might find that concept a little strange because you probably came into this industry thinking that you've arrived once the checks start rolling in but the fact is that any small business that isn't planning for growth and working on growing is stagnating and stagnant businesses fail.

Obviously you don't want to fail so you should be planning on growing your business but actually doing any planning can be a challenge ... it's much easier just to react to the prevailing conditions rather than making an effort to grow by being proactive. However, no matter how difficult it might be to plan ahead that's what you have to do if you really do want your business to survive.

You need to set short and long-term goals to aim for ... you need to know just where you're going and that means that you have to draw up your own road map of how you're going to achieve those goals. If you don't set your goals you simply won't achieve anything and even if you do set some goals without a plan on how to achieve those goals you simply won't achieve them.

Sure you can sit down and plan for the future ... set those goals ... draw up that road map ... in your head but then thoughts are easy to forget when life gets hectic and before you know it you can be a million miles off the course you had charted and have no way of getting back to being focused on those goals you set.

That's why you need a business plan and I know that sounds terribly corporate and just the sort of thing you wanted to escape from when you decided to be your own boss but if you want to succeed then you really do need a business plan.

But this business plan isn't what you might find in the corporate world and it's certainly not what you might take to the bank if you were trying to get a loan. Those business plans are very formal and when you draw one up it's like you're being embedded in stone.

The business plan that Steve and I use is very flexible and we write it in pencil so it's easy to change. It's also more of a brain dump than anything else so you don't have to rush out and find a bunch of books or tutorials on business plans to write the sort of plan that we use.

All you need is four or five sheets of ordinary paper ... the sort of paper you load in your printer. Place them end to end across a table with each page slightly overlapping the next one and then staple them together so that you end up with a continuous strip of paper.

Start your plan on the left-hand edge ... somewhere around the middle of that side ... and write down where you're business is right now. Just jot down a few dot points.

Now go over to the far right-hand edge and write down where you want to be at the end of your time in business ... in other words, write down what your ultimate goals are.

Now go back the left-hand side of the page and draw a line towards those ultimate goals ... it should run about half-way across the first sheet. At the end of that short line write down a short-term goal that you're aiming for and then draw another line and write the next short-term goal and repeat that step until your line ends way over on the right-hand side of the page where you have your ultimate goals listed.

Once you've done that go back to the lines between your short-term goals and list above and below those lines all the things you have to do to achieve the next short-term goal.

Now you have a business plan to work with and you can measure each idea that you have for your business against that plan. You will be able to see if what you want to do will really take you towards your ultimate goals or take you away from them.

Don't be afraid to run branches off that main line when you see other opportunities arise and don't be afraid to insert extra pages as your business develops and you see new opportunities. When you do see new opportunities add them in but always measure them against your ultimate goals to see if what you're thinking of doing will actually take you closer to those ultimate goals or further away.

Just don't think of removing any pages that were in the past or are in the future but are now not part of your short-term goals. As the years go on, your flexible business plan will not only be a guide to the future but it will also be a great reminder for you of what worked and what didn't.

That business plan will also show you how you've developed as a business person because it will show you how you could have crashed and burned with some of those short-term goals that you had way back when you started.

All you need to get it started is a few sheets of paper, a stapler and a pencil. It's about as simple as a business plan can be but it could be the most valuable tool you will ever have.