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Writing a business plan from scratch seems like an uphill climb? We get that, but hold tight—you’re not alone. Even business plan writers often feel the same way while writing from scratch. That’s where a little content reference or inspiration can help—just like these business plan examples .
Reading such real-life sample business plans can be incredibly helpful while drafting your very first business plan with zero clue about business plan writing.
As you read and explore these industry-specific examples, you learn more about what you should and should not include in your business plan, ensuring sustainable and long-term growth.
So, let’s explore these 400+ business plan examples to help you quickly write a business plan—hassle-free.
Why you should refer a business plan example?
A Business plan example will provide you with the complete format and structure for your document, giving you a head start on developing your document so you’re not stuck seeing an empty page working to find out where to start.
Also, it gives you the overall layout of a professional business plan so you understand what goes where and you’re not leaving out anything.
Here are some of the key benefits of using sample business plans:
- Guidance on what to include in each section. If you’ve never attended business school, you might never have created a SWOT analysis or a balance sheet before. Business templates that give guidance — in plain language — about what to include and how to fill in each section and create a complete and effective plan.
- A business plan is vital to get an investment. If you’re seeking investment for your business, you’ll need to convince banks and investors why they should invest in your business . Lenders and investors will only risk their time and money if they’re certain that your business will be successful and profitable and they will get a great return on their investment.
- A business plan can help you prioritize. A complete, well-balanced business plan is one of the most valuable tools in assisting you to reach your long-term goals. It gives your business direction, defines your goals, outlines out strategies to reach your goals, and helps you to manage possible bumps in the way.
Creating a business plan will help you define the business goals you want to achieve, and define the strategies to achieve them. This means you can focus your resources and energy on what is important, rather than wasting time on unimportant things.
If you’re working with a team in your company then having a regular brainstorming session is the best way to keep your business on track and your business plan assures you’re all on the same page.
Make your plan in half the time & twice the impact with Upmetrics.
Sample business plan format
Following is the standard business plan format you must consider while drafting a comprehensive business plan.
- Executive Summary : A high-level overview of your business plan.
- Company Overview : An in-depth and detailed description of your small business, its fundamental elements, and future goals.
- Market Analysis : A detailed description of your industry with the target market, competitors, and growth potential.
- Products and Services : Description of the products or services you intend to exchange for money.
- Sales and Marketing Strategies : Promotional strategies you will use to attract and retain customers.
- Operations Plan : Business processes and procedures that ensure seamless business operations.
- Management Team : Introduction to your founders, key management, and their compensation plan.
- Financial Plan : A breakdown of your financial projections and financing needs.
- Appendix : A supplementary final section that includes additional documents to support your plan.
This was about the outline. Now let’s break down and understand how to write each section, step by step, with real-life examples.
1. Executive Summary
Executive Summary is the first section of your business plan, providing a high-level overview of your entire plan and summarizing it for a quick understanding of your business.
Considering it as an introductory section of your plan, it must be clear, concise, and written to grab readers’ attention and persuade them to take action.
As business plans can be 10-20 to a hundred-page long, an executive summary remains your sole chance to gain a quick extra point.
Here are a few key components your Executive Summary must include:
- Business concept
- Company’s mission
- Company History
- Market Opportunity
- Management Team
- Financial Projections
Remember, you are bound to cover these topics in detail moving forward in your business plan, so make sure your executive summary is brief, covering only the key takeaways.
2. Company Overview
As the name suggests, the Company Overview section of your plan provides an overview of your small business, including your business concept, objectives, future goals, and what customers your business serves.
Since you will provide a brief company description in the executive summary, this section will expand on it—providing an in-depth understanding of your business.
Remember, this section is a platform for introducing and positioning your business as an ideal solution for your target market to your reader. So, make sure it’s short and succinct but impactful enough to help them understand what it does, who your potential customers are, and how you can make a difference.
Here are a few key components your business overview must include:
- Company Description
- Mission Statement
- Business Objectives
- Business History
- Future Goals
3. Market Analysis
Market Analysis is a study of your external business environment, providing a complete overview of your industry and its dynamics. This section provides valuable insights into the market, like what’s working.
When smartly researched, utilized, and written, this section can help you discover and identify untapped areas in the market and strategize to stand out from your competitors.
Remember, this section helps your readers and potential investors understand your target market, market size, and growth potential, so make sure you play your cards right.
Here are a few key components your market analysis section must include:
- Target Market
- Market Size and Growth Potential
- Competitive Analysis
- Market or Industry Trends
- Regulatory Environment
Unlike other sections of your business plan , Market Analysis requires deep research and analytical work. However, using an industry-specific example business plan can save hours of research work.
4. Products And Services
The products and services section is where you will mention and elaborate on your product or service range, description, pricing strategies, and more.
Since your business success solely depends on your products or services, your entire plan revolves around this particular section.
This section can be a crucial component of your plan while searching for an investor or partner, as a well-articulated products and services section can help you persuade them.
Here are a few key elements your products and services section must include:
- Product Description
- Product Comparison
- Pricing Strategy
- Order Management
- Quality Measures
5. Sales And Marketing Strategies
A business’s sales and marketing strategies determine how your product is displayed and reaches your target audience.
A well-designed sales and marketing plan can help you streamline your marketing efforts and create impactful and effective marketing campaigns while keeping track of the marketing budget and maximizing return on investment.
In short, this section will discuss how you’ll acquire new customers using your sales and marketing strategy. You might consider including the following information in your sales and marketing plan:
- Your target audience and brand positioning
- Your business’ UVP
- Marketing channels and distribution tactics you plan to use
- Sales goals and performance measurement
- Your customer retention strategies
- Your sales and marketing goals
6. Operations Plan
The operations plan section outlines the daily business processes and activities centered on achieving business goals and objectives described in the previous sections of your plan.
A detail-oriented logistics and operations plan helps you and your team define your responsibilities, daily tasks, and short-term goals you need to achieve, keeping track of your long-term objective.
Remember, your logistics and operations plan won’t be static but a living document. You may adjust and update it as time goes on.
Here are a few key elements your operations plan section must include:
- Staffing and training
- Tools and equipment
- Inventory management
- Supply chain management
- Operational process
7. Management Team
Your management team plays a crucial role in the ultimate success of your business. And this section introduces your owners and management team, along with their qualifications, industry experience, roles and responsibilities, and compensation plan.
A strong management team section can be critical to weigh authority and help investors be confident about your business idea and vision.
Make sure to include the educational background, accomplishments, work experience, and area of expertise for each individual, part of your management.
You might consider including the following information in the management team section:
- Business owner/founders
- Key management
- Organization structure
- Compensation plan
- Advisors/consultants
8. Financial Plan
It’s no secret that the financial plan is the most crucial yet nerve-wracking aspect of business planning. In fact, it’s one of the deciding factors when it comes to convincing potential investors and banks to invest or lend money.
This section of your plan details your business’s financial information and how it will reach its financial goals. The information may include balance sheet, income, and cash flow statements.
Here are a few key components and financial statements you must include or provide while creating a financial plan:
- Profit and loss statements
- Operating costs
- Income statement
- Cash flow statement
- Balance sheet
- Break-even point
- Financing needs
9. Appendix
While an Appendix isn’t a required element of your business plan, it can be pretty helpful in adding legal notes, charts, tables, or any other critical information to support your business document.
It generally includes financial statements, information, and documents that didn’t naturally fit into your plan but can be considered critical enough to add.
In addition, it helps readers navigate through the entire business plan and easily find specific information or documents.
Need a way out from manual editing and business plan writing work?
Get Upmetrics’ business plan template, import data directly into the editor, and start editing using Upmetrics AI Assistant.
Start Planning Now
Since we are finished discussing the sections of a business, let’s learn more about how you can put an example business plan to use while writing your own.
How to use an Example of a Business Plan to write your own?
Having real-life and industry-specific business plan examples by your side can be incredibly resourceful to help you write a business plan from scratch.
A well-planned structure helps you outline your plan, while content inspiration helps you set the tone for your business document.
Let’s dive deep and understand how to use these examples effectively to write your business plan.
1. Understanding the Structure
Traditional business plans generally follow a similar structure.
It starts with an executive summary followed by a company description, market analysis, product and services, sales and marketing strategies, operational plan, management team, financial plan, and appendix.
Using an example business plan is the best way to understand the structure and outline your plan.
2. Gaining Inspiration
Reading industry-specific business plan examples can help you gain inspiration for your plan. You can gain insights on presenting your business idea, vision, mission, and values and persuade investors to invest in your idea.
3. Learning Industry-Specific Language
There’s no universal template for business planning that fits all. An industry-specific template can help you learn and understand the business language for your industry and the best way to communicate your message to your investors.
4. Identifying Key Elements
Reading business plan examples of similar businesses can help you identify the key elements and information to include in your plan. You can keep note of these and ensure everything necessary for investors to consider is present in your final draft.
5. Crafting Financial Projections
A financial plan is a critical component of your business plan, and a good business plan example can help you better understand how they project their financials which can be incredibly helpful while forecasting yours.
6. Refining Your Executive Summary
As mentioned earlier, your executive summary is a key factor influencing potential investors and lenders to invest or lend you money. Analyzing free business plan templates can help you optimize your executive summary to make it more brief, persuasive, and attention-grabbing.
7. Realizing what works and what doesn’t
Analyzing industry-specific and real-life examples can help you determine what works best and what doesn’t within your industry. Understanding these factors can help you avoid many significant pitfalls.
While business plan examples can be incredibly helpful in writing a plan from scratch, ensure your plan is customized for your business and sends out a unique message. Your business plan must reflect its unique idea, vision, and target market.
Download business plan examples for:
- Business Plan Template for Startups
- Business Plan Template for Small Business
- Business Plan Example for Non Profits
- Business Plan Example for Students
Download a free sample business plan template
Ready to kick-start your business plan writing process? Not sure where to start? Here you go, download our free sample business plan, import data directly into the editor, and start planning.
This intuitive, modern, and investment-ready template is designed specifically for startups and small businesses. In fact, this format has helped 110K+ entrepreneurs create business plans to secure funding, business grants, and loans. It includes a business planning course and step-by-step instructions to write each section.
Business plan types: choose the suitable template
Well, there are a few types of business plans. Though they cover similar categories, they all have different formats intended for different purposes or industries.
Here are a few common business plan types to help you choose the most suitable one for your business:
1. One-page business plan
One page business plan can be considered a one-page version of a standard business plan. It’s mainly used to present a quick overview of small businesses to your vendors, employees, investors, or stakeholders.
Considering its shorter length, creating a one page business plan can be a lot easier and less time-consuming compared to a standard business plan using a business plan software like Upmetrics.
2. Lean business plan
A lean business plan is a summarized version of a standard business plan that is longer than a one-page one. It’s mainly used to track finances and emphasize achieving short-term milestones.
This business plan type is best suitable if you are unsure about the business planning process. Moreover, drafting a lean business plan is also a lot easier and faster than a standard one.
3. Traditional business plan
A traditional business plan is the standard plan entrepreneurs have been using for years to outline marketing strategies, project financials, and draw investors. A traditional business plan can be a few dozen to a hundred-page long, depending on its purpose and your business specifications.
A traditional plan is a must-have business document for business owners aiming to achieve long-term business success.
4. Internal business plan
As the name suggests, an internal business plan is a document designed for internal management and team members to ensure everyone’s on the same page. The primary focus of these plans is to set primary goals and outline processes aiming to achieve them—ultimately streamlining business operations.
Start writing your business plan
There’s no denying—creating a business plan that draws investors in needs some serious work; it’s no stroll in the park. But you must take the first step to stay ahead in the cut-throat competition; there is no way around it.
So, what are you waiting for? Understand your business and the value it offers to its customers, find a suitable template from our library, and start planning.
Simplifying Business Planning through AI-Powered Insights.
Founder, CEO & Lead Scientist at Nanolyse Technologies
After trying Upmetrics, I wish to highly recommend this app to anyone who needs to write a business plan flexibly and to a high standard.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can i write my own business plan.
Follow this step-by-step process to write your business plan on your own.
- Choose a format that best suits your business requirements
- Create a business plan outline
- Create a company description section
- Conduct market research
- Conduct a competitive analysis
- Describe your product and services
- Outline sales and marketing strategies
- Create a logistics and operations plan
- Introduce management team
- Project financials
- Summarize your plan with an executive summary
- Complete your plan with an appendix
Where can I find business plan examples?
Upmetrics is an incredible business planning solution providing 400+ business plan samples and examples. You can easily create a good business plan using these industry-specific templates.
What is a business plan template?
A business plan template is a pre-formatted business plan, usually written for a fictional company. These industry-specific templates can help entrepreneurs understand a business plan’s structure and other key components. These templates are used mainly by entrepreneurs planning to launch a new startup or expand an existing business.
Should I hire someone to write my business plan for me?
Concept, contents, and cashflow are the 3Cs of a business plan that can be defined as follows:
- Concept: Your concept should explain the purpose of your business, summarizing what you plan to accomplish with this very business.
- Contents: Your content should reflect your concept, product and services, target market, and competition.
- Cashflow: Your cash flow section must detail your cash in-and-out flows, including capital investment, operations costs, and revenue projections.
Why Is It Beneficial to Use a Sample Business Plan as a Guide?
Let’s face it—writing a 40-50 page business plan from scratch can be too intimidating; you may soon give up and won’t even finish it.
Instead, using a sample business plan as a guide can help you understand its structure, gain inspiration and ideas for content, plan marketing strategies, and project financials. In short, using business template examples is the best way to write a business plan.
When should you not follow a business plan example?
We’ve always been saying this, using an example of a business plan is the best way to write one. However, it’s also critical to understand when not to follow a template. Here’s when:
- The format does not align with your business model or industry.
- Include outdated templates and information.
- Offer poorly written content.
- Include misleading and poorly done financials.
- There’s a lack of expertise.
These are a few red flags in a template you must consider looking at while choosing one.
Are these examples suited for business plan beginners?
Absolutely. In fact, these examples are specially designed, keeping common issues faced by beginners while drafting a plan in mind to serve them best. So, if you are a new or an established business with no planning experience, you have to check out these templates.
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The 7 Best Business Plan Examples (2024)
As an aspiring entrepreneur gearing up to start your own business , you likely know the importance of drafting a business plan. However, you might not be entirely sure where to begin or what specific details to include. That’s where examining business plan examples can be beneficial. Sample business plans serve as real-world templates to help you craft your own plan with confidence. They also provide insight into the key sections that make up a business plan, as well as demonstrate how to structure and present your ideas effectively.
Example business plan
To understand how to write a business plan, let’s study an example structured using a seven-part template. Here’s a quick overview of those parts:
- Executive summary: A quick overview of your business and the contents of your business plan.
- Company description: More info about your company, its goals and mission, and why you started it in the first place.
- Market analysis: Research about the market and industry your business will operate in, including a competitive analysis about the companies you’ll be up against.
- Products and services: A detailed description of what you’ll be selling to your customers.
- Marketing plan: A strategic outline of how you plan to market and promote your business before, during, and after your company launches into the market.
- Logistics and operations plan: An explanation of the systems, processes, and tools that are needed to run your business in the background.
- Financial plan: A map of your short-term (and even long-term) financial goals and the costs to run the business. If you’re looking for funding, this is the place to discuss your request and needs.
7 business plan examples (section by section)
In this section, you’ll find hypothetical and real-world examples of each aspect of a business plan to show you how the whole thing comes together.
- Executive summary
Your executive summary offers a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. You’ll want to include a brief description of your company, market research, competitor analysis, and financial information.
In this free business plan template, the executive summary is three paragraphs and occupies nearly half the page:
- Company description
You might go more in-depth with your company description and include the following sections:
- Nature of the business. Mention the general category of business you fall under. Are you a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer of your products?
- Background information. Talk about your past experiences and skills, and how you’ve combined them to fill in the market.
- Business structure. This section outlines how you registered your company —as a corporation, sole proprietorship, LLC, or other business type.
- Industry. Which business sector do you operate in? The answer might be technology, merchandising, or another industry.
- Team. Whether you’re the sole full-time employee of your business or you have contractors to support your daily workflow, this is your chance to put them under the spotlight.
You can also repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, Instagram page, or other properties that ask for a boilerplate description of your business. Hair extensions brand Luxy Hair has a blurb on it’s About page that could easily be repurposed as a company description for its business plan.
- Market analysis
Market analysis comprises research on product supply and demand, your target market, the competitive landscape, and industry trends. You might do a SWOT analysis to learn where you stand and identify market gaps that you could exploit to establish your footing. Here’s an example of a SWOT analysis for a hypothetical ecommerce business:
You’ll also want to run a competitive analysis as part of the market analysis component of your business plan. This will show you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to gain an edge over the competition.
- Products and services
This part of your business plan describes your product or service, how it will be priced, and the ways it will compete against similar offerings in the market. Don’t go into too much detail here—a few lines are enough to introduce your item to the reader.
- Marketing plan
Potential investors will want to know how you’ll get the word out about your business. So it’s essential to build a marketing plan that highlights the promotion and customer acquisition strategies you’re planning to adopt.
Most marketing plans focus on the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. However, it’s easier when you break it down by the different marketing channels . Mention how you intend to promote your business using blogs, email, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing.
Here’s an example of a hypothetical marketing plan for a real estate website:
Logistics and operations
This section of your business plan provides information about your production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.
Financial plan
The financial plan (a.k.a. financial statement) offers a breakdown of your sales, revenue, expenses, profit, and other financial metrics. You’ll want to include all the numbers and concrete data to project your current and projected financial state.
In this business plan example, the financial statement for ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy includes forecasted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.
It then goes deeper into the financials, citing:
- Funding needs
- Project cash-flow statement
- Project profit-and-loss statement
- Projected balance sheet
You can use Shopify’s financial plan template to create your own income statement, cash-flow statement, and balance sheet.
Types of business plans (and what to write for each)
A one-page business plan is a pared down version of a standard business plan that’s easy for potential investors and partners to understand. You’ll want to include all of these sections, but make sure they’re abbreviated and summarized:
- Logistics and operations plan
- Financials
A startup business plan is meant to secure outside funding for a new business. Typically, there’s a big focus on the financials, as well as other sections that help determine the viability of your business idea—market analysis, for example. Shopify has a great business plan template for startups that include all the below points:
- Market research: in depth
- Financials: in depth
Your internal business plan acts as the enforcer of your company’s vision. It reminds your team of the long-term objective and keeps them strategically aligned toward the same goal. Be sure to include:
- Market research
Feasibility
A feasibility business plan is essentially a feasibility study that helps you evaluate whether your product or idea is worthy of a full business plan. Include the following sections:
A strategic (or growth) business plan lays out your long-term vision and goals. This means your predictions stretch further into the future, and you aim for greater growth and revenue. While crafting this document, you use all the parts of a usual business plan but add more to each one:
- Products and services: for launch and expansion
- Market analysis: detailed analysis
- Marketing plan: detailed strategy
- Logistics and operations plan: detailed plan
- Financials: detailed projections
Free business plan templates
Now that you’re familiar with what’s included and how to format a business plan, let’s go over a few templates you can fill out or draw inspiration from.
Bplans’ free business plan template
Bplans’ free business plan template focuses a lot on the financial side of running a business. It has many pages just for your financial plan and statements. Once you fill it out, you’ll see exactly where your business stands financially and what you need to do to keep it on track or make it better.
