Articles

2026 Business Plan and Budget

"2026 Business Plan and Budget"

October 2025

Richard T. Hendee
A Silver Fox Advisor

If you haven’t looked at your calendar lately, there are just two more full months left in 2025, and both of those months have major Holidays in them, which means lost business work days and family and personal obligations.

So, what’s my point? Well, if you haven’t started at least thinking about your 2026 Business Plan and Budget, you will be under the gun to finish both by the end of the year for implementation on January 2, 2026.

If you have been in business for a while, you are probably saying, “Why do I need a 2026 Business Plan and Budget”?

My response to you is – “Your business is probably the largest single asset you have. It is also the source of your family’s livelihood”.  Don’t you want your business to be successful and generate profitability to support your family? If you said yes to these questions, then let’s do something about it to make that happen!

Writing the key points of a Business Plan are not that hard. Start by writing a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threats (S.W.O.T.) analysis. Use the S.W.O.T. analysis to plan to capitalize on the strengths, improve the weaknesses, take advantage of the opportunities, and identify the threats as best you can, so if they happen, you will not be caught totally off guard.

Now, develop your top three or four business goals you would like to achieve in 2026. These goals can be things like adding a new product in 2026, expanding your facilities, buying a new piece of equipment, or some new vehicles. Then, develop three or four financial goals you want to achieve in 2026. These can be things like increasing your gross profit margin by one or two percent, adding to your reserves for a rainy day, or even expanding your line-of-credit with your bank.

Also, you should generate an organizational chart, identify what each position does, and evaluate the people you have in those functional boxes to make sure you have the right people in the right places to carry out your plan.

Then, detail your marketing strategies and techniques for 2026. Those items can include having a new website built, adding a social media component. Hiring a new salesperson, instituting a customer satisfaction experience campaign. 

Those are some of the key elements for your business plan. Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make with their business plans is not sharing the plan with their employees. You need all of your employees on the same page you are on if your business is going to be successful. Further, if you don’t tell your employees what you want, how can you expect them to perform the way you want them to?

Next month I will detail the components of the 2026 Budget.

If you need assistance in working through your “”2026 Business Plan”, I recommend you start by contacting the Silver Fox Advisors. Silver Fox Advisors are former or present business owners themselves, and they have experience in running a business, and in some cases several businesses, and they have lots of experience developing Business Plans. We encourage you to visit our website at www.silverfox.org to select a Silver Fox Advisor and also to learn more about the Silver Fox Advisors, as well as our great programs and community outreach endeavors.