SLIPPERY ROCK — To be an entrepreneur, a person does not need to have a lot of money or know a lot of people.

“You just need to have an idea and you have to be able to take a risk,” said John Golden, director of projects and outreach at Slippery Rock University’s Sustainable Enterprise Accelerator.

Golden hosted a business planning session for farms Thursday evening at the Sustainable Enterprise Accelerator. The session focused on building mission and vision statements, as well as business objectives.

To get a business started, owners need to develop a mission statement and a strategy, Golden said.

He said it is important to realize the mission tells a business where it is going and a strategy tells it how it will get there.

“You need to have that understanding clear in your head,” Golden said.

The mission statement should state the company’s reason for existence and identify its value, he said.

“Most businesses fail probably because they don’t understand the importance of this first step,” Golden said.

The owner may be in love with his or her business idea, but everyone else may not. He said there has to be a market for this idea. If there is no market for the idea, Golden said the owner should stop.

“You have to be able to identify a want or a need in the marketplace,” Golden said.

The mission statement also should identify where the business is going, what its purpose is, who it serves and what it provides society.

Golden said it will provide focus and boundaries for the business. This is important, he said, because going outside of the mission statement may take the business to places the owner did not want it to go.

“You want to stay inside your mission statement,” Golden said.

He said there are nine components to forming a mission statement; customers, employees, products/services, markets, technology, growth/profits, philosophy, self concept and public image.

Not every mission statement uses all of the components, he said, but all statements use some of them.

A vague mission statement is not a bad thing, he said. If the public associates a business with one specific product, it can be hard for that company to try new products. He said being more vague can be advantageous for farmers because multiuse farms are growing in popularity.

Rhonda Clark, a management professor at SRU who also helped with the session, said mission statements generally should be about 25 words. She also said they are not written in stone.

“You can update this when you feel fit,” Clark said.

After forming a mission statement, Golden said, an owner needs to form a vision statement, which points to where the business is heading and what it intends to be. He said these are more creative and open-ended than mission statements.

Vision statements should be brief and memorable, inspiring and challenging, descriptive of an ideal state and should appeal to everyone involved.

Not only must a business owner have a vision of what the business should look like in the future, he has to be able to get others to see that vision.

“You have this vision and you want to take everyone there,” Golden said.

Clark said vision statements are describing an ideal, so owners should think big and be creative when writing them.

“There’s nothing that’s too great or too big. It’s almost like writing out your dreams,” Clark said.

Following a vision statement, business owners have to perform a SWOT analysis, taking the mission statement and analyzing the business’ strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats.

Golden said this is an important step before developing specific strategies. The goal is to minimize threats and weaknesses.

Sometimes, he said a perceived threat turns out not to be one. As an example, he noted that many similar, competing businesses often are clustered together because there is demand in that area.

“Turn a threat into an opportunity,” Golden said.

Finally, owners develop a strategy. Golden said strategies should plan for the long term, define objectives and make sure those objectives are deployed.

He used the acronym SMART, specific, measurable, achievable, responsible and time, to describe how to create solid objectives.

Good objectives define specific, easy to measure, achievable goals and further defines when these goals should be accomplished and who is responsible for making sure they are done.