PandaDoc’s free business plan template
PandaDoc’s free business plan template is detailed and guides you through every section, so you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. Filling it out, you’ll grasp the ins and outs of your business and how each part fits together. It’s also handy because it connects to PandaDoc’s e-signature for easy signing, ideal for businesses with partners or a board.
Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template
Miro’s Business Model Canvas Template helps you map out the essentials of your business, like partnerships, core activities, and what makes you different. It’s a collaborative tool for you and your team to learn how everything in your business is linked.
Better business planning equals better business outcomes
Building a business plan is key to establishing a clear direction and strategy for your venture. With a solid plan in hand, you’ll know what steps to take for achieving each of your business goals. Kickstart your business planning and set yourself up for success with a defined roadmap—utilizing the sample business plans above to inform your approach.
Business plan FAQ
What are the 3 main points of a business plan.
- Concept. Explain what your business does and the main idea behind it. This is where you tell people what you plan to achieve with your business.
- Contents. Explain what you’re selling or offering. Point out who you’re selling to and who else is selling something similar. This part concerns your products or services, who will buy them, and who you’re up against.
- Cash flow. Explain how money will move in and out of your business. Discuss the money you need to start and keep the business going, the costs of running your business, and how much money you expect to make.
How do I write a simple business plan?
To create a simple business plan, start with an executive summary that details your business vision and objectives. Follow this with a concise description of your company’s structure, your market analysis, and information about your products or services. Conclude your plan with financial projections that outline your expected revenue, expenses, and profitability.
What is the best format to write a business plan?
The optimal format for a business plan arranges your plan in a clear and structured way, helping potential investors get a quick grasp of what your business is about and what you aim to achieve. Always start with a summary of your plan and finish with the financial details or any extra information at the end.
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Business Plan: What It Is and How to Write One in 9 Steps
Business plans aren’t just for entrepreneurs who need to secure funding—they can help you plan and evaluate new ideas or growth plans, too. Find out how to write a business plan and get the most out of the process in this comprehensive guide.
A great business plan can help you clarify your strategy, identify potential roadblocks, determine necessary resources, and evaluate the viability of your idea and growth plan before you start a business .
Not every successful business launches with a formal business plan, but many founders find value in the process. When you make a business plan, you get to take time to step back, research your idea and the market you’re looking to enter, and understand the scope and the strategy behind your tactics.
Learn how to write a business plan with this step-by-step guide, including tips for getting the most of your plan and real business plan examples to inspire you.
What is a business plan?
A business plan is a strategic document that outlines a company’s goals, strategies for achieving them, and the time frame for their achievement. It covers aspects like market analysis , financial projections, and organizational structure. Ultimately, a business plan serves as a roadmap for business growth and a tool to secure funding.
Often, financial institutions and investors need to see a business plan before funding any project. Even if you don’t plan to seek outside funding, a well-crafted plan becomes the guidance for your business as it scales.
The key components of a business plan
Putting together a business plan will highlight the parts of your company’s strategy and goals. It involves several key business plan components that work together to show the roadmap to your success.
Your business plan’s key components should include:
- Executive summary: A brief overview of your entire plan.
- Company description: An explanation of what your business does and why it’s unique.
- Market analysis: Research on your industry, target market, and competitors.
- Organization and management: Details about your business structure and the people running it.
- Products or services: A description of what you’re selling and how it benefits customers.
- Customer segmentation: A breakdown of your target market into different groups.
- Marketing and sales plan: The strategy for promoting and selling your products and services.
- Logistics and operations: An overview of how your business will run its daily activities and manage resources.
- Financials: A complete look at projected income, expenses, and funding needs.
How to write a business plan in 9 steps
- Draft an executive summary
- Write a company description
- Perform a market analysis
- Outline the management and organization
- List your products and services
- Perform customer segmentation
- Define a marketing plan
- Provide a logistics and operations plan
- Make a financial plan
Few things are more intimidating than a blank page. Starting your business plan with a structured outline and key elements for what you’ll include in each section is the best first step you can take.
Since an outline is such an important step in the process of writing a business plan, we’ve put together a high-level overview to get you started (and help you avoid the terror of facing a blank page).
Once you have your business plan template in place, it’s time to fill it in. We’ve broken it down by section to help you build your plan step by step.
1. Draft an executive summary
A good executive summary is one of the most crucial sections of your business plan—it’s also the last section you should write.
The executive summary distills everything that follows and gives time-crunched reviewers (e.g., potential investors and lenders) a high-level overview of your business that persuades them to read further.
Again, it’s a summary, so highlight the key points you’ve uncovered while writing your plan. If you’re writing for your own planning purposes, you can skip the summary altogether—although you might want to give it a try anyway, just for practice.
An executive summary shouldn’t exceed one page. Admittedly, that space constraint can make squeezing in all of the salient information a bit stressful—but it’s not impossible.
Your business plan’s executive summary should include:
- Business concept. What does your business do?
- Business goals and vision. What does your business want to accomplish?
- Product description and differentiation. What do you sell, and why is it different?
- Target market. Who do you sell to?
- Marketing strategy. How do you plan on reaching your customers?
- Current financial state. What do you currently earn in revenue?
- Projected financial state. What do you foresee earning in revenue?
- The ask. How much money are you asking for?
- The team. Who’s involved in the business?
2. Write a company description
This section of your business plan should answer two fundamental questions:
- Who are you?
- What do you plan to do?
Answering these questions with a company description provides an introduction to why you’re in business, why you’re different, what you have going for you, and why you’re a good investment.
For example, clean makeup brand Saie shares a letter from its founder on the company’s mission and why it exists.
Clarifying these details is still a useful exercise, even if you’re the only person who’s going to see them. It’s an opportunity to put to paper some of the more intangible facets of your business, like your principles, ideals, and cultural philosophies.
Here are some of the components you should include in your company description:
- Your business structure (Are you a sole proprietorship, general partnership, limited partnership, or incorporated company?)
- Your business model
- Your industry
- Your business’s vision, mission, and value proposition
- Background information on your business or its history
- Business objectives, both short and long term
- Your team, including key personnel and their salaries
Brand values and goals
To define your brand values , think about all the people your company is accountable to, including owners, employees, suppliers, customers, and investors. Now consider how you’d like to conduct business with each of them. As you make a list, your core values should start to emerge.
Your company description should also include both short- and long-term goals. Short-term goals, generally, should be achievable within the next year, while one to five years is a good window for long-term goals. Make sure your goal setting includes SMART goals : specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.
Vision and mission statements
Once you know your values, you can write a mission statement . Your statement should explain, in a convincing manner, why your business exists, and should be no longer than a single sentence.
Next, craft your vision statement : What impact do you envision your business having on the world once you’ve achieved your vision? Phrase this impact as an assertion—begin the statement with “We will” and you’ll be off to a great start. Your vision statement, unlike your mission statement, can be longer than a single sentence, but try to keep it to three at most. The best vision statements are concise.
3. Perform a market analysis
Market analysis is a key section of your business plan, whether or not you ever intend for anyone else to read it.
No matter what type of business you start, whether a home-based business or service-based, it’s no exaggeration to say your market can make or break it. Choose the right market for your products—one with plenty of customers who understand and need your product—and you’ll have a head start on success.
If you choose the wrong market, or the right market at the wrong time, you may find yourself struggling for each sale. Your market analysis should include an overview of how big you estimate the market is for your products, an analysis of your business’s position in the market, and an overview of the competitive landscape. Thorough research supporting your conclusions is important both to persuade investors and to validate your own assumptions as you work through your plan.
How big is your potential market?
The potential market is an estimate of how many people need your product. While it’s exciting to imagine sky-high sales figures, you’ll want to use as much relevant independent data as possible to validate your estimated potential market.
Since this can be a daunting process, here are some general tips to help you begin your research:
- Understand your ideal customer profile. Look for government data about the size of your target market , learn where they live, what social channels they use, and their shopping habits.
- Research relevant industry trends and trajectory. Explore consumer trends and product trends in your industry by looking at Google Trends, trade publications, and influencers in the space.
- Make informed guesses. You’ll never have perfect, complete information about your total addressable market. Your goal is to base your estimates on as many verifiable data points as necessary.
Some sources to consult for market data include government statistics offices, industry associations, academic research, and respected news outlets covering your industry.
Read more: What is a Marketing Analysis? 3 Steps Every Business Should Follow
SWOT analysis
A SWOT analysis looks at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
That involves asking questions like:
- What are the best things about your company?
- What are you not so good at?
- What market or industry shifts can you take advantage of and turn into opportunities?
- Are there external factors threatening your ability to succeed?
SWOT is often depicted in a grid or otherwise visual way. With this visual presentation, your reader can quickly see the factors that may impact your business and determine your competitive advantage in the market.
Competitive analysis
There are three overarching factors you can use to differentiate your business in the face of competition:
- Cost leadership. You have the capacity to maximize profits by offering lower prices than the majority of your competitors. Examples include companies like Mejuri and Endy .
- Differentiation. Your product or service offers something distinct from the current cost leaders in your industry and banks on standing out based on your uniqueness. Think of companies like Knix and QALO .
- Segmentation. You focus on a very specific, or niche, target market, and aim to build traction with a smaller audience before moving on to a broader market. Companies like TomboyX and Heyday Footwear are great examples of this strategy.
To understand which is the best fit, you’ll need to understand your business as well as the competitive landscape.
You’ll always have competition in the market, even with an innovative product, so it’s important to include a competitive overview in your business plan. If you’re entering an established market, include a list of a few companies you consider direct competitors and explain how you plan to differentiate your products and business from theirs.
For example, if you’re selling jewelry , your competitive differentiation could be that, unlike many high-end competitors, you donate a percentage of your profits to a notable charity or pass savings on to your customers.
If you’re entering a market where you can’t easily identify direct competitors, consider your indirect competitors—companies offering products that are substitutes for yours. For example, if you’re selling an innovative new piece of kitchen equipment, it’s too easy to say that because your product is new, you have no competition. Consider what your potential customers are doing to solve the same problems.
4. Outline the management and organization
The management and organization section of your business plan should tell readers about who’s running your company. Detail the legal structure of your business. Communicate whether you’ll incorporate your business as an S corporation or create a limited partnership or sole proprietorship.
If you have a management team, use an organizational chart to show your company’s internal structure, including the roles, responsibilities, and relationships between people in your chart. Communicate how each person will contribute to the success of your startup.
5. List your products and services
Your products or services will feature prominently in most areas of your business plan, but it’s important to provide a section that outlines key details about them for interested readers.
If you sell many items, you can include more general information on each of your product lines. If you only sell a few, provide additional information on each.
For example, bag shop BAGGU sells a large selection of different types of bags, in addition to home goods and other accessories. Its business plan would list out those categories and key details about the products within each category.
Describe new products you’ll launch in the near future and any intellectual property you own. Express how they’ll improve profitability. It’s also important to note where products are coming from—handmade crafts are sourced differently than trending products for a dropshipping business, for instance.
6. Perform customer segmentation
Your ideal customer, also known as your target market, is the foundation of your marketing plan , if not your business plan as a whole.
You’ll want to keep this buyer persona in mind as you make strategic decisions, which is why an overview of who they are is important to understand and include in your business plan.
To give a holistic overview of your ideal customer, describe a number of general and specific demographic characteristics. Customer segmentation often includes:
- Where they live
- Their age range
- Their level of education
- Some common behavior patterns
- How they spend their free time
- Where they work
- What technology they use
- How much they earn
- Where they’re commonly employed
- Their values, beliefs, or opinions
This information will vary based on what you’re selling, but you should be specific enough that it’s unquestionably clear who you’re trying to reach—and more importantly, why you’ve made the choices you have based on who your customers are and what they value.
For example, a college student has different interests, shopping habits, and pricing sensitivity than a 50-year-old executive at a Fortune 500 company. Your business plan and decisions would look very different based on which one was your ideal customer.
Put your customer data to work with Shopify’s customer segmentation
Shopify’s built-in segmentation tools help you discover insights about your customers, build segments as targeted as your marketing plans with filters based on your customers’ demographic and behavioral data, and drive sales with timely and personalized emails.
7. Define a marketing plan
Your marketing efforts are directly informed by your ideal customer. That’s why, as you outline your current decisions and future strategy, your marketing plan should keep a sharp focus on how your business idea is a fit for that ideal customer.
If you’re planning to invest heavily in Instagram marketing or TikTok ads , for example, it makes sense to include whether Instagram and TikTok are leading platforms for your audience. If the answer is no, that might be a sign to rethink your marketing plan.
Market your business with Shopify’s customer marketing tools
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Most marketing plans include information on four key subjects. How much detail you present on each will depend on both your business and your plan’s audience.
- Price: How much do your products cost, and why have you made that decision?
- Product: What are you selling and how do you differentiate it in the market?
- Promotion: How will you get your products in front of your ideal customer?
- Place: Where will you sell your products? On what channels and in which markets?
Promotion may be the bulk of your plan, since you can more readily dive into tactical details, but the other three areas should be covered at least briefly—each is an important strategic lever in your marketing mix.
8. Provide a logistics and operations plan
Logistics and operations are the workflows you’ll implement to make your business idea a reality. If you’re writing a business plan for your own planning purposes, this is still an important section to consider, even though you might not need to include the same level of detail as if you were seeking investment.
Cover all parts of your planned operations, including:
- Suppliers. Where do you get the raw materials you need for production, or where are your products produced?
- Production. Will you make, manufacture, wholesale , or dropship your products? How long does it take to produce your products and get them shipped to you? How will you handle a busy season or an unexpected spike in demand?
- Facilities. Where will you and any team members work? Do you plan to have a physical retail space? If yes, where?
- Equipment. What tools and technology do you require to be up and running? This includes everything from software to lightbulbs and everything in between.
- Shipping and fulfillment. Will you be handling all the fulfillment tasks in-house, or will you use a third-party fulfillment partner?
- Inventory. How much will you keep on hand, and where will it be stored? How will you ship it to partners if required, and how will you approach inventory management ?
This section should signal to your reader that you’ve got a solid understanding of your supply chain, with strong contingency plans in place to cover potential uncertainty. If your reader is you, it should give you a basis to make other important decisions, like how to price your products to cover your estimated costs, and at what point you anticipate breaking even on your initial spending.
9. Make a financial plan
No matter how great your idea is—and regardless of the effort, time, and money you invest—a business lives or dies based on its financial health. At the end of the day, people want to work with a business they expect to be viable for the foreseeable future.
The level of detail required in your financial plan will depend on your audience and goals, but typically you’ll want to include three major views of your financials: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement. It also may be appropriate to include financial data and projections.
Here’s a spreadsheet template that includes everything you’ll need to create an income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement, including some sample numbers. You can edit it to reflect projections if needed.
Let’s review the types of financial statements you’ll need.
Income statements
Your income statement is designed to give readers a look at your revenue sources and expenses over a given time period. With those two pieces of information, they can see the all-important bottom line or the profit or loss your business experienced during that time. If you haven’t launched your business yet, you can project future milestones of the same information.
Balance sheets
Your balance sheet offers a look at how much equity you have in your business. On one side, you list all your business assets (what you own), and on the other side, all your liabilities (what you owe).
This provides a snapshot of your business’s shareholder equity, which is calculated as:
Assets - Liabilities = Equity
Cash flow statements
Your cash flow statement is similar to your income statement, with one important difference: it takes into account when revenues are collected and when expenses are paid.
When the cash you have coming in is greater than the cash you have going out, your cash flow is positive. When the opposite scenario is true, your cash flow is negative. Ideally, your cash flow statement will help you see when cash is low, when you might have a surplus, and where you might need to have a contingency plan to access funding to keep your business solvent .
It can be especially helpful to forecast your cash-flow statement to identify gaps or negative cash flow and adjust operations as required.
📚 Read more: Cash Flow Management: What It Is & How To Do It (+ Examples)
Why write a business plan?
Investors rely on business plans to evaluate the feasibility of a business before funding it, which is why business plans are commonly associated with getting a business loan.
Business plans also help owners identify areas of weakness before launching, potentially avoiding costly mistakes down the road. “Laying out a business plan helped us identify the ’unknowns’ and made it easier to spot the gaps where we’d need help or, at the very least, to skill up ourselves,” says Jordan Barnett, owner of Kapow Meggings .
There are several other compelling reasons to consider writing a business plan, including:
- Strategic planning. Writing out your plan is an invaluable exercise for clarifying your ideas and can help you understand the scope of your business, as well as the amount of time, money, and resources you’ll need to get started.
- Evaluating ideas. If you’ve got multiple ideas in mind, a rough business plan for each can help you focus your time and energy on the ones with the highest chance of success.
- Research. To write a business plan, you’ll need to research your ideal customer and your competitors—information that will help you make more strategic decisions.
- Recruiting. Your business plan is one of the easiest ways to communicate your vision to potential new hires and can help build their confidence in the venture, especially if you’re in the early stages of growth.
- Partnerships. If you plan to collaborate with other brands , having a clear overview of your vision, your audience, and your business strategy will make it much easier for them to identify if your business is a good fit for theirs.
- Competitions. There are many business plan competitions offering prizes such as mentorships, grants, or investment capital.
If you’re looking for a structured way to lay out your thoughts and ideas, and to share those ideas with people who can have a big impact on your success, making a business plan is an excellent starting point.
Business plan types
Business plan types can span from one page to multiple pages, with detailed graphs and reports. There’s no one right way to create a business plan. The goal is to convey the most important information about your company for readers.
Common business plans we see include, but are not limited to, the following types:
Traditional business plans
These are the most common business plans. Traditional business plans take longer to write and can be dozens of pages long. Venture capitalist firms and lenders ask for this plan. Traditional business plans may not be necessary if you don’t plan to seek outside funding. That’s where a lean business plan comes in.
Lean business plans
A lean business plan is a shorter version of a traditional business plan. It follows the same format, but only includes the most important information. Businesses use lean business plans to onboard new hires or modify existing plans for a specific target market. If you want to write a business plan purely for your own planning purposes when starting a new small business, a lean business plan is typically the way to go.
Nonprofit business plans
A nonprofit business plan is for any entity that operates for public or social benefit. It covers everything you’ll find in a traditional business plan, plus a section describing the impact the company plans to make. For example, a speaker and headphone brand would communicate that they aim to help people with hearing disabilities. Donors often request this type of business plan.
📚 Read more: 7 Business Plan Examples to Inspire Your Own (2024)
7 tips for creating a small business plan
There are a few best practices when it comes to writing a business plan. While your plan will be unique to your business and goals, keep these tips in mind as you write.
1. Know your audience
When you know who will be reading your plan—even if you’re just writing it for yourself to clarify your ideas—you can tailor the language and level of detail to them. This can also help you make sure you’re including the most relevant information and figure out when to omit sections that aren’t as impactful.
2. Have a clear goal
When creating a business plan, you’ll need to put in more work and deliver a more thorough plan if your goal is to secure funding for your business, versus working through a plan for yourself or your team.
3. Invest time in research
Sections of your business plan will primarily be informed by your ideas and vision, but some of the most crucial information you’ll need requires research from independent sources. This is where you can invest time in understanding who you’re selling to, whether there’s demand for your products, and who else is selling similar products or services.
4. Keep it short and to the point
No matter who you’re writing for, your business plan should be short and readable—generally no longer than 15 to 20 pages. If you do have additional documents you think may be valuable to your audience and your goals, consider adding them as appendices.
