Business Plan for Blue Lotus Bhakti
Executive Summary
Blue Lotus Bhakti is an online web site development and computer consulting business with an emphasis on Bhakti Yoga, which is a devotional yoga and healing practice. The web site development side of the business is geared toward artists, mystics and healers. There are no direct competitors in this market, which makes Blue Lotus Bhakti unique. It will pull from other web site developers based on its relationship in the yoga and holistic health communities. The marketing plan is to advertise in spiritual, holistic health and online yoga communities as well as use targeted online advertising such as Google AdWords and blogs. The operations of the business are carried out by the sole proprietor, Becky Westbrook and Blue Lotus Bhakti is expected to make a profit in its first year.
Description of Business
The name of the business is Blue Lotus Bhakti. The business is a sole proprietorship and its presence exists online only. It offers web site development, computer consulting and information on Bhakti Yoga. The owner is Becky Westbrook. Until 2004, Becky was a Senior Network Engineer in Virginia and has extensive hands on experience with computers, servers, switches, routers, firewalls, and local and wide area networks. In 2004, she shifted from the corporate sector to the non-profit sector, learned web design on her own and began a consulting business. In 2006, Becky joined a non-profit computer services organization and provided onsite and remote data network support and consulting. In 2007, Becky used Bhakti Yoga to heal an eight and a half year chronic health condition and decided to offer that information to others via her business as well as focusing her website skills on the artist, healer and mystic communities to provide them services they need. In 2008, Becky resigned from her non-profit agency and went back to school full time, combining web development with religious studies and consciousness studies.
Vision Statement: Within five years, Blue Lotus Bhakti will be the premier Bhakti Yoga website on the Internet offering healing eBooks and seminars online, web site development for artists, mystics and healers and will be generating revenues of $250,000 per year. It will become internationally known with clients all over the globe.
Mission Statement: Blue Lotus Bhakti will combine the areas of technical consulting with the holistic medicine, art and yoga communities. It will begin to make a profit immediately with minimum startup costs. This online focus of the business will allow the proprietor to travel freely around the world making her living wherever there is an Internet connection. The business already owns the resources it needs to begin.
The holistic health fields and the yoga communities are growing at a high rate and the markets are fragmented and it’s hard for consumers to find consolidated information. The web offers the small practitioner or artist access to vast amounts of consumers and a very low cost of entry, yet very few of these practitioners are tech savvy and able to capitalize on it. By being fluent in the language and customs of both the technical side and the holistic communities, Blue Lotus Bhakti intends to make it easy for the practitioners to create a web presence and reach their intended audience. Blue Lotus Bhakti has a strong sense of graphic design that supports that goal.
In addition, Blue Lotus Bhakti is interested in educating people about the inherent healing power within themselves by using Bhakti Yoga and sound healing and will provide a web presence with links and access to download healing workshops and seminars.
There are risks associated with combining spirituality and business. Consumers who practice a particular faith may perceive it as divisive or be turned away. Blue Lotus Bhakti is committed to bringing different communities together and being inclusive, not divisive. The target audience is aligned with the principle that all paths are honoured.
Analysis of Competitors
Blue Lotus Bhakti does not have any direct competitors offering both Bhakti Yoga resources and computer consulting services or web development. This differentiates them from the other web development and computer support sites on the web and gives them the advantage in the holistic health and yoga communities. The two main competitors are Third Eye Studio at http://www.checkoutmysiteonline.com/ and wholistic website design at http://www.wholisticwebdesign.ca/. Both of these companies offer website design services with a holistic or spiritual focus.
Third Eye Studio does not have the strong technical support background that Blue Lotus Bhakti does and its own web site is annoying to use. wholistic website design seems to be more focused on the graphical design than the technical aspects of support and marketing. Both of these competitors focus solely on their portfolios of client sites and do not offer resources of their own in the holistic communities they serve.
A distant competitor is http://openconcept.ca/. Its portfolio contains social justice and environmental sites and focuses on non-profits, not artists, mystics and healers. There is overlap in those markets, as the consumers are driven by similar values and yet they are distinct markets. Blue Lotus Bhakti is also available to travel anywhere in the world to meet with clients and plans to serve a global constituency.