Starting A Business

RE: Business Plans

kiki55 — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:49:19 GMT

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RE: Business Plans

Creative2009 — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:31:15 GMT

Excellent source of information. I was looking for this information for my new business venture. Now I found this on time. Thank you for the post

RE: Business Plans

BizBlackBelt — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:44:42 GMT

According to a Small Business Administration survey, of all the businesses that failed, 60% had no business plan. What does that tell you? For the most part, you're off to a good start... We produce BizPlanBuilder business planning software and it goes into great detail on each of those subjects and more. (We also refer our customers to business planning professional as well for further development and possible introductions to investors.) And I think Brian Mosko (above) is right too. The most difficult for most people, it seems, are the financial projections -- especially if you are a right-brained artistic type -- but a good spreadsheet template can step you through a financial model quite easily.

Burke Franklin
www.jian.com

RE: Business Plans

simon07 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:12:41 GMT

This article seems to cover the basics

RE: Business Plans

Mergent — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:35:59 GMT

I think that this is one of those articles that is the same thing as every other one on starting a business. I am a professional business plan writer and I can tell you, both the topics included and the structure of the plan will change.

What happens if someone has a services business? They may not need to have sections on products. What happens when they have a product to sell? Then they wont be concerned with the delivery of services. Giving general topics that people need to have is someone detrimental to those who think that those three or four topics is all they need to get money from a bank.

I know in my practice, I use a hand crafted business survey that is 75 pages long that delves into the persons business, and makes them take a hard look at the venture. I hand write EVERY plan, from ground up. People need to be able to look at their business from a hard perspective, instead of just answering general questions.

Brian Mosko
Mergent Planning
www.MergentPlanning.com

RE: Business Plans

chefbry — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:28:53 GMT

I AM STILL LOST!

RE: Business Plans

GrowthCurve — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:58:19 GMT

I'm not sure what the take-away is for this article. Is the reader supposed to realize that they need a business plan, or are they supposed to know how to write one?

The article also pretty much lost me right here:

"The summary should be no more than a few sentences, a paragraph at most."

As someone who has written over forty business plans, I can not agree with this statement. A summary can be one or two pages. A few sentences? A paragraph? Impossible.

Many times the only thing that a lender or investor will ask to see initially is the executive summary. They don't want a complete business plan unless they know they are interested. A good summary states:

(1) What the current problem is in the market
(2) How you intend to solve that problem
(3) Why you are the right team to make this work
(4) How much money you need and for what
(5) A sense as to what you're offering for the money and how investors can profit

At the very least, a referral to a solid business plan book would have been a good idea.

All my opinion, of course...