5. Keep the tone, style, and voice consistent
This is best managed by having a single person write the plan or by allowing time for the plan to be properly edited before distributing it.
6. Use a business plan template
You can also use a free business plan template to provide a skeleton for writing a plan. These templates often guide you through each section—from financial projects to market research to mission statement—ensuring you don’t miss a step.
7. Try business plan software
Writing a business plan isn’t the easiest task for business owners. But it’s important for anyone starting or expanding a business.
Fortunately, there are tools to help with everything from planning, drafting, creating graphics, syncing financial data, and more. Business plan software also has business plan templates and tutorials to help you finish a comprehensive plan in hours, rather than days.
A few curated picks include:
- LivePlan : the most affordable option with samples and templates
- Bizplan : tailored for startups seeking investment
- Go Small Biz : budget-friendly option with industry-specific templates
📚 Read more: 6 Best Business Plan Software Platforms (2024)
Common mistakes when writing a business plan
Other articles on business plans would never tell you what we’re about to tell you: Your business plan can fail.
The last thing you want is for time and effort to go down the drain, so avoid these common mistakes:
- Bad business idea. Sometimes your idea may be too risky for potential investors or too expensive to run, or there’s no market. Aim for small business ideas that require low startup costs.
- No exit strategy. If you don’t show an exit strategy, or a plan for investors to leave the business with maximum profits, you’ll have little luck securing capital.
- Unbalanced teams. A great product is the cost of entry to starting a business. But an incredible team will take it to the top. Unfortunately, many business owners overlook a balanced team. They focus on potential profits, without worrying about how it will be done operationally.
- Missing financial projections. Don’t forget your balance sheet, cash flow statements, P&L statements, and income statements. Include your break-even analysis and return-on-investment calculations in your financial projections to create a successful business plan.
- Spelling and grammar errors. All the best organizations have an editor review their documents. If someone spots typos while reading your business plan, sloppy errors like those can evoke a larger sense of distrust in your capabilities to run a successful company. It may seem minor, but legibility and error-free writing helps make a good impression on your business plan’s audience.
Updating and revising a business plan
Business plans aren’t static documents. The business world moves fast and your plan will need to keep up. You don’t want it to get stale.
Here’s a good rule of thumb for business plan revisions:
Review Period | Action |
---|---|
Annual | |
Quarterly | |
Monthly |
- Monthly: Update KPIs like sales, website traffic, and customer acquisition costs. Review your cash flow. Is your money situation as expected? Make the necessary changes.
- Quarterly : Are you hitting your targets? Be sure to update your financial performance, successful marketing campaigns, and any other recent milestones achieved.
- Yearly : Think of this as a big overhaul. Compare projections to actuals and update your forecasts.
When updating your plan, don’t just go with your gut. Use data like surveys and website analytics to inform each update. Using outdated information will only lead to confusion and missed opportunities.
Remember not to just update one part of your plan—it’s all connected. Fortunately, with business plan software you can easily give your plan attention and help your business thrive.
How to present a business plan
Here are some tips for presenting your business plan to stakeholders.
Understand your audience
Start by doing homework on who you’ll be presenting to. Are they investors, potential partners, or a bank? Each group will have different interests and expectations.
Consider the following about your presentation audience:
- Background: What’s their professional experience?
- Knowledge level: How familiar are they with your industry?
- Interests: What aspects of your plan will excite them most?
- Concerns: What might make them hesitant about your idea?
Depending on who you’re presenting to, you can tweak your presentation accordingly. For example, if you’re presenting to a group of investors, you’d probably want to highlight financial projections and market analysis.
Structure your presentation
Once you know your audience, you can organize your presentation. Think of this as the story you’ll tell listeners. A well-structured presentation helps listeners follow along and remember key points.
Your opening should grab attention and give a snapshot of what’s to come. It’s kind of like an elevator pitch that gives an overview of your business idea.
From there, break your presentation into clear sections:
- Problem: What issue are you solving?
- Solution: How does your business address this problem?
- Market: Who are your potential customers?
- Competition: Who else is in this space, and how are you different?
- Business model: How will you make money?
- Financial projections: What are your expected costs and revenues?
- Team: Who’s involved, and what makes them qualified?
Use visual aids to support your points. Graphs, charts, and even simple illustrations can make your information more digestible. Remember to practice your timing, too. A good presentation flows smoothly, giving each section the right amount of attention for its intended audience.
Handle objections and questions
Facing objections or questions can be nerve-wracking, but it’s actually a great opportunity. It shows your listeners are engaged and thinking critically about your idea. The key is to be prepared and stay calm.
Try to anticipate potential questions. Put yourself in the listener’s shoes: What would you want to know if you were them? Come up with clear answers to these questions ahead of time.
When handling questions:
- Listen carefully: Make sure you fully understand the question before answering.
- Stay positive: Even if the question seems critical, respond with enthusiasm.
- Be honest: If you don’t know something, it’s OK. Offer to find out and follow up.
Use questions as a way to highlight the strengths of your business plan. If a question needs more thought or refresh, it’s perfectly fine to say, “That’s a great question. I’d love to look further into it and get back to you with a detailed answer.”
Handling questions well shows that you’re knowledgeable, thoughtful, and open to feedback—all things that will impress listeners and make them feel confident in your business plan.
Prepare your business plan today
A business plan can help you identify clear, deliberate next steps for your business, even if you never plan to pitch investors—and it can help you see gaps in your plan before they become issues.
Whether you’re working on starting a new online business idea , building a retail storefront, growing your established business, or purchasing an existing business , you now understand how to write a business plan that suits your business’s goals and needs.
Feature illustration by Rachel Tunstall
Business plan FAQ
How do i write a business plan.
Learning how to write a business plan is simple if you use a business plan template or business plan software. Typically, a traditional business plan for every new business should have the following components:
- Executive summary
- Company description, including value proposition
- Market analysis and competitive analysis
- Management and organization
- Products and services
- Customer segmentation
- Marketing plan
- Logistics and operations
- Financial plan and financial projections
What is a good business plan?
A good business plan clearly communicates your company’s purpose, goals, and growth strategies. It starts with a strong executive summary, then adequately outlines idea feasibility, target market insights, and the competitive landscape.
A business plan template can help businesses be sure to follow the typical format of traditional business plans, which also include financial projections, details about the management team, and other key elements that venture capital firms and potential investors want to see.
What are the 3 main purposes of a business plan?
The three main purposes of a business plan are:
- To clarify your plans for growth
- To understand your financial needs
- To attract funding from investors or secure a business loan
What are the different types of business plans?
The types of business plans include startup, refocusing, internal, annual, strategic, feasibility, operations, growth, and scenario-based. Each type of business plan has a different purpose. Business plan formats include traditional, lean, and nonprofit. Find a business plan template for the type of plan you want to write.
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300+ Business Plan Examples
With over two decades of experience, Growthink has assisted more than 1 million companies in developing effective business plans to launch and expand their businesses. Trust in our expertise to guide you through developing a business plan that drives your success. In addition to our sample plans, below you’ll learn the answers to key business plan questions and gain insightful tips on writing your business plan.
Quick Links to Sections On this Page:
- Sample Business Plans By Business Category
Answers to Key Sample Business Plan Questions
Shoutmouth business plan example, business plan examples by business category.
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1. Why is utilizing an example business plan a good idea?
Sample business plans can help you quickly and easily write a business plan for your own business. Business plans are an important tool for any business, but they can be challenging to create. A sample business plan will help you understand the business plan format , the benefit of market research, and how to write a compelling executive summary. It can also serve as a guide for creating your own business plan, outlining the key sections and providing examples of successful plans. Utilizing the best business plan template can save you time and ensure that your plan is well-structured and comprehensive.
Business plan examples may even help you with the different sections of a plan, including market analysis, business description, cash flow statements/business financial statements, and more. Business plans can also show you how a quality plan in your exact business plan category is organized and shows you the appropriate business communications style to use when writing your business plan.
2. Who would benefit from using an example business plan?
Any entrepreneur or business owner who has never written a business plan before can benefit from an example or sample plan. New business owners often start with business plan templates , which are helpful but are sometimes more useful after reviewing other sample business plans.
A good sample plan can be a step-by-step guide as you work on your business planning and business idea. Once you have a sense for the flow, specs, and details, etc. that business plans have, utilizing a business plan template will help you pull everything together, helping you create a plan investors and other stakeholders will value. A solid business plan will also help you if you need a bank loan, which may require a startup business plan. Download our free business plan template to help you get started on your own business plan.
Free Download : Free Business Plan Template PDF
3. How do you get started with a sample business plan and maximize its benefit?
First you should read the business plan thoroughly. Study both the type of information provided in key sections like the executive summary, target market analysis, summary, etc., as well as the format and style of the plan. As you read, you may find yourself thinking through things such as improving or evaluating your business planning process, your business idea, or reconsidering who you want to write your business plan for. This is OK and part of the process. In fact, when you start writing a business plan for the first time, it will be much easier because you’ve gone through this process.
After this initial read, outline your business plan and copy in from the sample plan sections that apply to your business. For instance, if the sample plan included public relations in their marketing strategy and sales plan, and you will also use this tactic, you can copy it into your plan and edit it as appropriate. Finally, answer the other questions answered in the sample plan in ways that reflect your unique business and target customers.
Writing a business plan can seem daunting. Starting your business plan writing process by reviewing a plan that’s already been created can remove a lot of mental and emotional barriers while helping you craft the best plan you can.
4. When should you not use a sample business plan?
If your business is unlike any other, using a sample business plan will not be as effective. In this situation, writing a business plan from scratch utilizing a business plan template is probably your best path forward.
As an example, Facebook’s early business plan was unlike others since it was paving a new path and way of doing business. But, groundbreaking new businesses like Facebook are not the norm, and the vast majority of companies will benefit from utilizing sample business plans.
5. How do you choose the right type of business plan for your venture?
Selecting the appropriate type of business plan depends on your business’s stage, needs, and goals. Let’s explore the different types of business plans and how to determine which business plan format is right for you.
- Startup Business Plan : This type of plan is for businesses just starting out and seeking funding or investment. It typically includes a detailed analysis of the market, target audience, competition, and financial projections.
- Traditional Business Plan : Traditional business plans are the most common type of business plan, used by established businesses to outline their goals and strategies. It includes all the key sections such as market analysis, company description, and financial statements.
- Internal Business Plan : Internal business plans are used for internal purposes, to guide the day-to-day operations and decision making of the business. It may not be as detailed as a traditional business plan, but still includes important information such as company mission, objectives, and key performance indicators.
- Feasibility Business Plan : A feasibility business plan is used to assess the viability of a new product or service in the market. It includes detailed research and analysis to determine if the business idea is feasible and profitable.
- One-Page Business Plan : As the name suggests, this type of business plan is condensed into one page and includes the most critical information about the business. It can be a useful tool for pitching to potential investors or partners.
- Strategic Business Plan : A strategic plan looks at the big picture and long-term business goals of a company. It may include the company’s mission statement, core values, and overarching strategies for achieving success.
Ultimately, the type of business plan you choose will depend on your business’s specific needs and goals. It may also be beneficial to combine elements from different types of plans to create a customized plan that best fits your business. Carefully consider your objectives and resources before deciding on the right type of plan for your venture.
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The business plan example below is for Shoutmouth, a company that enjoyed much success in the early 2000’s and which was able to raise funding. While the plan’s premise (social networking) is not as unique now as it was then, the format and structure of this business plan still holds.
I. Executive Summary
Business Overview
Launched in late February 2007, Shoutmouth.com is the most comprehensive music news website on the Internet .
Music is one of the most searched and accessed interests on the Internet. Top music artists like Akon receive over 3 million searches each month. In addition, over 500 music artists each receive over 25,000 searches a month.
However, music fans are largely unsatisfied when it comes to the news and information they seek on the artists they love. This is because most music websites (e.g., RollingStone.com, MTV.com, Billboard.com, etc.) cover only the top eight to ten music stories each day – the stories with mass appeal. This type of generic coverage does not satisfy the needs of serious music fans. Music fans generally listen to many different artists and genres of music. By publishing over 100 music stories each day, Shoutmouth enables these fans to read news on all their favorite artists.
In addition to publishing comprehensive music news on over 1200 music artists, Shoutmouth is a social network that allows fans to meet and communicate with other fans about music, and allows them to:
- Create personal profiles
- Interact with other members
- Provide comments on news stories and music videos
- Submit news stories and videos
- Recommend new music artists to add to the community
- Receive customized news and email alerts on their favorite artists
Success Factors
Shoutmouth is uniquely qualified to succeed due to the following reasons:
- Entrepreneurial track record : Shoutmouth’s CEO and team have helped launch numerous successful ventures.
- Affiliate marketing track record : Online affiliate marketing expertise has been cited as one of MySpace’s key success factors. Over the past two years, Shoutmouth’s founders have run one of the most successful online affiliate marketing programs, having sold products to over 500,000 music customers online.
- Key milestones completed : Shoutmouth’s founders have invested $500,000 to-date to staff the company (we currently have an 11-person full-time team), build the core technology, and launch the site. We have succeeded in gaining initial customer traction with 50,000 unique visitors in March, 100,000 unique visitors in April, and 200,000 unique visitors in May 2007.
Unique Investment Metrics
The Shoutmouth investment opportunity is very exciting due to the metrics of the business.
To begin, over the past two years, over twenty social networks have been acquired. The value in these networks is their relationships with large numbers of customers, which allow acquirers to effectively sell to this audience.
The sales price of these social networks has ranged from $25 to $137 per member. Shoutmouth has the ability to enroll members at less than $1 each, thus providing an extraordinary return on marketing expenditures. In fact, during an April 2007 test, we were able to sign-up 2,000 members to artist-specific Shoutmouth newsletters at a cost of only 43 cents per member.
While we are building Shoutmouth to last, potential acquirers include many types of companies that seek relationships with music fans such as music media/publishing (e.g., MTV, Rolling Stone), ticketing (e.g., Ticketmaster, LiveNation) and digital music sales firms (e.g., iTunes, The Orchard).
Financial Strategy, Needs and Exit Strategy
While Shoutmouth’s technological, marketing and operational infrastructure has been developed, we currently require $3 million to execute on our marketing and technology plan over the next 24 months until we hit profitability.
Shoutmouth will primarily generate revenues from selling advertising space. As technologies evolve that allow us to seamlessly integrate music sampling and purchasing on our site, sales of downloadable music are also expected to become a significant revenue source. To a lesser extent, we may sell other music-related items such as ringtones, concert tickets, and apparel.
Topline projections over the next three years are as follows:
2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
Shoutmouth Members | 626,876 | 4,289,580 | 9,577,020 |
Unique Visitors | 2,348,050 | 8,390,187 | 18,633,659 |
Total Page Views (Millions) | 20.7 | 273.5 | 781.0 |
Revenues | $165,431 | $2,461,127 | $7,810,354 |
Expenses | $1,407,958 | $2,591,978 | $2,838,423 |
EBITDA | ($1,242,527) | ($130,851) | $4,971,931 |
II. Shoutmouth Overview
What is Shoutmouth?
Shoutmouth is an operating company of The Kisco Group Inc. (TKG). Since 2003, TKG has capitalized on web-based marketing opportunities via launching targeted websites and generating web-based leads. TKG revenues in 2005 exceeded $1.3 million and grew to $3.5 million in 2006. Shoutmouth is currently the sole focus of TKG; all other TKG business units have been divested.
Development of Shoutmouth began in August 2006 and the site officially launched on February 21, 2007. Shoutmouth (located at www.shoutmouth.com) is the most comprehensive music news community on the Internet. The website covers 1,200 popular bands and music artists and offers more than 100 new music articles each day. In addition to providing news, Shoutmouth is a web community. That is, Shoutmouth members can actively participate on the site, by doing things such as commenting on news stories and submitting their own stories.
The Market Size and Need for Shoutmouth
The music market is clearly vast. According to IFPI, which represents the recording industry worldwide, global music sales were $33.5 billion in 2005, with the U.S. accounting for $12.3 billion of that amount. Importantly, digitally music sales are seeing substantial growth, with IFPI reporting sales of $400 million in 2004, $1.1 billion in 2005 and $2 billion in 2006.
Online, music is the one of the most frequently searched and accessed interests. For example, according to Wordtracker, the music artist Eminem received over 1.7 million web searches in December 2006, while band Green Day received 534,000 searches.
To put these figures in perspective, top celebrities in other entertainment fields receive but a fraction of this search volume. For example, December 2006 search volumes for select sports stars and actors were as follows: Kobe Bryant, 122K; Tiger Woods, 88K; Cameron Diaz, 332K; and Tom Cruise, 82K.
Conversely, 225 music artists received over 100,000 searches in December 2006, and over 500 music artists received over 25,000 searches.
This data is corroborated by Nielsen BuzzMetrics which plots the most popular topics bloggers are posting about. The chart to the right plots September 25, 2006 to March 25, 2007 and shows how music dominates other entertainment sectors online.
When searching for music artists online, fans, which are primarily between the ages of 13 and 35, are looking for news, pictures, lyrics, videos and audio files. In addition, fans enjoy publicly voicing their opinions about music and interacting with other fans.
There is currently no website besides Shoutmouth that provides comprehensive music news. Currently, to get the latest news on their favorite artists, fans must visit the official websites or fan websites of each of the artists they like . Even then, it is unlikely that the fan will get all the news that has occurred. To solve this problem, Shoutmouth scours the web and uncovers news from thousands of web sites.
What Shoutmouth Does and Will Offer
As of May 2007, the site covers the 1,200 most popular music artists (popularity primarily based on the number of web searches over the past 12 months for each artist).
Shoutmouth currently offers members the ability to:
- Read over 500 new music articles each week
- Read special features such as album reviews, interviews, new album release dates, top quotes of the week and other special reports
- Watch and rate music videos
- Listen to select music audio clips
- Comment on news stories and music videos
- Submit news stories that they see/hear of elsewhere
- Suggest new music artists to add to the site
- View articles by music artist or by genre (current genres include Rock, Pop, Rap, R&B, Country, and Electronic)
- Create a user profile that includes their favorite music artists, Shoutmouth friends, news stories submitted to Shoutmouth, and comments made. Members have the ability to find other members based on their favorite artists and via our search functions.
- Receive customized news and email alerts. Members can customize their “My News” page to include only artists they specify. Likewise, they can choose to receive email alerts whenever there is a new story on one of their favorite artists.
While establishing itself as the premier music news community, Shoutmouth will embark on the more aggressive goal of becoming the premier music community online . To accomplish this, Shoutmouth will begin to offer additional content (more videos, audio, pictures, lyrics, etc.) and additional functionality (music compatibility testing (e.g., if you like this, you’ll like this), voting capabilities, member-to-member messaging, etc.). We have already begun mapping out our content and technology growths plans to achieve this goal upon financing.
Importantly, Shoutmouth expects to be able to add massive amounts of relevant content (e.g., lyrics, reviews, pictures, video files, audio files, etc.) via member submissions and moderation. This is the same way that YouTube has been able to quickly add millions of videos and Wikipedia has been able to add millions of articles. Importantly, since established music websites (e.g., MTV, RollingStone.com, Billboard.com, etc.) are not community based, they would have to hire thousands of staff members to rival the content that Shoutmouth will have.
How We Get and Publish Our News
Currently, news stories that appear on Shoutmouth are gathered from numerous online sources. Shoutmouth’s staff writers find these stories by using RSS and News feeds that cover thousands of websites. In addition, Shoutmouth community members have the ability to submit stories they find elsewhere.
Typical stories include factual information plus the insight of the author. Shoutmouth editors ensure that all stories are properly classified by artist and genre, and that duplicate articles are filtered out.
Over the past three months, Shoutmouth has developed a solid infrastructure, which we consider a core competitive advantage, that that allows us to provide comprehensive music news . This infrastructure includes:
- Setting up hundreds of RSS feeds based on comprehensive research regarding sites from which to receive feeds
- Training our editorial team regarding identifying a story and weeding out duplicates
- Assigning music artists among our five-person editorial team to better manage work flow and avoid duplicate articles
We are working on a system to ensure that member-submitted articles are automatically routed to the appropriate member of Shoutmouth’s editorial team to improve our efficiencies further.
Shoutmouth’s Goal to Break News First
The majority (approximately 90%) of Shoutmouth’s articles are currently developed by our in-house editorial team, while the balance is submitted by members. In addition, virtually all of our articles are based on information gleaned from other websites. As such, we are generally not the first to publish news; however we are the first and only site to publish all the news in one easily-accessible place. The one current exception is news which is published on bands’ official MySpace pages; Shoutmouth generally publishes articles on this news 24 to 48 hours before it is reported by other news or music sites (due to our efficiencies in finding news).
Shoutmouth realizes that it will gain a key competitive advantage, and will generate significant market buzz, if it is able to report on music news stories before other media sources . To accomplish this, we have begun contacting publicity departments at record labels to gain direct access to music news. We expect these contacts to enable us to gain immediate and sometimes exclusive access to news which will help further establish Shoutmouth as the canonical source for music news. We also plan to more aggressively solicit member submissions of new, buzzworthy news events and will consider offering rewards for unique substantiated news (much the way paparazzi are compensated).
III. Competition in the Online Music Market
This section of the business plan provides a competitive analysis, which is an overview of the competitive landscape, discusses both indirect and direct competitors and then details Shoutmouth’s competitive advantages.
Because consumer demand for music on the Internet is so great, there are a vast number of music websites. In summary, we consider most sectors of the online music market (which are discussed below) to be indirect competitors and potentially partners, rather than direct competitors, because none of them focus on music news.
The reason we believe that no one focuses on music news is that it is very difficult to do. Because news is very important to music fans, most music websites offer news. However, they primarily get their news from organizations such as CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press and BBC. These large organizations only write about the music stories that have mass appeal, which traditionally amounts to 8-10 music news stories per day. However, since music fans are often zealots when it comes to their favorite artists, they are not merely interested in cover stories. For instance, a U2 fan cares about any U2 news, particularly news that a non-U2 fan might consider insignificant.
In fact, because Shoutmouth is the sole one-stop shop for getting comprehensive music news, there might be an opportunity to license our content to other music websites.
Sectors of the Online Music Market
Shoutmouth specifically comPs in the community-based music news market. While players in this market represent direct competitors, Shoutmouth faces indirect competitors in the following markets:
- Community-Based Sites
- Community-Based News Sites
- Community-Based Music Sites
- Traditional Music Websites
- Official Artist and Fan Sites
Each of these markets is described below.
A. Community-Based Sites
Community-based sites, also known as social networking sites, are websites in which members can create profiles, leave comments throughout the site, and communicate with other members among other features.
A June 2006 report by Piper Jaffray entitled “Silk Road: Social Networking is Here to Stay” effectively sums up the power and longevity of social networking:
“We believe social networking sites have become a permanent part of the fabric of web applications and are rapidly becoming one of the most popular activities online, potentially impacting how other popular services such as email, IM, and maybe even search are accessed.
As a clear indication of the growth rate and scale of social networking, consider this: MySpace monthly page views have now surpassed MSN or AOL in the U.S. and are nearly 75% of the size of Yahoo!. Social networking has filled a gap that was left by all the existing portals and web services and it is fulfilling a very important and basic function for millions of users: allowing them to express themselves and connect with their friends, with the two functions tightly integrated.
The leading sites such as MySpace (News Corp), Facebook, and others are amassing significant power in the new landscape of the Internet and the existing Internet companies are likely to have to work with these newcomers as they may yield material control on the flow of traffic to other applications.”
Social networking sites such as MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Tagged.com, and TagWorld.com have educated consumers regarding the value of these sites and how to use them. Their success has spurred genre-specific social networks such as community-based/social networking news sites and music sites, which are discussed below.
Shoutmouth doesn’t view established social networking sites as competitors since these sites have a general focus. That is, members talk about all aspects of life, from dating to music to movies, etc. Conversely, Shoutmouth is solely focused on music.
B. Community-Based News Sites
Community-based news sites are sites in which members decide what’s newsworthy and what’s not. For instance, on Digg.com, the most prominent community-based news site, members “Digg” stories that they feel are most newsworthy. The stories that the community feels are most important rise to Digg’s homepage, while less important stories get little attention.
Digg’s one million members can submit stories, “digg” stories, and comment on stories. Digg focuses on general news with a slant towards technology, gaming and unique/sensational news. While Digg does have a Music area within its Entertainment section, this receives little focus. In fact, at the time of the writing of this plan, Digg’s music home page only includes one article submitted within the past 48 hours. Furthermore, Digg doesn’t pare down the music category into sub-categories such as Rock and individual music artists. Conversely, these sub-categories are the entire focus of Shoutmouth.
Other sites that are similar to Digg include Newsvine.com, Spotback.com and Gabbr.com. Of most relevance is the Digg-like site for music, Noisetap.com, which was launched by Ticketmaster in January 2007.
Like Digg, Noisetap.com allows members to submit and vote for music stories. Noisetap.com is organized by music genre and not by music artist. This most likely will not satisfy the needs of many music fans since they don’t have the ability to find news on the specific artists they care most about. Likewise, without a full-time staff actively researching and publishing news stories at the artist-level, Noisetap.com will never be able to offer the comprehensive news that Shoutmouth does.
While Shoutmouth is currently similar to community-based news sites in that members can submit stories and comment on the news they find most interesting, no established player in the market provides a comprehensive focus on music. In addition, Shoutmouth sees these sites as marketing partners as we have and will continue to submit our stories on them to increase our readership.
C. Community-Based Music Sites
There are many community-based music websites, although none focuses on music news such as Shoutmouth. Conversely, these sites generally give members the ability to create and listen to song play lists. The community acts to help individual members find new music and new friends based on similarities in their music tastes. Prominent sites in this genre include Last.fm, Finetune, Pandora, RadioBlogClub, MyStrands, iLike[1] and iJigg.
Last.fm is the most prominent community-based music site and is a good model with which to compare Shoutmouth. Likewise, we will benchmark our performance against Last.fm as we reach of goal of becoming the premier music news community and focus on becoming the premier music community.
According to Alexa, Last.fm is the 359th most visited site on the Internet. While Last.fm focuses on allowing members to create customized Internet stations based on their music tastes, the site has much additional content and social networking features. For instance, for each artist, Last.fm includes pictures, a bio, concert dates, discography, fans on Last.fm, and similar artists. Fans are also able to create journals and communicate with other fans. Key features that Last.fm doesn’t currently focus on include news and video.
D. Traditional Music Websites
Traditional music websites such as MTV.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard.com, NME.com, AOL Music, and Yahoo! Music tend to have many features such as news, reviews, pictures, videos and audio. While these sites are generally very well done and extremely popular, they are under-serving visitors in two core areas: music news and community .
These sites’ lack of music news stems from the difficulty in creating this news, specifically that it requires filtering through thousands of articles and websites to find relevant stories. Likewise, as discussed, these firms might wish to license our news content in the future.
Regarding community , none of the top music sites are thriving communities. Rather, either these sites offer no community features or they recently began offering select features (e.g., submitting reviews or commenting on articles). Even when available, the community features on these sites are afterthoughts and are not engrained within the core fabric of the sites.
While they haven’t been able to transform their current sites into communities, top music websites clearly understand the power of online music communities and have an appetite for them. For example, in January 2007, MTV invested in social networking website TagWorld. MTV also acquired RateMyProfessors.com and Quizilla.com (teen social network) in January 2007 and October 2006 respectively.
As mentioned previously, our vision is to build and incorporate additional technologies, and use our “army” of members to publish vast amounts of music content on Shoutmouth, in order to fully satisfy music fans and leapfrog traditional music sites in terms of their music content.
E. Official Artist and Fan Sites
Shoutmouth com’s with official music artist websites and fan websites. These sites often include news about the specific artist as well as pictures, videos and other relevant information.
On one hand, official music artist and fan websites are direct competitors to Shoutmouth. This is because some of these sites offer comprehensive news on the specific artist they cover. In addition, many offer forums, discussion boards or other ways to communicate with other fans.
However, two factors separate Shoutmouth from these types of sites: 1) breadth and 2) sophistication.
- Breadth : Most music fans love more than one artist. As such, in order to get the news they want, they would have to visit/join multiple fan or artist websites rather than getting all of their news from Shoutmouth.
- Sophistication : While some official music artist websites are technologically sophisticated, offering forums, networking and other worthwhile features, the majority of artist and fan websites have limited usability, functionality and networking ability. In fact, this deficiency has lead to the success of MusicToday, which provides front and back-end technology to power artist websites.
Specifically, MusicToday offers web design and hosting, develops sophisticated online stores, builds online fan clubs and offers web ticketing among other services to select top music artists such as Dave Matthews Band, Christina Aguilera, Kenny Chesney, Britney Spears and Usher. While offering sophisticated tools for select music artist websites, MusicToday offers little to no music news nor advanced social networking functions. For instance, the official Dave Matthews Band website offers less than one news story per month.
F. Direct Competitors: Community-Based Music News Sites
Shoutmouth’s direct competitors are other music news websites that have social or community features that allow users to join the site, submit articles, comment on articles, create public profiles and/or communicate with other members. Shoutmouth has identified one significant player who offers this service, AbsolutePunk.net.
AbsolutePunk.net has done a good job of building a user base (the site claims 125,000+ registered members and nearly 500,000 un-registered members). In addition, the user base is very active — the average story on their site receives approximately 20 comments. AbsolutePunk.net offers music news, reviews, pictures and interviews among other features.
On the negative side, AbsolutePunk.net’s articles are generally posted by one staff writer (as opposed to Shoutmouth’s five writers), most articles are simply one sentence posts rather than full articles, and no attempt seems to have been made to cover all news stories. In addition, the site only covers the punk music genre. Although “punk” is broadly defined on the site, the site doesn’t cater to genres such as R&B, rap and country among others, failing to satisfy the broader market.
AbsolutePunk.net is owned by Indieclick, a Los Angeles-based media company. According to the AbsolutePunk.net website, the site:
- Has developed a loyal (72% return rate) reader base
- 5,182,147 Posts
- 163,535 Threads
- 126,448 Members
- 1,711 Artist Profiles
- 20,774 Multimedia Files
- Approx 76,000 visits per day.
- Approx 276,000 pageviews per day.
Shoutmouth’s Competitive Advantage
In addition to being the first to fill the untapped market void for comprehensive music news, Shoutmouth’s competitive advantage in the market primarily includes the following:
Online Marketing Sophistication
Content Development Experience and Expertise
Shoutmouth’s team, primarily team members DL and PF, has operated an affiliate marketing business focusing on music for the past four years. Affiliate marketing is defined as a system of revenue sharing between one site (the affiliate) which features an ad or content designed to drive traffic to another site (the merchant). The affiliate receives a fee based on traffic to the merchant which converts to sales.
Our affiliate business has focused on connecting music fans, primarily aged 13 to 30, with music offers such as iPods and ringtones. Over the past two years, we have successful sold affiliated offers to over 500,000 customers. We have become a significant online advertiser, receiving Google’s “over 1 million leads” award, and are recognized as a major player among the top affiliate networks.
It is important to note that affiliate marketing success has been credited with part of MySpace’s success. This is because effective affiliate marketers understand how to drive and convert on Internet traffic.
Shoutmouth will employ its affiliate marketing techniques to drive traffic to Shoutmouth.com and enroll members. We will utilize technologies and proprietary techniques that allow us to monitor multiple metrics such as the cost per visitor, cost per member sign-up, etc., so that we can set and maintain profitable metrics.
Another venture that Shoutmouth team members, primarily PK and DL, launched was the development of over 3,000 niche websites. To create the content for these websites, we employed a virtual work force of over 90 researchers in India and 30 writers and editors in the US.
This experience taught us how to manage a large workforce, train writers to improve content quality and motivate a large group of people. These skill sets will be critical in allowing Shoutmouth to grow the content of the site, as developed by both staff and members, while maintaining quality standards.
IV. Marketing Plan
Shoutmouth’s marketing plan includes the following:
Online Advertising : Shoutmouth will initiate pay-per-click advertising campaigns on Google and Yahoo! in order to inexpensively drive traffic to the site. Specifically, Shoutmouth believes it can drive qualified traffic to the site for 20 cents per visitor and achieve a 20% member conversion rate, thus generating members at a cost of $1.00 per member.
Keys to Shoutmouth’s success in achieving this metric include:
- Conducting thorough keyword research and advertising on appropriate keywords and keyword groups
- Creating advertising text that maximizes click through rates
- Creating landing pages that maximize conversions while maintaining the highest Google AdWords quality score possible
- Closely monitoring conversions to quickly stop and/or modify unprofitable campaigns
- Getting individuals to enter their email address to join the newsletter is much easier than getting them to join a site where they have to create a username, select a password, etc. As such, step one will be to get visitors to sign up for artist-specific newsletters.
- Once on the newsletter distribution list, members will constantly receive messages (embedded in their daily newsletter) regarding the benefits of participating more on Shoutmouth.
- Active Shoutmouth Membership: the constant reminders regarding Shoutmouth’s value proposition in the daily newsletters will influence members to participate more actively on the site (e.g., customize their profile, visit the site more often, etc.).
Invite-A-Friend : Shoutmouth is in the process of creating an aggressive invite-a-friend/member referral program. In doing so, we are following the lead of social movie community, Flixster, which grew to 5 million members within 10 months. It did this by encouraging members, during their initial registration process, to upload and send an invitation to multiple contacts in their email address books. The technology to develop this process is fairly complex and we expect to be completed with and to rollout this program in June 2007.
Direct Email Marketing : Shoutmouth will directly contact bloggers and prominent music fans we find online to tell them about Shoutmouth, encourage them to join, and encourage them to write about Shoutmouth on their blogs and online journals .
Creating/Distributing Buzzworthy/Viral Content : Shoutmouth plans to have several buzzworthy/viral articles (i.e., content that people would want to email to their friends since it is funny, interesting, etc.) on the site each day. With a single click, visitors will be able to send these articles to social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com or Fark.com, where these articles could receive widespread attention. In addition to our traditional news stories, Shoutmouth will also periodically create special reports/features in order to satisfy our members and visitors and to try to get widespread exposure.
An example of the power of such buzzworthy content, Shoutmouth has already succeeded in having two stories accepted by Fark and Digg, which have brought in over 50,000 unique visitors.
Super Fans/Street Team Development : Shoutmouth also plans to recruit “super fans.” Super fans are individuals who are passionate about a certain music artist/band and actively contribute articles and/or comments on Shoutmouth. We will recruit these fans, reward them with status (e.g., adding a gold Shoutmouth headphones image to their profile page) and encourage them to more aggressively promote the site by:
- Submitting more news to Shoutmouth
- Commenting on more articles on Shoutmouth
- Growing the Shoutmouth community around their favorite artist(s) by actively recruiting new members to join the site (such as actively posting Shoutmouth-related comments on their MySpace pages, on other music forums, etc.)
Public Relations : Upon financing, Shoutmouth will hire a public relations firm to help us get mentions in media sources ranging from magazines, newspapers, radio, television and blogs. To date, we have developed and issued press releases via Billboard Publicity Wire which have been syndicated throughout the web. An effective PR firm will enable Shoutmouth to quickly reach a wide audience.
Widgets : Shoutmouth will create artist-specific and genre-specific music news widgets. For example, our U2 widget (see example on right) would include all of the recent U2 articles published on Shoutmouth. The widget can easily be placed on MySpace pages, blogs, etc. Each story title in the widget links to the full article on Shoutmouth.
Shoutmouth has great expectations for our widget. To begin, no such widget currently exists as there is no one place to get comprehensive news for specific music artists. Secondly, each time someone places a Shoutmouth widget on their blog or social networking page, it will effectively market Shoutmouth to a wide audience at zero cost to us.
V. Technology/Site Development Plan
This section provides a brief roadmap of the initial and future functionality of Shoutmouth.
Initial Site Functionality
The initial Shoutmouth website will include the following features:
- Ability to submit and comment on news stories
- Ability to suggest new music artists to add to the site
- Ability to create user profiles
- Ability to receive customized news and email alerts
- Articles categorized by artist and core genre (e.g., Rock, Rap, Pop, etc.)
- Music artist sections which includes News, Bio and Fans
Future Site Functionality
Shoutmouth will use news and basic functionality as the platform though which we will build a thriving music community. After initial launch, the Shoutmouth technology team will work on incorporating additional features such as:
- Ability to message other members via the site (e.g., members will have an Inbox on the site)
- Event calendars: members will receive online calendars. With the click of a button, the member will be able to add tour dates of their favorite artists/bands to their calendar.
- Articles also categorized by sub-genre (e.g., Alternative Rock, West Coast Rap, etc.)
- Music artist sections to also include videos, audio files, photo galleries, reviews and event calendars to which members can upload files and vote on top content.
- Forums and member blogs
- Music compatibility testing (suggestions on song/artists members might like)
- Trivia quizzes
- Music playlists
VI. Financial Plan
Revenue Model
During the first six months, Shoutmouth will not generate any revenues as it will not sell advertising space nor offer products for sale. This decision has been made to spur the growth of the Shoutmouth community. By initially positioning Shoutmouth more as a non-profit, for-the-people-by-the-people venture, members will be more prone to promote the site and invite their friends than if the site looks too commercial.
Starting in September 2007, Shoutmouth will primarily generate revenues from selling advertising space. As technologies (such as the Snocap music widget) evolve that allow us to seamlessly integrate music sampling and purchasing on our site, sales of downloadable music are also expected to be a significant revenue source. To a lesser extent, we may sell other music-related items such as ringtones, concert tickets, and apparel.
Funding To Date
To date, Shoutmouth’s founders have invested $500,000 in Shoutmouth, with which we have accomplished the following:
- Built the site’s core technology
- Hired and trained our core staff (we currently maintain an 11-person full-time team)
- Populated the website with content (over 10,000 articles and 1,200 artist bios)
- Generated brand awareness among music fans, including driving 50,000 unique visitors in March, 100,000 unique visitors in April, and 200,000 unique visitors in May 2007.
Funding Requirements/Use of Funds
Shoutmouth is currently seeking $3 million to provide funding for the next 24 months. At this point, the site will be profitable and can grow organically, or additional capital may be sought to more aggressively expand our member base.
The capital will be used as follows:
- Execution of Marketing plan : in order for Shoutmouth to grow its visitor and member base, we need to invest dollars in online advertising and public relations. With regards to online advertising, we are confident that we can enroll members at a cost of $1 per member, which is a fraction of the value of the members to an acquirer (minimum $25 per member), thus providing a significant return on our marketing investments.
- Execution of Technology plan : in order to build a thriving community, Shoutmouth needs to offer its visitors a “stickier” website and enhanced features. We currently maintain a vast “wish list” of features, such as members uploading and rating pictures and videos, trivia quizzes, and member-to-member messaging, that will significantly improve the site’s functionality and value proposition.
- Staffing : In order to reach our goals, we will have to hire additional technical and operations personnel.
Financial Projections
Below is an overview of Shoutmouth’s Financial Projections for the next three years. Please see the Appendix for the full financial projections and key assumptions.
Exit Strategy / Valuation Metric
Shoutmouth’s most likely exit strategy is to be acquired by a traditional music website or property (e.g., Viacom/MTV, Ticketmaster, Rolling Stone), an entertainment/media conglomerate (e.g., Yahoo!, IAC/InterActiveCorp, NBC), or a large social networking site (e.g., News Corp/MySpace).
This strategy is supported by the significant M&A activity in the social networking market, which includes the following transactions over the past 24 months:
Del.icio.us | social bookmarking | 12/05 | $30-$35 million | Yahoo! |
eCrush Inc. | teen social network | 01/07 | Undisclosed | Hearst Magazines Digital Media |
FanNation | sports social networking | 01/07 | $20+ million | Sports Illustrated |
Five Across Inc. | social networking | 02/07 | Undisclosed | Cisco Systems Inc. |
Flickr | photo uploading and sharing community | 03/05 | $15-35 million (rumored) | Yahoo! |
Grouper | video creating, uploading and sharing community | 08/06 | $65 million | Sony Pictures |
Jumpcut | video creating, uploading and sharing community | 09/06 | $15 million (rumored) | Yahoo! |
KiwiBox.com | teen social network | 02/07 | Undisclosed | Magnitude Information Systems, Inc. |
MyBlogLog | blog community tool | 01/07 | $10 million (rumored) | Yahoo! |
MySpace | social networking | 07/05 | $580 million | News Corp. |
Quizilla.com | teen social network | 10/06 | Undisclosed | Viacom/MTV Networks |
RateMyProfessors.com | community focused on rating college professors | 01/07 | Undisclosed | Viacom/MTV Networks |
social news site | 10/06 | Undisclosed | Conde Nast/ Wired Digital | |
Sconex.com | social network for high school students | 03/06 | $6.1 million | Alloy Inc. |
TelevisionWithoutPity.com | TV fan site | 03/07 | Undisclosed | Bravo |
Weblogs Inc. | blogging network | 10/05 | $25 million (rumored) | AOL |
YouTube | video community | 10/06 | $1.65 billion | Google Inc. |
Regarding valuation, below are the estimated valuations of social networking companies on a per member basis upon exit:
- Del.icio.us: $50 – $100 per member
- MySpace: $25 per member
- Xing (business social network): $137 per member at IPO in 10/06
- Flickr: $56 – $130 per member
- Grouper: $130 per member
Based on this data, not only are social networking sites a promising investment, but sites that can acquire members for less than $25 each (a conservative valuation estimate based on the figures above), should earn a solid return on investment. As discussed above, Shoutmouth’s goal is to acquire members for no more than $1 each.
In addition, per the membership projections above, Shoutmouth’s valuation at the end of 2009, at a $25 valuation per member, is expected to be $239 million. A more conservative, using a 24.4 time EBITDA multiple (the average multiple of tech M&A deals in 2006 according to The M&A Advisor), yields a $121 million valuation in 2009.
Shoutmouth’s founding team includes entrepreneurs and managers with a track record of success and a history of successfully working together.
Management Team
DL, Co-Founder and CEO
D has a history of successfully launching and growing businesses of all sizes. As president and co-founder of an entrepreneurial services firm., D has personally assisted in the launch and development of over 100 ventures.
Over the past three years, D founded and has managed The Kisco Group which includes an affiliate marketing division (2006 revenues exceeded $3 million), a search engine optimization business which includes a network of 3,000 websites (2006 revenues exceeded $500,000) and an e-commerce business (which includes TopPayingKeywords.com and ShowerHeadsEtc.com).
D earned his Bachelors degree from the University of South Carolina.
PK, Co-Founder and Vice President of Operations
For the past two years, P has managed The Kisco Group’s search engine optimization business where he hired, trained and managed nearly 100 employees and a dozen outside firms. During this time, P has honed his management skills with regards to content development, marketing and operations.
P has had a passion for music since childhood and has been a semi-professional drummer for the past 15 years.
P earned his Bachelors of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Clemson University.
PF, Co-Founder and Vice President of Technology
For the past year, P has managed The Kisco Group’s affiliate marketing business. In addition to setting up and managing widespread marketing campaigns, P has developed sophisticated analytic techniques to precisely analyze web traffic in order to optimize profitability.
Since August 2006, P has shifted his efforts and leveraged his technology skills in developing the Shoutmouth website. P has been instrumental in selecting the Content Management Platform upon which Shoutmouth is built, and finding and managing the technology team.
P earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College.
AB, Marketing Manager
A’s background in music includes being a singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer. He has also worked on the marketing side of music, having marketed Veritas Records through the development and distribution of promotional materials.
A’s career also includes psychological research and administration, having served as a Research Assistant with the Interpersonal Perception And Communication Laboratory in Cambridge, MA.
A earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Ohio State University.
M, Lead Technology Developer
M is an experienced web programmer with expertise in web design, application development and database development among others.
M’s work experience includes serving as a Senior Developer at Spheres. M has also engaged in multiple, long term freelance projects including serving as a Database Developer Consultant with The Penn Group and a Web Developer Consultant with Volution Media Group and Allied Online Consulting Group.
M earned his Bachelors degree in Computer Science with a minor in Cognitive Science from Rutgers University.
Content Development Team
Shoutmouth’s writing team, managed by PK, includes the following members:
- JS, Editorial Manager: former content manager and copywriter for Scholastic Inc. and Promotions.com.
- TZ: former music intern (Virgin Records and WRRV) and author of the blog, The Tom Z Show .
- ML: former assistant editor for Adventure Publishing; author of the blog Certified Gangsta ; and former editor-in-chief of Fordham University’s newspaper The Paper .
- SB: former staff writer for Paste Magazine , The Clarion Ledger , and Nightclub and Bar Magazine among others.
- CSJ: former editorial intern for Rolling Stone and Editorial Assistant for Psychology Today .
Outsourced Technology Team
Shoutmouth works very closely with 2skies, a technology firm based in Australia with staff in Australia and the United States. 2skies is run by JDN, one of the co-founding developers of XE, the platform upon which Shoutmouth is built.
XE is an extensible, Open Source web application framework written in PHP and licensed under the GNU General Public License. XE delivers the requisite infrastructure and tools to create custom web applications that include fully dynamic multi-platform Content Management Solutions (CMS).
VIII. Appendix: Shoutmouth Financial Projections 3-Year Income Statement
Total Page Views (MILLIONS) | |||
Revenues | $165,431 | $2,461,127 | $7,810,354 |
Staffing | $891,058 | $1,328,078 | $1,522,923 |
Outsourced Technology | $115,000 | $60,000 | $60,000 |
Office Space | $26,400 | $90,000 | $90,000 |
Advertising | $254,000 | $900,000 | $900,000 |
Other Marketing/Public Relations | $72,000 | $120,000 | $150,000 |
Web Hosting | $11,500 | $33,900 | $55,500 |
Other | $38,000 | $60,000 | $60,000 |
$1,407,958 | $2,591,978 | $2,838,423 | |
($1,242,527) | ($130,851) | $4,971,931 | |
Depreciation | $1,600 | $4,200 | $5,800 |
($1,244,127) | ($135,051) | $4,966,131 | |
Income Taxes @ (40%) | ($497,651) | ($54,020) | $1,986,452 |
Income Taxes Paid | $0 | $0 | $1,434,781 |
Income Tax Credit | ($497,651) | ($551,671) | $0 |
($1,244,127) | ($135,051) | $3,531,350 |
3-Year Balance Sheet
As of December 31
Cash | $1,845,206 | $1,614,336 | $4,726,360 |
Accounts Receivable (30 days) | $13,597 | $202,284 | $641,947 |
Inventory | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Current Assets | $1,858,803 | $1,816,620 | $5,368,307 |
Other Assets | |||
Equipment (Computer systems, office equipment, etc.) | $16,000 | $26,000 | $32,000 |
Accumulated Depreciation | ($1,600) | ($5,800) | ($11,600) |
Total Long-Term Assets | $14,400 | $20,200 | $20,400 |
$1,873,203 | $1,836,820 | $5,388,707 | |
Accounts Payable (30 days) | $117,330 | $215,998 | $236,535 |
Total Current Liabilities | $117,330 | $215,998 | $236,535 |
Long Term Debt | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Paid In Capital | $3,000,000 | $3,000,000 | $3,000,000 |
Retained Earnings | ($1,244,127) | ($1,379,178) | $2,152,172 |
Total Equity | $1,755,873 | $1,620,822 | $5,152,172 |
$1,873,203 | $1,836,820 | $5,388,707 |
3-Year Cash Flow Statement
Net Income/Loss | ($1,244,127) | ($135,051) | $3,531,350 |
Depreciation | $1,600 | $4,200 | $5,800 |
Minus Increase in Accounts Receivable | ($13,597) | ($188,687) | ($439,663) |
Plus Change in Current Liabilities | $117,330 | $98,668 | $20,537 |
Net Cash Flow from Operating | ($1,138,794) | ($220,870) | $3,118,024 |
Purchases of Property & Equipment | ($16,000) | ($10,000) | ($6,000) |
Net Cash Flow from Investing | ($16,000) | ($10,000) | ($6,000) |
Cash Received from Investors | $3,000,000 | $0 | $0 |
Net Cash Flow from Financing | $3,000,000 | $0 | $0 |
$1,845,206 | ($230,870) | $3,112,024 | |
$1,845,206 | $1,614,336 | $4,726,360 |
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Frequently asked questions.
A sample business plan is an example/template document that outlines the key sections and elements that are typically included in a plan used to start and/or operate a business venture. It provides a structured format and sample content that you can use as a guide when writing your own specific business plan tailored to your company's details.
A good business plan example will contain the core components found in most business plans, including:
- Executive summary
- Company overview
- Market analysis
- Product/Service description
- Operations plan
- Management team
- Marketing & sales strategy
- Financial projections & requirements
The business plan example gives descriptions, instructions, and illustration text to explain what information should be covered in each of the sections. However, the actual data and specifics will need to be customized for your particular business.
The purpose of business plan examples is to provide an organizational framework and example formatting that can guide you in developing a professional, comprehensive plan to define their business model and convey it to potential investors or lenders. It essentially serves as a template and starting point you can adapt according to your own business goals, market, financials, and plans.
Download a free example business plan . Use it as a template for your own business plan and to see an example of what you'll find in LivePlan.
Here are some of the main ways you can utilize our examples of different business plans:
- Get a visual template. A sample plan allows you to see the typical structure and order of sections in a professional business plan. This gives you a visual template to follow for organizing your own information.
- Understand what to include. By seeing a business plan example, you can better understand what kind of information, analysis, and level of detail is expected in each section. The samples will prompt you on the key elements to cover.
- Learn proper formatting. Sample business plans demonstrate the formatting conventions like using headings, subheadings, charts, and visual layouts. You can mimic the professional presentation.
- Use it as a starting framework. Rather than starting from a blank page, you can use the sample as an initial framework and template.
- Get ideas from the examples. The descriptions and sample text in each section can spark ideas and remind you of important points to include in your own plan.
- Follow the flow and order. A good sample will put the sections in a logical order that guides the reader through the plan. You can maintain this clear flow when writing yours.
- Study them as a learning tool. For first-time entrepreneurs, reviewing several sample plans can be an excellent way to learn what investors and lenders expect to see in a high-quality business plan.
The key is using real business plan examples as a guide and framework, while customizing with your company's unique strategies, market research, projections and other plan details.
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15+ Business Plan Examples to Help You Write Your Own
Written by: Caleb Bruski
Having a clear business plan and sharing your goals with investors and stakeholders is an important first step to starting a successful business. It's like Utibe Samuel Mbom said, “Those who work hard, work alone. Those who work smart, work as a team.”
Whether you’re at a startup creating a pitch deck for investors or an established corporation with a team to work with, it's crucial to write a solid business plan to help everyone grasp the goals and ultimate vision of your company.
Creating a business plan from scratch can take a lot of time and effort. Get a head start by using professionally designed business plan templates. You can find some amazing, ready-made business plan templates in Visme — complete with financial, overview and other important pages.
In this article, we'll show you 15+ business examples to help inspire your own.
Ready to create your own business plan? Build a solid document to bring your ideas to life using our business plan maker . Access pre-made templates, drag-and-drop design tools, free images, interactivity and more.
Table of Contents
- Simple Business Plan Example
- Creative Business Plan Example
- Modern Business Plan Example
- Ecommerce Business Plan Example
- Salon Business Plan Example
- Startup Business Plan Example
- Nonprofit Business Plan Example
- Coffee Shop Business Plan Example
- Consulting Business Plan
- Fashion Business Plan Example
- One-Page Business Plan Example
- SaaS Business Plan Example
- Photography Business Plan Example
- Real Estate Business Plan Example
- Small Business Plan Example
- Day Care Business Plan Example
1 Simple Business Plan Example
When a business plan is called simple, it does not mean it lacks details. A good business plan should cover the most important details of your core idea and present them in a way that's easy for your audience to understand and remember.
The simple business plan template gives you access to 10 customizable pages for your next business plan complete with stock images and a professionally designed layout that is fully customizable.
These pages can be used to explain your business goals and deadlines to your shareholders, potential investors or employees. Use this simple business plan example and template to effortlessly share your timeline and scheduled launches with others.
2 Creative Business Plan Example
Making your company stand out from the crowd is essential to running a successful business. Use this creative business plan example and template to showcase how your ideas and plans for the future are unique, and why they're worth investing in.
While creativity is what makes our world diverse, your creativity here needs to follow your company’s branding. A key aspect of any successful brand strategy is consistency. Your business plan and any other document should follow the tone and style guide of your brand identity.
To learn more about the importance of branding and style guides, check out our complete guide to branding.
3 Modern Business Plan Example
Show your team what the future looks like with a modern business template.
One of the undeniable characteristics of modern style is the lack of clutter. While not all modern styles go so far as to be called minimalistic, they do share a common theme of being clean and clutter-free.
This modern business plan example takes those characteristics and applies them to a business plan. By being clean and organized, this business plan template shows how clear and solid the future plans of your company are.
Utilize this template to reinforce a culture of excellence among your work colleagues or impress potential investors with a clean and clear business plan outline for the future.
4 Ecommerce Business Plan Example
Ecommerce stores have become an important part of our society. According to a study from Statista, nearly 15% of all US retail sales were ecommerce sales in the first quarter of 2020.
For your online business to succeed and stay up to date with all the online sales, holidays and trends, a clear business plan is needed.
The ecommerce business plan template is a great template for anyone looking to launch or maintain an ecommerce store. Use this example to help you create goals for upcoming sales and deadlines to launch new features in your store.
5 Salon Business Plan Example
This salon business plan is a perfect way to establish and share plans for your salon. With the help of this glamorous business plan template, you will be able to share with investors what your vision is for your salon or any other small business.
Our incredible selection of crystal-clear images takes your content to the next level, giving your sophisticated design some extra flair.
Create and share future plans, sales and ideas for your business with those around you. Cast your vision for what the future looks like and invite others to get behind your ambitions.
6 Startup Business Plan Example
Creating a startup can be a difficult task.
Having a great idea is one thing, but creating tangible goals, sharing mission statements and creating a culture that stands behind your original vision is a whole separate challenge.
Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download
The startup business plan template is a great example of how a business plan should look for a successful startup. The example includes customizable portions to help you share your objectives, values, market analysis and business model.
Creating a successful business plan that is captivating and informative may seem like a daunting task, but it’s actually a perfect opportunity to share your hopes, dreams and goals for your business.
7 Nonprofit Business Plan Example
There are over 10 million nonprofits in the world, and over 25% of Americans volunteer to work with a nonprofit or charity.
If you have a great cause and are looking for a way to bring other people on board, consider making a nonprofit business plan. While technically a nonprofit is “not a business”, a nonprofit or charity requires similar structure and planning.
The nonprofit business plan example and template above is a great starting place to get your nonprofit's plan sketched out on paper.
Creating a business philosophy, creating goals and setting deadlines are shared values for both nonprofits and businesses. If you make a great plan, you will be able to compel others to give, volunteer or support your idea.
If you do not form a solid business plan that is easy to share with others, you will have a difficult time building your nonprofit, even if you are working for a good cause.
8 Coffee Shop Business Plan Example
If you’re looking to really spice up your coffee business, take a look at Visme’s business plan template. With an earth-toned color swatch, all of the pages on your business plan will match the overall vibe of your cafe or coffee shop.
With the ability to customize your font and colors and find something that will grab your customers’ attention, it's hard to go wrong with the coffee shop business plan. From hiring strategies to operational costs, this template covers all the basic topics you would expect out of a business plan.
Investors and employees alike will be able to see the creativity and art that goes into coffee making with the high-quality stock photos, while also seeing that your business plan is structured and clearly laid out.
A business plan should be detailed and go over market evaluations and your company's marketing strategy. Every page of this particular theme reminds your team or investors that this is a business plan centered around coffee.
9 Consulting Business Plan
Consulting is an eclectic business. A consultant can help in nearly any industry where a person has the expertise and teaching capabilities.
As such, a business plan template for a consultant agency must be versatile and easily customizable. This consulting business plan example is an extremely flexible template to fit nearly any need.
While most business plans are directed towards investors or employees, consulting business plans must also be tailored towards potential customers.
A great consulting business plan template will include a summary, objectives, market strategies, services and price listings for customers.
This template makes great use of large, high quality images. With Visme, you can simply drag and drop images onto the template to replace the existing images with your own.
10 Fashion Business Plan Example
Fashion can be a difficult business to get into due to the fact that most of your competitors are larger and more established brands.
One of the best ways to get the business off the ground is to show investors and customers that you’ve done your research into the market and have a strategy for success.
A detailed plan that shows how your product and business plans outshine the competition is exactly what you need to land your net pitch and get seed money for your business.
The fashion business plan example and template above gives you multiple pages to explain in detail how your business model will work and what your target dates are for particular tasks.
RELATED: 10 Efficient Business Model Canvas Templates to Use
11 One-Page Business Plan Example
Having an outlined plan for your business is an absolute must to have a prosperous business.
As the old proverb goes, “a goal without a plan is just a wish.”
While it is good to know as many details as possible, not every business plan or pitch needs to cover every excruciating detail. When pressed for time or dealing with a simple subject matter, consider using a one-page business plan.
The benefit of a one-page business plan is the amount of information retained by your audience. If you can simplify your subject matter to only contain a few main points, the likelihood of your audience engaging with and remembering your presentation increases.
A one-page business plan should cover the core essentials of your business plan and be used as an invitation for further discussion. It may be a good idea to have an extended version of your business plan on standby for when an investor wants more details on a specific subject.
12 SaaS Business Plan Example
A SaaS (software as a service) company is a company that hosts a web application and offers access to the application over the internet.
If you want your SaaS company to be the next big thing in tech, you need a business plan that explains what solutions your application provides, how your research and development financial goals will be met and how your app will be scalable.
Most applications can collect data with a monitoring tool and give crucial insight to you, your team and your shareholders.
Be sure to utilize these assets and include relevant data into your business plan presentation. This establishes trust with your supporters and helps them know what to expect in the future.
If you would like to know more about how to present your big data points, check out this article on how to use data visualization techniques in your documents and presentations.
13 Photography Business Plan Example
Freelancing can be a profoundly rewarding way of doing business. The freedom to work at your own pace and set your own rules can be a dream come true. However, freelancing also comes with the pressure of always finding the next job or project.
By creating a great customer experience, you increase the chances of drawing people back into your business for repeat purchases and even attract potential investors.
This well-structured photography business plan can help create a better customer experience as your client knows exactly what they are getting and how it compares to the rest of the market.
Create a business plan for your photography, design or any other freelance business complete with market analysis, pricing, target audience and plans to scale.
14 Real Estate Business Plan Example
Large-scale real estate investments are rarely done by a single individual. Typically, real estate investments are done by a group of friends, family, shareholders or companies.
Regardless of which category you find yourself in, writing out a plan and projection for your real estate investment is an absolute must to raise investments for a potential project.
Explaining the market condition for the specific region is one of the main pieces of information necessary for a real estate investment. Knowing the market value, potential obstacles and return on investment are all important parts of your business’s plan that need to be presented.
The real estate business plan example goes into detail regarding the market conditions and financial analysis. Within the editor, you are able to import your own data to customize the charts and graphs for your specific situation.
15 Small Business Plan Example
Even small businesses need big plans.
The size of a business does not negate the need for a solid and thoroughly outlined business plan. The tendency amongst small businesses is to keep track and plan things in their heads.
If a small business wants to scale and be successful, plans and goals for growth need to be outlined and presented. Start by creating a strategic business plan that includes your methodology for reaching your target audience.
From these big ideas, break the plan down into smaller and more achievable goals. Writing these goals out in a plan helps you and your team remember the established goals and creates a great way to invite potential investors into your business.
Take a look at this helpful article to learn how to create a timeline for your business.
16 Day Care Business Plan Example
The daycare business plan example will give you a great idea of what an operating plan should look like. Operating plans are detailed plans that show how a particular person or team contributes to the overall business goals.
Operating plans do not need to cover every minute of every day, but should give an overarching plan for the day to day operations. An operation plan's purpose is to give a good insight into how and where the basic operations of a business will run in the everyday course of life and set milestones for success.
With this comprehensive business plan template, you can show off your childcare business's outstanding services and plans for the future. Customize each page to suit your context and needs.
Create a Solid Business Plan With Visme
The old saying “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” remains true. Whether you are a new start up company or an established corporation with hundreds of employees, you need to have a business plan that is up-to-date and displays your current goals.
Visme offers tons of high-quality business plan templates that you can easily edit using a drag-and-drop editor in your browser — no downloads or design experience needed.
Or, learn more about how to create a compelling business plan presentation and turn your ideas into reality by impressing investors and stakeholders.
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About the Author
Caleb is a freelance writer, frontend web developer and photographer who is passionate about all things tech.
70 Small Business Ideas for Anyone Who Wants to Run Their Own Business
Updated: September 13, 2024
Published: July 12, 2018
A good business idea may seem hard to come by, but with some planning and preparation, you can easily launch a small business to supplement your income — or become your own full-time boss.
Maybe you already have an idea of the business you’d like to start. But while you might feel ready for a new venture and passionate about your idea, you might be looking for some direction.
So, what’s the first step to becoming a successful entrepreneur? Finding a business idea that works for you. In this article, you’ll find dozens of small business ideas you can start from home and scale up as your clientele grows.
To help get you started, here's a list of small business ideas separated into a few sections:
Table of Contents:
- What Makes a Good small Business Idea?
Best Small Business Ideas
Best businesses to start with little money, home business ideas, online business ideas, easy businesses to start, business ideas for students, creative small business ideas, how to start a small business at home, starting a small business: faq, getting started with your next small business venture.
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What makes a good small business idea?
Not all small business ideas are made equal.
Some require more effort and funding than others, while some can be launched with few resources — or resources you already have. As a potential small business owner, you’ll want to save as much money as possible on training, rent, supplies, and other necessities.
Let’s quickly go over what makes a good business idea:
- Requires little to no training. A good small business idea will ideally leverage your existing field of expertise and require little to no training. That will not only shorten your time-to-launch, but also lessen your expenses, since training courses can cost a significant amount of money and time. Plus, you’ll be more confident offering services that you feel prepared to deliver.
- Requires low setup costs. Your business should be cheap to start. Maybe you only need to purchase a website domain or buy a desk for your garage.
- Requires little hands-on inventory or supply management. A great business idea needs few supplies and little inventory management. If you want to sell physical goods, you can either try drop-shipping or manually make goods in small batches.
- Is based online. The best small businesses are based online and can be carried out from your personal computer. This will automatically lower your commuting costs and give you greater flexibility over your personal and work life.
- Can sustainably be managed by few people. As a small business owner, you won’t have the funds to hire other people to help you run your business — at least not at first. A good business idea should give you the ability to run your business on your own.
Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky said, “If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life.”
If you’re like Brian and you’ve already thought about a solution for a problem you encounter in your life — or you’re on the path to doing so — then starting a small business may be in your future. It may also be for you if you dream of clocking out of your nine-to-five job for the last time and becoming your own boss.
Below, I’ve included the best ideas for you to start your small business, with tons of great resources, certification examples, and best-in-class advice to help you get started.
1. Handyman
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Are you always fixing things around the house? Are you often on-call when friends need small projects completed? Create a website, conduct a competitive analysis to determine what your time and expertise are worth, and turn to the friends you’ve helped before for referrals.
A handyman business is a good idea if you’ve already built a robust set of skills to help others fix up their homes. For instance, if you know your way underneath a sink and water system, you might provide sink fixing services to start and then expand your offerings once you earn more skills.
No certifications are needed to become a handyman, and there are no special education requirements. You might need, however, a license if you’re planning to undertake jobs worth more than a certain dollar amount. Some states might not require this license.
To start your handyman business, we recommend the following resources:
- Handyman License Requirements by State
- The Most Requested Handyman Services
- Association of Certified Handyman Professionals
2. Freelance Copywriting and Content Creator
When you’re a freelance copywriter and content creator, you really do get to set your own standards for the work you do and the companies you work with.
To get started, you'll need to build a strong portfolio showcasing your writing skills. This can include samples of your work from previous projects, blog posts, or even creative writing pieces. In my own experience of putting together decks of freelance work (writing, design, or otherwise), I’d say that Canva is definitely the way to go for this part of the job.
Now, freelancing as any sort of content creator will (obviously) be a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs. Be prepared for inconsistent income, contract changes, and shifts in market trends. However, with dedication, hard work, and a love for what you do, you can enjoy the fruits of your labor quickly.
3. Creative Strategist
Got an eye for design, maybe a knack for storytelling? Perhaps you’re quite good at understanding the ins and outs of consumer behavior. If this sounds like you, you may want to consider transforming your talents into a lucrative business as a creative strategist.
By offering strategic guidance on branding , marketing, and consumer engagement , you can help businesses stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Whether it's developing compelling brand narratives, crafting effective advertising campaigns, or designing innovative marketing materials, a creative strategist plays a pivotal role in a brand’s success.
To enhance your credibility in this space, I suggest pursuing certifications in fields like marketing, branding, or design thinking. The American Marketing Association (AMA), Udemy, and Coursera offer free courses that’ll get you started in no time:
- AMA’s Content Marketing Course
- Coursera’s Branding Course
- Udemy’s Creative Advertising Course
4. Sewing and Alteration Specialist
People will always need clothing hemmed and buttons mended — and you could be the person to do it. If you love sewing and have a sewing machine at home, start by offering simple services like those mentioned above and expand your repertoire to dressmaking and design as you build a customer base and demand.
You don’t need a special license or degree to begin a sewing and alterations business, but it’s essential to build your skills so you can take on more complicated projects. High-value clients will want to customize complicated items of clothing such as suits, pants, gowns, and dresses. That’s where you’ll see the highest potential for profits.
Altering these items requires special skills, however. A few courses you might consider include:
- International Open Academy's Tailoring Course for Beginners
- Jackson Sewing Academy’s Basic Alterations Course
- American Bespoke Tailoring Academy’s Programs
You’ll also need to shop for sewing supplies of all colors to accommodate your clients.
5. Freelance Developer
From building websites for other small businesses to providing technical support for certain projects, quality web development is in high demand right now. As a web developer, you‘ll naturally have a technical skill set. Distill your knowledge and expertise so customers who don’t have your experience are able to understand what it is you'll be helping them achieve.
To help with this, test your messaging on friends and family who don’t have a firm understanding of the work you do. If they’re able to summarize what you do, your messaging is likely effective among people outside of your industry. You can start finding your first freelance contracts by visiting different freelance websites.
Unlike a few other options in this list, a freelance developer does need some training to launch a successful business and start taking on projects, but if you’re a beginner, don’t worry. There are plenty of boot camps to get you up to speed with either full-stack or front-end web development. Some of these boot camps are even offered through accredited tech schools.
Some boot camps you might consider include:
- Coding Dojo
- Fullstack Academy
- Georgia Institute of Technology Coding Boot Camp
These courses do vary in price, so be sure to complete lots of extensive research to find one that fits you and your budget.
6. Personal Trainer
Offer in-home consultations, personalized nutrition and exercise regimens, and community boot camps to get the word out. Don’t forget to populate an Instagram feed with inspirational quotes, free exercise videos, and yummy snack ideas as well — it’s a common way for fitness gurus to build their brands in our digital world.
If you choose to go this route, it’s OK to start small at first, then scale up. For instance, MOURfit is a personal training business in Indianapolis that started in a shared gym, then grew to a private gym that offers group fitness, personal training, and nutrition services.
To start a personal training business, you’ll need a certification. If you already earned a degree in an unrelated discipline, I recommend starting with the NASM-CPT certification , which is nationally accredited and only requires a high school diploma or GED. You can also get a Bachelor’s degree in physical and exercise science — here’s one example from Emory & Henry College .
7. Freelance Graphic Designer
Set your own hours, choose your projects, and build a portfolio and business you’re proud of. Sounds amazing, right? From website design to blog graphics and more, many companies seek out experienced graphic designers for support on a variety of projects.
And the good news? There are no special education requirements for becoming a freelance graphic designer. However, I recommend seeking a credential (like SAIC’s graphic design certificate or RISD’s graphic design certificate ) or an Associate’s degree in design so you can confidently present your portfolio and complete your first few projects.
If you’re just starting out with graphic design, try these tips and trick s that are ideal for beginners. If you’re more experienced but need to build your portfolio to attract clients, these prompts will get your creativity flowing in no time. I also recommend reviewing other people’s work on portfolio websites to get a feel for what is “trendy” and receive feedback as you grow your small business.
8. Life/Career Coach
If you have experience navigating career, personal, and social transitions successfully, put it to good use as a life or career coach. Many of us are looking for guidance in our careers — and finding someone with the time to mentor us can be tough.
Life/career coaches don’t come cheap, but they are able to offer clients the intense and hands-on training and advice they need to make serious moves in their personal and professional lives. After all, everyone needs some uplifting advice from time to time.
To start your life/career coaching business with confidence, you can look for a certification program (like the Life Coach School’s or Diane Hudson’s ), then apply your skills as you acquire new clients.
Looking for inspiration? Nariah Broadus has dedicated more than 20 years to helping people create better working environments and navigate change successfully as a career and leadership coach. Check out her story for more inspiration to get started with this small business idea.
9. Resume Writer
Creating a resume, cover letter, and — when required — portfolio for a new job can be tough and time-consuming. That’s why many people hire help. Here’s where you could potentially come in.
As a resume writer, you’d assist clients with tailored resumes, beautifully edited cover letters, and carefully-crafted portfolios that make it impossible for employers to ignore. And if you’re feeling nervous about writing resumes from scratch, you can use the templates below to get started.
A resume writing business is economical, has few overhead costs, and has few educational requirements. Now, I still recommend having an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree and a few resume samples on hand. If you still feel that you need to brush up on your resume writing skills, you can take a course like Coursera’s or LinkedIn Learning’s .
Once you’ve gotten resume writing down, you can expand your business to include cover letter writing and even offer career coaching services in conjunction with these services.
10. Freelance Writer
If you have writing skills , there’s someone out there willing to pay you for them. Write blog posts, magazine articles, and website copy galore — just make sure you have a body of work built up to share with potential clients. Even if you create a few sample pieces to have on hand, they’ll help exhibit your work and attract new business.
To become a freelance writer, it’s essential to choose a specialty. For instance, you might choose to only write for publications in the healthcare industry (maybe because you were previously a healthcare worker) or focus on lifestyle publications. Whatever the case, specializing will help you find your niche market and gain confidence as a new freelancer writer.
There are no educational requirements for freelance writing, but you do need strong writing skills. It also helps to enjoy writing. While certification may be beneficial, getting practice and writing every day is more important. Try these writing prompts to start.
11. Landscaper
Mowing, tree-trimming, and seasonal decor are all neighborhood needs. If you have or can acquire the equipment, a landscaping business could be your next lucrative affair. It’s also a great choice if you enjoy doing it for your own home and have a good eye for landscape design.
The good news is that you can start small. For instance, you could offer your neighbors seasonal planting services and start with a few perennial plants, or simply offer mulching services.
To grow your landscaping business, you should consider taking some formal training. The following organizations offer courses:
- New York Botanical Gardens
After completing a course and getting enough experience, you can apply for a certificate from a landscaping organization. While a certificate isn’t mandatory to work in the field, it can build your credentials and help you make industry connections to take your landscaping business to the next level. The Association of Professional Landscape Designers offers one potential certificate you could pursue.
Some states require licensure, especially if you’ll be using pesticides and fertilizers. Don’t forget to review the requirements for your state.
12. Videographer
Video production requires you to have invested in the equipment up front, which can be quite expensive. But that’s also what makes your services so valuable. Make sure you have a reel of your work to share or create a website with several selections of your work available for interested viewers.
There are no educational or licensure requirements for starting a video production business. As with writing and other creative arts, though, it pays to specialize. Real estate videos differ radically from wedding videos, and wedding videos differ radically from in-studio interviews and testimonials. By assessing what type of videography you want to specialize in, you target a highly specific customer who’ll benefit the most from your services, and you can also skill-up more effectively in one shooting style.
While you can find general classes on videography, you should consider taking a class in the type of videography you’d like to do. For instance, you could take The Complete Wedding Videography Course .
Hot tip: If you’re interested in specializing in video marketing, check out The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing and download our starter pack below.
13. Photographer
Getting started as a photographer is easier than you think.
First, enlist some family, friends, maybe your pet, for test shoots. As you build a body of work, ask for referrals and reviews. Photography businesses often grow by word of mouth, so create an Instagram or TikTok page where you can tag recent clients (or make your work go viral). Photos where you tag those clients will show up in their friends’ newsfeeds, where they can view your work. But similar to a video production small business, you’ll want to niche down. Will you do product shoots or portraits? How about wedding or fashion photo shoots?
Once you decide what sort of photograph to specialize in, you’ll be able to create a body of work that most accurately represents your strengths.
There are no educational or licensure requirements for starting a small photography business. Still, I recommend investing in a few photography courses, especially if you haven’t used your camera in a while. Some courses you might start with include:
- Cornell’s Digital Photography Certificate Program
- New York Institute of Photography’s Course
From there, seek courses that help you build skills in your chosen specialty. Also, purchasing a good backdrop and lighting kit ( Amazon has great beginner options) are a definite must, too.
14. Bed and Breakfast Owner
This is another business venture that will require you to research the correct licensure from your state, but it will be well worth it to see your dreams come true. Consider what guests will be traveling to your area and create special packages and themed stays that coincide with their interests in your locale.
To start a bed and breakfast business, you’ll need a physical business location and a small staff for maintenance, customer service, and upkeep. For that reason, I recommend it if you have startup funds to start your business. (Don’t have any? Here’s how to start crowdfunding to launch your new business .)
A successful bed and breakfast business will also need an SEO-optimized website with a hotel booking system. If you create your website on the WordPress platform, you can easily create a B&B website using a hotel booking plugin — so there’s no need to code the booking form from scratch.
With Airbnb and hotels stealing market share, the competition is tough in the bed and breakfast space, so I recommend providing a unique angle to the stay. As mentioned, the stays can be themed — maybe your B&B is a vintage home with all original furniture, or maybe you offer traditional fare from your homeland.
15. Clothing Boutique Owner
If you dream of building your own fashion empire, why not start with a local boutique? Build buzz with impressive clothing styles, inspiring social media accounts, and heavy community involvement. While you can open a physical store, you can easily start online — and if that proves profitable, you can open up a local shop.
There are a few ways you can start a clothing boutique. First, you can make the clothes yourself if you already have experience in fashion design or know how to sew, knit, and curate colors and patterns.
Alternatively, you can design certain aspects of the clothing — such as a graphic or a logo — then send it to be printed on-demand at a local print shop when orders come in.
Lastly, you can dropship the items from a warehouse you’ve partnered with. This method is less reliable because there’s less quality assurance for each item, especially if you never visit the warehouses yourself. Regardless of your chosen method, starting a clothing boutique is highly doable, and you don’t need to have a fashion degree (though it certainly helps).
Take some inspiration from Sleep Ova , a luxury loungewear boutique based in Los Angeles, CA.
16. Specialty Food Store Owner
Gourmet foods, cheeses, sake, wine — you name a food, there’s a specialty food store out there for it. Put your passion for exotic olive oils to good use and open a store like American Provisions where you offer the kind of expertise and selection your audience couldn’t dream of getting from their local grocer.
To start your specialty food store, you’ll want to curate and source the items from makers that you love and trust. Ask around your community to find local makers of the food you want to sell, and the makers will likely be open to a partnership, especially if they get a cut of the profits.
When it’s time to sell, you’ll want to find a physical location, but if that investment is too high, you can start by setting up stalls at food festivals and local markets. Or you can go the ecommerce route and sell the products through your website, taking care to carefully pack perishable items.
17. Food Truck Owner
Always dreamt of owning a restaurant but not quite ready to take the plunge? Test out your concepts with a food truck. It’s a great way to become familiar with food and restaurant licensing in your state, see what people like and don’t like, and build a ravenous following before ever opening or investing in a brick-and-mortar location.
Food trucks will require a larger investment, but thankfully, you can rent the truck itself — the Food Truck Group and Roaming Hunger are two potential leasers you could look at. The cost will be high, so I recommend renting one in preparation for an event such as a food festival or concert. There, you’ll get to test out the popularity of your cuisine and see if the food truck business is right for you.
Taco Nganas , a taco truck in Memphis, TN, started with one food truck and expanded to three, building a loyal customer base along the way.
18. Car-detailing Specialist
The devil is in the details, and you can be too. Car-detailing services that travel to the client are convenient for busy people who can’t find the time to run through the car wash. With this business, your clients only have to pay, and the service will be done for them before they know it. Just make sure you have the flexibility, transportation, and equipment to take your business on the road.
There are no educational requirements for car detailing, but you should still take a course such as Auto Finesse’s detailing training to learn core concepts and brush up on your skills.
To get your car detailing business off the ground, you’ll need an SEO-optimized website and a way for customers to book online with you. Before you take that step, however, consider listing your services on websites like Angi , Thumbtack , and even Nextdoor.com so you can get your first local clients.
Don’t have a lot of money to start your business? Check out the ideas below.
1. Translator
Speak a foreign language? Start a translation service. Consider specializing in a specific genre of translation, like medical or financial translation, as you might be able to fill a niche need in your community.
To become a translator, you should have a rock-solid grasp of two languages — ideally, you’ll be near native level for both. You don’t need special credentials to become a translator, but a certification (such as from the American Translators Association ) will legitimize your business and help you get clients.
Prior to gaining a certification, you can also pursue an online certificate, which will teach you the basics of translation. Some providers include:
- University of Massachusetts Amherst
- The University of Arizona
- University of Georgia
2. Garden Designer
Many people have the willingness to do the dirty work in their backyards, but few have the know-how to complete the first part of this process — designing and planning the backyard space. Draw up the designs for your clients’ outdoor spaces and let them do the actual digging.
But you can also offer installation services, or hire your own contractors to fulfill the design.
To become a garden designer, you should seek at least one credential so you’re well-versed in the basics and prevent damage to a client’s landscape. The American Academy of Garden Design offers courses and certificates that start at $450. A cheaper option is New Skills Academy’s Garden Design Certification ($120).
Remember, the goal is to start a business for cheap, and a certification can have a high ROI after you book your first few clients for garden design.
3. Travel Planner
The time of the travel agent might be passing, but people are still looking for those with a flair for more nontraditional travel coordination. If you always plan the perfect vacations complete with beautiful hotels, the ideal location, and a bevy of delicious restaurants lined up for every evening, consider advertising your services as a more modern approach to travel planning.
You don’t have to only plan trips for individuals, either. If you’re experienced enough, you can even start a group travel company, like Art N Soul Escapes .
You can become a travel planner by first volunteering to plan a few trips for your family and friends. Try it and see if you like it. Once you feel like you’ve gotten a good taste, attend a travel planner program and get certified. Some options include:
- The Travel Institute Training & Certification Program
- Penn Foster Travel and Tourism Specialist Diploma
You can also seek employment at a travel agency first, then strike out on your own once you’ve learned the basics.
4. DEI Consultant
Passionate about creating inclusive and equitable spaces? This could be a great foundation for starting a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) consulting business. By offering tailored DEI strategies, workshops, and training programs, you can help organizations cultivate inclusive cultures and foster a sense of belonging.
To get started, consider volunteering with non-profit organizations in your community or joining professional organizations focused on diversity and inclusion. Then, from there, you can continue to enhance your skill set by taking 100% online, 100% free DEI programs, such as:
- Coursera’s ADP DEI Course
- LinkedIn’s LinkedIn Learning DEI Course(s)
- Oregon State University’s DEI Course
5. Personal Chef
We all love to eat, but few of us have the time or energy to cook healthy, delicious meals. Advertise your services to local families and businesses alike. To save on start-up costs, consider scheduling certain groups of clients together — say, vegetarians — so you can cook larger quantities of the same dish.
You can also begin by selling food in batches at local farmer’s markets or via a food truck. Once you’ve generated some awareness, you can begin taking on clients. Alternatively, you can start a delivery meal prep service by cooking 5 to 7 days’ worth of meals for clients.
Chef Paul’s mouth-watering dishes are available to clients across the country. His clientele niche consists of athletes, corporate businesses, and local gyms.
6. Property Manager
Many people maintain properties they don’t live in — often based in different cities or states. As a property manager, you can help a property owner ensure their home is well taken care of, handle small fixes as they arise, and serve as a liaison to renters. It’s helpful if you have a background in real estate.
This option is a great fit if you have stupendous organizational, administrative, and customer service skills. As a property manager, you’ll be handling everything from screening potential tenants to collecting rent.
To become a property manager, you must first complete coursework in your desired state. I recommend working at an existing property management company to get your foot in the door. Once you’ve learned the basics, you can then start your own property management business.
7. Hair Stylist
If you have a flair for creating stunning hairstyles and a genuine love for helping people look and feel their best, becoming a professional hair stylist may be for you.
Firstly, enrolling in a cosmetology school is essential. Most states require a cosmetology license to operate a legitimate hair styling business. That said, look for programs that offer comprehensive training in both basic and advanced styling services. Additional certifications in specific areas like hair extensions, textured hair, or bridal styling can set you apart.
By offering services such as hair cutting, coloring, and styling, you can build a loyal clientele quicker than you like. Start by offering your services to friends and family to gain experience and build a portfolio. You can even consider partnering with local salons chains (like Ulta Beauty or Great Clips ) or photographers to expand your clientele.
Remember: Building a successful hair styling business requires not only technical skills but also strong customer service skills and business acumen.
8. Interior Designer
Similar to landscape design — many people can buy the furniture and home decor they need to fill their rooms, but few know where to start. Building a portfolio might take some time, but documenting your projects and sharing them online can build a fanbase beyond your wildest dreams.
To start an interior design business, we first recommend trying your hand at decorating your friends’ homes and working with their vision and specifications. One big aspect of interior design is providing fantastic customer service and knowing how to fulfill a client’s design vision while employing your interior design expertise.
You can then take an interior design course to round out your knowledge, such as the one offered by The New York Institute of Art and Design .
Need inspiration? Check out Sandra Cavallo’s interior design Instagram account.
9. Nonprofit Owner
If you dream of devoting your life to a cause you believe in, it might be time to start a nonprofit. You’ll need to incorporate your business and file for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status — and then you’ll be required to meet ongoing standards of compliance, but the payoff is making a meaningful impact on a cause you believe in.
The best thing is that you can begin a nonprofit easily from home, even before filing for 501(c)(3) status. First, create a nonprofit website (ideally with a .org top-level-domain). Define your mission and goals and determine how you’ll execute your non-profit activities. For instance, if you’re raising money to buy books for local schools, who will deliver them? Which retailer will you use? Start small, then expand.
After that, apply for exempt status so you’re not taxed like a regular business. The profit margins may be smaller, but the job is endlessly rewarding.
10. Color Grader
Got an eye for color? You might be onto something. Color grading is all about transforming footage from okay to awesome. If you're a visual whiz and love playing around with colors, this could be your ticket to a cool career.
Start by practicing with free editing softwares like CapCut Pro or Video Star , and building a portfolio of your work. Share your creations on Tik Tok or Instagram Reels to get noticed.
While there’s no strict certification path, learning color theory and mastering color grading software like DaVinci Resolve is a must. YouTube tutorials can also be a great starting point.
And hey, don’t be afraid to reach out to established colorists for advice or even an internship. Building relationships in the industry can really help you get your foot in the door.
11. Consultant
If you have significant experience in or knowledge of a specific subject, consider becoming a consultant. Perhaps you’re an expert at hiring practices, have a knack for SEO , or have led multiple sales teams to six-figure success. Identify your expertise, market yourself as a consultant, and charge the going rate.
Some consulting industries are more competitive than others, so be sure to complete your research before starting a small consulting business. One way to find out how competitive a consulting niche is by doing keyword search . If your target niche is highly searched or is already dominated by big companies, you may have a harder time breaking in. You can use keyword research tools to uncover keyword volume and local demand.
If there’s room for you to enter the market, the next step is to land your first clients. Be sure to participate in local networking events covering your niche and reach out to potential prospects through cold calling and emailing. Investing in dedicated sales software can also help measure and improve your emailing strategy, as well as keep track of worthwhile leads.
12. Event Planner
An event planning business is an excellent choice if you have great organizational and interpersonal skills, and it’s relatively cheap to start. You might choose to specialize in a specific type of event — like weddings or company meetings — or set yourself up as an event planner of all trades.
The good news is that event planners are always in demand. It’s not an easily automated job, so this small business idea is set to thrive regardless of the digital landscape. To start, you’ll want to look for a platform that will easily allow you to advertise your availability, such as event planner directories like Eventective and WeddingWire .
If you’re highly organized, detail-oriented, and have experience planning large events, it might be time for others to benefit from your skills.
13. Personal Assistant
Personal assistants help business owners and executives take care of administrative tasks. To launch a freelance personal assistant business, you should leverage networking opportunities on LinkedIn and attend small business events at local chambers of commerce. Most local business owners might not even know they need a personal assistant until you market your services to them.
If you’re an organized, highly-detailed person, the life of a personal assistant might be for you. Don’t want to be tied to one office or person all day, every day? Consider becoming a virtual assistant, which allows you a more flexible work environment.
To become an assistant, choose a niche — will you be helping women business owners specifically? Do you have a specific field of expertise, like bookkeeping? A website can also go a long way, and be sure to print business cards for you to hand out during networking events.
14. Consignment Shop Owner
If you have an eye for style but don’t want to invest in the inventory of a brand-new boutique, consider starting a consignment shop. It will allow you to curate a collection of clothing that matches your goals and aesthetic without the overhead of a boutique selling entirely new garments.
The beauty of a small consignment business is that you can now start one online. You can sign up on a platform such as Poshmark , Depop , and even Etsy , then easily start selling your own used fashion from home.
Once you’ve defined your niche — such as vintage clothing, unique locally made art, or colorful shoes — you can begin sourcing new products from your local stores and thrift shops.
15. Caterer
If the personal chef gig is too restrictive for your schedule, consider catering instead. Pick your projects, work on fewer but larger events, and hone in on your time management skills.
Becoming a caterer is a natural step for those who are used to cooking for large events — for instance, you may have already catered your friend’s wedding or brought a 20-person meal to a potluck (that counts, too!).
It’s essential that you have enough temperature-regulated storage for the meals prior to each event, and that you arrange for reliable, temperature-controlled transportation to and from your home kitchen. Alternatively, you can lower your costs by inviting customers to pick up their order at your home.
16. Nail Technician
This one may be a bit controversial but (regardless of how you feel about it) it’s actually one of the most popular services/businesses to date.
If you’re all about attention-to-detail, exercising tons of creative freedom, and building close-knit relationships with clients, designing beautiful nail sets as an at-home nail tech could be the perfect way to turn your passion into a profitable venture. With the flexibility to set your own hours and work from the comfort of your own home, this career path offers a great balance between work and life.
To get started, you'll need to invest in some essential equipment, such as a manicure table, UV lamp, and a variety of nail polishes and tools. Consider taking a nail technician course ( Empire Beauty School may be a great place to start) to learn the latest techniques and ensure you’re providing top-notch service to your clients.
Additionally, building a strong online presence through social media and a website ( Vagaro is what’s popular these days for independent esthetic businesses) can also help you attract new customers and showcase your skills.
However, with this business idea (just like with most business ideas), you should know that building clientele takes time and effort. I recommend starting off with offering discounted nail sets.
With dedication and hard work, you can 100% turn your at-home nail tech business into a thriving and rewarding career.
17. Boutique Agency Owner
What’s your specialty? Whether it’s marketing, social media, or PR, it might be time to start your own agency. Many other small businesses need this type of help but don’t have the resources or volume to necessitate a full-time position.
To start an agency, you would ideally have worked in your specialty for a number of years. You should also be prepared to interface directly with clients, fulfill their requirements, and temper their expectations (if they want results in an unreasonably short amount of time).
Consider building a small team and learn from other entrepreneurs who’ve successfully started their own agencies, like Duane Brown of Take Some Risk .
18. Coffee Shop Owner
Turn your caffeine addiction into something a little more lucrative. Opening a franchise or buying an existing shop are lower-risk entry points to the coffee game, but they usually require a little more cash upfront. Starting a shop from scratch requires more planning and work — but it also maximizes your earning potential in the future.
A coffee shop is an excellent fit if you already have a full-time remote job and wish to supplement your income with a small business. You can manage the coffee shop as you work at one of the tables, but be sure to have the budget to hire an experienced barista who can pick up the slack.
If you would like to open a coffee shop and run it full-time on your own, you’ll need to undertake barista training, understand worldwide coffee sources, and have excellent customer service skills.
19. Moving Company
A truck, moving equipment, manpower, and the correct permits and insurance are the building blocks of starting your own moving company . Before you buy your first fleet of trucks, however, start small with a moving van and keep your costs low.
Still sound like too much of an initial investment? Consider offering packing services only, which have a much lower financial barrier to entry. You can partner with moving companies and offer to do their packing, or have them refer clients to you.
You could even take a niche approach to the industry as Astro International has by offering international moving services.
20. Home Staging
If you have a flair for interior design, a staging service might serve as your creative outlet and professional calling. You can build a portfolio with little initial investment by staging homes using the owner’s existing furnishings and decor. Most stagers eventually build up an inventory of furniture as they become more established and network with area realtors.
To get your first home staging clients, you should first rely exclusively on networking. Find your local realtors’ association and attend their events with business cards handy. Once you’ve gotten your first clients and built your portfolio, you can begin posting your designs on your home staging website.
If you don’t yet have enough experience, be sure to pursue an interior design course before opening this small business.
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These home business ideas give you a few more business options that are either based at home or online.
Frontend, backend, and every type of code in between, this skill requires no in-person interaction with your clients. But one skill you’ll want to carry over from the in-person world for this type of business is active listening. It can be easy to zone out while building a product, but developing a connection with the client is just as important as developing the code for their website.
If you keep the client top of mind when you can’t be around physically, you can ensure that you’re meeting their development needs with your coding work.
2. Vending Machine Owner
Since 2015, the growth rate for vending machine businesses has increased 1.4%. Even as social distancing restrictions are still in place, this business can still be lucrative if you choose the right locations. High-traffic is key — places like hospitals, schools, and community centers are smart places to start placing your machines to generate enough revenue to cover cost and turn a profit.
3. Social Media Manager
If you're always up-to-date on the latest trends and can whip up an engaging post in two seconds flat, social media management could be your calling.
As a social media manager, you can use your skills to manage the social media accounts for companies and even individuals. Influencer marketing has become more common and many influencers rely on marketing agencies or employees to help them run their social channels.
And let's not forget about AI! It can be a total game-changer for scheduling posts, analyzing audience data, and even generating content ideas.
According to HubSpot’s 2024 Social Media Marketing Report , 51% of marketers say generative AI is most helpful in creating social media posts (i.e., copy, content calendars, etc.), and 58% say that's what they mainly use generative AI for. Check out the chart below for some additional insights that may skew you towards pursuing social media management professionally:
6. Voiceover Artist
Speaking of podcasts and videos, many content creators recognize the value and level of professionalism that great voice talent can bring to a project. There are gigs out there for podcast intros/outros, narration for explainer videos, or even voice work for audiobooks.
7. Dog Walker, Groomer, or Trainer
Licensing and insurance will be the two most important factors in opening a dog walking, grooming, or training business, but your canine colleagues will surely make up for the initial red tape. To test the waters before jumping in, consider walking dogs through companies like Rover. Ready to run your own show? Consider a franchise like Dogtopia .
8. Food/Restaurant Reviewer
Hey… if Keith Lee can do it, you can, too.
If you’re a foodie with a passion for sharing your culinary experiences, starting a food reviewing business could be a delicious way to earn extra income. Whether you want to focus on local restaurants, specific cuisines, or niche food trends, there’s sincerely something for everyone in the world of food reviewing.
To get started, consider building a strong online presence through a blog ( Substack or Medium.com have been hot recently), social media channels ( Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts ), or a dedicated food reviewing website. Share your honest and informative reviews, accompanied by high-quality photos and videos. Then, as you build your audience, engage with them by responding to comments and participating in online food communities.
As you build your reputation, you can explore opportunities for collaborations with restaurants, food brands, and other food influencers. Additionally, you might even consider offering consulting services to restaurants. As a food influencer, the world is really your oyster. All puns intended.
If you want a business idea that you can run entirely online, check out the ones below. These ideas are ideal for those looking for a passive income stream. In other words, you shouldn’t need to do too much manual work to launch these businesses from your home or preferred business location.
1. Become an online reseller.
To become an online reseller, all you need is some business savvy and some funds to invest in product stock from manufacturers — or, of course, the willingness to sell your own used items. Generally, this is a low-touch but high-performance way of creating a passive income online business.
Online resellers usually use a platform, such as Facebook Marketplace or Amazon Sellers, to sell either their own or manufacturers’ stock. The benefit of using Facebook Marketplace is that you can begin today with your own Facebook account, and simply list items that you already own.
Interested buyers typically drive directly to your home for pick-up — but if you’re not interested in human interaction, you can leave it outside and have the buyer pay via an online platform.
But if you’re not too crafty, you don’t need to create full-on journals or beautiful art prints, either; you can create templates for <a href=" https:="" www.canva.com="" creators="" "="" rel="noopener" target="_blank">marketplaces such as Canva. There, folks are able to customize a base design to their specifications, so you don’t have to worry too much about creating something specially beautiful — it’s more about functionality and customizability.
AI can be revolutionary for this small business idea, too. It truly can help you with everything, from creating product descriptions to designing eye-catching graphics. Plus, AI-powered tools embedded in design programs (wink wink, Canva) can help you create designs quickly, without hassle.
If you plan to create digital products that buyers can print at home, think about printing specifications, such as recommended paper size, paper weight, PPI (pixels per inch; a higher PPI results in better print quality), and so on. It’s essential to create a positive customer experience, even if users are ultimately responsible for what the final result looks like.
8. Publish a subscription-based newsletter.
I’ve already discussed becoming an independent author, but if long-form writing, such as novels, seems out of reach, you can always go for something much shorter and simpler: Newsletters. And the best part about paid newsletters is that you typically don’t need to have a separate website and blog; instead, you can sign up on a platform and begin publishing right away.
A website can, of course, benefit you, but the core of your revenue will come from the newsletter itself.
With newsletter monetization platforms such as Substack or even Patreon , you can publish shorter content that features your opinion, experience, and expertise. I recommend pairing this small business idea with a robust social media marketing strategy , where your followers can learn more about you and be swayed to subscribe to a gated newsletter.
Choose a niche you’re passionate about, and this online business idea can feel less like work and more like a profitable hobby.
9. Create an online course.
If you want to monetize your expertise a little further for your online business, then creating an online course is the best choice.
To create a course, you’ll need to sign up on an online course platform such as WordPress or Teachable , sketch out a curriculum, film your lectures, and create worksheets and guides. You can be as hands-on or as hands-off as you’d like, but to make this online business as passive as possible, you’d ideally record all your lectures at once and allow users to access them by paying a premium fee.
If you’d like to try your hand at it first, you can try publishing a course on a platform such as Udemy and see if it feels viable to you. To become an online course teacher, you don’t need a specific level of education, but you should have a strong grasp on the material you’re teaching and a strong set of customer service skills , as well as software to effectively handle inquiries or course refunds.
10. Transcript videos, shows, and podcasts.
A freelance transcription business is an excellent idea for those who speak only one language and are passionate about improving communication. Transcribers listen to speech, write it out — usually verbatim — and deliver it to the original publisher in an organized document.
Oh, and AI can definitely boost your productivity here. It can automatically generate a basic transcript, which you can then clean up and polish. It's like having a super smart assistant to speed up the process. Plus, with AI extension tools like Otter.ai and Riverside , you can handle more projects and earn more money.
This small online business is a good fit for those who are looking for a part-time side business. You should be able to type quickly and have a good listening ear. Indeed has listed the top transcription companies where you can get your foot in the door.
Once you understand how the industry works, you can consider opening your own small transcription business and offering services on freelancer marketplaces such as Fiverr or Upwork .
Whether you’re looking to start your venture today or you simply don’t want to jump through the normal hoops of launching a small business, the below ideas are extremely easy to start — so easy, all you’ll need to do is sign up on a website or tell your friends about your services.
1. Vacation Host
Have you ever used a home-sharing service instead of a hotel? You could make a living by hosting visitors in your own home or renting out a room. Consider becoming a host with companies like Airbnb .
To become a vacation host, you don’t need any special skills except friendliness, courteousness, and agility (in case of guest emergencies or language barriers). A customer service course will prepare you to welcome guests and give them a pleasant stay.
You’ll need to invest in supplies and toiletries, such as new bedding and one-time soaps and toothbrushes, but the overhead is relatively small, and you can stop at any time.
2. Pet Sitter
Do you really, really love pets? Consider becoming a pet sitter. While the pet's owners are away on vacation, either host their pet at your home or make visits to their home. Join a pet sitting service like Wag or Rover to get started.
If you start a pet sitting business, be sure to have some experience with dogs, cats, and other household pets. You should also choose a niche based on timing. For instance, do you prefer long-term arrangements? You can market yourself as an excellent vacation pet sitter. Do you only do single afternoons, or only on weekends? You can pull in clients by telling them you’ll take care of their pets during their dates or weekend trips.
3. Rideshare Driver
If you didn’t know this already, rideshare driving has become a popular way to earn extra income, offering a flexible schedule and the potential for substantial earnings. So, if you're looking for a low-investment business venture that allows you to be your own boss, it might be a great fit.
To get started, you'll need a vehicle that meets the requirements of the rideshare platform you choose (e.g., Uber , Lyft ). You’ll also need to pass a background check and obtain any permits or licenses.
Once you’re approved, you can start picking up passengers, earning money, and experiencing the thrill of the open road.
Just don’t get in any accidents.
If there’s a topic you have a heavy interest in, then there’s an audience out there with a heavy interest in it too. blog %20can%20be%20used%20to%20build%20an%20online%20community%20whose%20engagement%20can%20be%20monetized.%20 Affiliate marketing , sponsored content , and co-marketing are some ways to make money once your blog develops a following.
Blogging is one of the most accessible small businesses to start, and there are countless niches to choose from. That said, because there are many blogs online, you’ll need to learn blog SEO and keyword research to ensure your audience finds you. That way, you actually make money out of your blogging efforts.
The great news is that a small blogging business has a ridiculously low overhead. All you need is a custom domain and your time for writing blog posts. Although finding the right topic ideas and outlining your posts may seem challenging at first, especially if you’re new to writing, you can let a blog ideas generator do most of the grunt work for you.
These tools leverage artificial intelligence to help you brainstorm ideas and set up your content structure. That way, you can kickstart your creative juices and begin writing about what you love right away.
5. Financial Advisor
Becoming a financial advisor could be your next calling, especially if you’re good with numbers and people. Imagine guiding folks towards financial security and helping them achieve their dreams. It's a pretty pleasing gig.
To get started, you'll need a solid understanding of investments, taxes, retirement planning… the works. But building trust with clients is the key here, so strong communication skills are also essential.
Of course, you'll need the right certifications to be a financial advisor. Things like the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation can really boost your credibility. And don't forget about networking! Building relationships with other financial professionals can open doors and help you grow your client base.
6. Ecommerce Store Owner
Do you create, collect, or curate anything special? Consider starting an ecommerce store and turning your hobby into a full-time job. Whether you need somewhere to sell all that pottery you’ve been making, or an excuse to search for the sports memorabilia you love tracking down, an ecommerce store can make it financially viable for you to pursue your passion.
Starting an ecommerce store is simple and easy. You can set up a shop using an ecommerce website builder , all of which start at a minimal monthly subscription (some even start at free). Be sure to take good photos of your products and write descriptive product pages .
If you don’t have inventory, you can always own an ecommerce store by using dropshipping . Instead of creating and shipping your products yourself, you’ll instead partner with a dropshipping website and have them mail out the orders directly to your client.
7. House Cleaner
With a low barrier to entry, house cleaning can be a great way to start doing what you love — soon. Consider advertising to homes in your neighborhood and get more bang for your buck by earning a few small businesses as clients as well. They’ll usually bring in a higher paycheck for a similar amount of work.
To become a house cleaner, you should be prepared to invest in cleaning supplies and accessories, or be willing to use your own. If you plan to serve small businesses, you should buy industrial janitorial supplies so you can get work done more effectively.
Need some inspiration? This small business cleaning service grew virtually overnight on Instagram after their content went viral during the pandemic.
8. Packing Services Facilitator
Moving is always a pain, and many people hire the entire packing process out. As a packing services facilitator, you’ll be going to people’s homes and packing up their smaller items into organized boxes. To start this business, you must be comfortable with face-to-face contact and with manual labor.
You can begin this business by advertising in your own neighborhood. Once you’re ready to expand, consider partnering with a local moving service that will refer new clients to you. That way, you’ll have a steady stream of clients, and you won’t have to invest in a moving truck (the moving service will take care of that for you).
1. Etsy Shop Owner
Creating novelties by hand is a fun and unique way to start a small business, and you can easily sell them via Etsy . Whether you make jewelry, knitted comfort items, or even custom wigs , there’s probably a market for your products and an Etsy buyer who’s ready to purchase.
This idea is excellent if you’re already an expert in the craft you aim to sell. That way, you don’t need to pursue additional education or certification courses. Once you set up your Etsy store, which is free, tap into your audience with creative marketing on social media and optimize your website using keywords that describe the products you make.
2. Tour Guide
Love the local history of your city or state? Consider becoming a tour guide. Sure, you’ll need to conduct plenty of research to be able to do the job well, but that’s half the fun. Set yourself apart by offering tours that speak to a specific niche of your community’s history.
You can start a tour guide business easily. First, decide what your specialty will be. Some tour guides, like the ones at Freedom Trail in Boston , offer historical walking tours of their town’s most haunted spots while others curate guided foodie tours for guests to get a true taste of the city.
Maybe you love the outdoors and are an experienced backpacker — you can then offer hiking tours. To begin, use a platform such as TripAdvisor or Airbnb, where you can sign up as a tour guide provider. Remember to launch a website, and to file for a sole proprietorship status.
3. Online Class Instructor
Tutoring is often done in-person and with one client at a time. But thanks to remote work software, teaching an online class offers more flexibility than ever for folks interested in educating others.
English is a typical subject for online classes because of how many people want to learn it. But anything that you have a mastery over could be translated to a virtual class. From American Sign Language (ASL) to music theory lessons, virtual teaching is an easy way to spread the wealth of knowledge (and to make money while doing it).
4. Small-Batch Goods Seller
Fun fact: There are many products you can learn how to make at home without any preservatives, chemicals, or toxins, and for cheap.
Candles, soaps, shampoos, moisturizers, and other body/home care products are some examples of unique goods you can create and tailor with custom scents.
By offering high-quality, handcrafted products, you can build a loyal customer base and differentiate yourself from competitors.
5. Makeup Artist
Many people prefer to have a professional do their makeup because they lack the proper products or just the skills. It may be for a special occasion, photoshoot, or video shoot, or another event. But as a professional makeup artist, being able to do a variety of different looks will make your business more attractive to more customers.
You should also consider honing in on a specific niche. For instance, you might do wedding makeup exclusively, or even editorial makeup could be your shtick.
To run a successful makeup artist business, you’ll need to be social media savvy . Instagram in particular is an excellent platform to advertise your services and get new clients. Again, Vagaro is also a wonderful place to promote your makeup artistry.
6. Professional Organizer
A lot of people struggle with clutter or disorganization in their homes and offices. It can be a large undertaking to create organized systems and habits. Grab a lot of storage bins and a label maker and get started.
To become an organizer, you’ll first need to have the chops: Is your own home organized? Do you enjoy making order out of chaos? Then, launch a website to market your services locally. Be sure to create local listings to ensure people find your business, including listings on Angi , Houzz , and Thumbtack .
Meg Golightly, founder at Gosimplified , has made this small business idea into a successful career.
When it comes to exploring creative small business ideas, it’s essential to tap into your unique talents, passions, and interests to help your venture stand out in the market.
Creativity is a powerful tool; with the right approach, you can turn your innovative concepts into successful businesses. Finding inspiration in your passions and strengths is crucial to building a business that resonates with your audience.
Look for opportunities to blend your creativity with market demand by offering unique products or services that cater to specific niches. By aligning your passion with market trends and consumer needs, you can carve out a distinctive space for your business and create a meaningful impact in your industry.
I tapped our awesome Trends & Research experts for outside-the-box ideas to inspire your entrepreneurial journey. Here are some data-backed creative small business ideas to get you started:
1. Branding Consultant
Every company, big or small, needs a strong brand identity to stand out. That’s where you come in. As a branding consultant, you’re the architect of a company’s image, shaping how people perceive and feel about them.
The best part? You don't need a fancy office or a huge team to get started. All you really need is a keen eye for design, a deep understanding of marketing, and a knack for storytelling. With a laptop and a solid internet connection, you can start building your client base.
Now, while certifications aren’t strictly needed to start your branding consultancy, they can definitely boost your credibility. Consider courses or certifications in marketing, branding, or design. Places like HubSpot Academy and Skillshare offer a variety of online courses.
Also, building a strong portfolio of your work is crucial. Even if you haven’t worked with paying clients, you can practice by creating brand identities for your favorite companies. This will not only showcase your skills but also help you refine your ideation process.
2. Crochet/Knitwear Designer
Love getting lost in a good crochet or knitting project? Turns out, your hobby could be your next money-maker. If you’ve got the gift of creating individualistic, stylish pieces, you might be onto something.
Designing your own crochet or knitwear and selling your patterns or finished products could be a super rewarding venture. Imagine seeing people wearing something you created… That's pretty cool, right?
Building a following on social media can be a great way to showcase your work and connect with potential customers. Plus, TikTok is a great place to gather free resources on easy patterns and beginner’s best practices, from preserving materials to where to get the best bang for your buck.
3. Tattoo Artist
So, you’re thinking about turning your love of art and ink into a full-time gig? Well, you’re in luck. Tattooing can be a really enjoyable career, both creatively and financially.
First off, there’s a huge demand for tattoos. From stick and pokes to fine line tattoo art, getting a tattoo is becoming as normal as getting a haircut in most major cities. This means there’s a steady stream of potential customers out there. Now, tattoos are indeed a bit of a luxury item, which means people are often willing to pay a premium for good work. That’s where you come in. If you’ve got the skills and can build a solid reputation, you can command some pretty decent rates.
Another cool thing about the tattoo industry is that it’s relatively low overhead compared to other small businesses . Sure, you’ll need supplies and a clean workspace, but you don’t need a huge storefront or a massive inventory. This means more of your earnings go straight to your wallet.
So, is your head buzzing with small business ideas yet? After all that brainstorming, you’ll need a practical plan to get started with your new small business.
Next, let’s talk about how you’ll start your small business, right from your own home.
1. Identify your small business idea.
Whether you choose an option from the list above or have another idea up your sleeve, it’s important to have the experience, training, or skills necessary to be successful.
Want to run a daycare but have never even visited a successful daycare center? Spend time conducting research to learn whether this is really the right fit for your experience, interests, and target audience.
HubSpot’s Business Startup Kit could also be a hassle-free, easy way to begin ideating about your business plan, goals, and how to identify your target market.
2. Start as a side business or hobby.
Can you get your business off the ground as something you do in the evenings or on the weekends (a.k.a. a side job)? This allows you to make some mistakes, test the market, and understand whether your idea has legs before you quit your nine-to-five job and lose your primary income.
3. Decide on your software.
You’ve got a lot of things on your plate when first starting up. But one step that’s critical (and often forgotten by first-time entrepreneurs) is deciding on the software that can help you be more efficient as your business grows.
Every business is different — but almost all companies can use software to help with analytics, project management , accounting, bookkeeping, email marketing , and other basic day-to-day tasks.
One of the most important software tools every small business should utilize is a free all-in-one CRM platform to keep track of important customer information in one central database. It will help align your team and make sure you stay organized as your business grows. Learn how to pick the best CRM for your small business .
Learn more about choosing the right structure for your business from the Small Business Administration.
6. Create a business bank account.
Once you have a legally formed business and have been issued an Employer Identification Number (EIN) , open a bank account specifically for your business. Having a business bank account is essential for keeping your personal and business finances separate which can help you gain an accurate picture of your business’s cash flow and financial health.
Additionally, keeping your personal and business finances separate makes bookkeeping and tax preparation easier.
Many banks offer business checking and savings accounts. Business checking accounts typically do not have a limit on the number of transactions that can take place, and issue a debit card that can be used for making business purchases. However, these checking accounts do (thankfully) not accrue interest.
Business savings accounts typically earn interest over time but have a limited number of transactions that can occur each month. When you’re just starting out, look for a business bank account that does not have a minimum balance requirement so you are not penalized for having low funds as you work to build your business.
7. Determine if your business idea works well from home.
Ask yourself whether your business idea will work well from home. Some businesses simply aren’t suited to be based from home. If you want to run a dog boarding center but live in an apartment without a backyard, you might want to consider a dog walking business instead.
8. Set up an office.
If your business idea is well-suited for being run from home, it’s still important you have a designated workspace. While a home office might not be possible, consider setting aside a corner in your living room or putting a desk in your bedroom for a space that inspires you and creates the conditions for success.
Need a more professional space? If you conduct client-facing work requiring you to be on video calls, no one wants to see your rumpled sheets in the background.
Check out local coworking spaces for memberships that earn you access to conference rooms, desk space, and more. WeWork and PeerSpace are great places to start looking.
9. Get to work!
You’ve put in the hard work, but I’ve got some bad news — it’s only going to get harder. But most entrepreneurs will agree that the payoff of being your own boss, making your own hours, and working on projects that you’re passionate about will pay dividends for the rest of your life.
What are the types of small businesses?
The types of small business structures are sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies (LLCs), and corporations.
- Sole Proprietorship: The simplest type of business structure is a sole proprietorship, which is also the easiest to start. As a sole proprietor, you are personally responsible for the business's liabilities and profits, and you have complete control over your business. If you are a solopreneur, you are automatically considered a sole proprietor.
- Partnership: A partnership is a business model involving two or more individuals who agree to share the business‘s profits and liabilities. Each partner contributes to the business and shares the risks and rewards. It’s essential to have a partnership agreement that defines each partner's roles and responsibilities to ensure clarity and prevent potential misunderstandings.
- Limited Liability Company (LLC): An LLC, or limited liability company, is a common option for small businesses because it protects its owners by separating personal assets from the company's liabilities. To form an LLC, the business owner must file the required paperwork with the state.
- Corporation: A corporation is an independent legal entity distinct from its owners. It provides limited liability protection to its shareholders, who are not held personally accountable for the company's debts. Corporations have formal requirements and often raise capital by issuing stocks or shares.
Which business type is best?
The best business type is a limited liability company (LLC). Operating as an LLC means that your personal assets are separate from your business assets. If your business goes bankrupt, your personal holdings won’t be affected. That said, it’s also one of the costlier types, requiring a fee paid to the state.
The easiest business type to start is a sole proprietorship. The main downside is that there’s no differentiation between you and your business.
It's crucial to seek advice from legal or accounting professionals to determine the best business structure based on your unique needs and objectives. Each structure has advantages, legal requirements, tax implications, and flexibility considerations.
How do I create a business idea?
To create a business idea, determine your skill set, work preferences, startup budget, and available resources. It’s important to strike the right balance between what you can feasibly offer and what you can feasibly afford in the short and long term.
We recommend starting with your skill set so that you can easily determine the niche in which you can effectively compete. For instance, if you have ample experience as a writer, you might consider starting a freelance writing business. But if you know you’d prefer to work with clients face-to-face, you might choose to start a ghostwriting business instead. That’s why it’s so important to take your work preferences into account, as well.
After that, take a look at your budget and determine the type of business you can start based on the resources at your disposal.
For instance, you might not be able to afford a physical office or location, so a location-based business will likely not be a good fit. In that case, starting an online business is your best option.
What resources or tools can I use to refine and validate my business ideas during the brainstorming process?
Online market research tools like Google Trends, Keyword Planner, and SEMrush can provide insights into market demand, competition, and keyword trends related to your business niche. Industry reports and market analyses from reputable sources such as IBISWorld, Gartner, Statista, and industry-specific publications can offer valuable data and trends to inform your decision-making. Ensure you know the industry risk before embarking on your small business venture.
Additionally, joining entrepreneurial communities, forums, and social media groups can provide opportunities to seek feedback, network with like-minded people, and gain insights from experienced entrepreneurs . Finally, consider conducting surveys or interviews with potential customers to gather feedback and validate your business concept before investing significant time and resources.
What are some of the most successful small businesses?
Every small business has the potential to be successful and profitable, provided it’s backed by a strong product-market fit and a robust business plan . These two elements are essential. Maybe postnatal services are one of the most successful small businesses to launch, but if you live in an area with declining population or a large elderly population, then that small business idea won’t yield a high return on investment.
Think carefully about the market where you’re launching your business, and you’ll be more than likely to see lasting success.
What are the top growing small businesses?
The top growing industries are healthcare support, technology, personal care, food preparation, and community and social service. As such, launching a small business in any of these fields is bound to yield a high return on investment, but remember to take your target market into account.
Here are some small business ideas for each of those industries.
Healthcare Support
- In-home care assistant
- In-home elderly care provider
- Psychological care provider
- Prenatal and postnatal support specialist
- Freelance programmer or web developer
- Freelance IT support specialist
- Freelance cybersecurity expert
Personal Care
- Hair stylist
- Nail technician
Food Preparation
- Personal chef
- Food truck owner
- Food delivery
Community and Social Services
- Non-profit owner
- Education specialist
How do I fund a small business?
If you are looking to fund your small business, there are several options you can consider, including:
Bootstrapping
Bootstrapping is building a business from scratch with limited finances, relying on personal savings, borrowing or reinvesting early profits. The main advantage is you have control over your vision and decisions, which allows you to innovate and adapt without being beholden to investors' demands.
Small Business Grants
Small business grants are a great option for smaller companies seeking initial support without the need for traditional venture capital routes. These grants offer modest funding ranging from a few hundred dollars to substantial sums.
They‘re available from government agencies, nonprofits, or corporate social responsibility programs. Unlike loans, grants don’t require repayment, and they also don't entail equity stakes like traditional investors.
Angel Investors and Venture Capital
As an entrepreneur with a great business idea but no financial resources, you can seek funding from angel investors or venture capitalists . Remember to present a compelling business plan to increase your chances of securing funding.
Besides financial support, these investors can offer valuable expertise, industry connections, and resources to help your business grow. Leverage online platforms and networking events to connect with potential investors and achieve your goals.
Bank Loans and Lines of Credit
You can approach banks or credit unions for small business loans or lines of credit, leveraging your business plan and credit history.
You can explore loan programs offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) designed to assist small businesses with financing needs.
Alternative Financing
As a small business owner, you may find securing traditional financing options, such as bank loans, challenging. However, there are other ways to finance your business.
One such option is microlending , where you can borrow money from individual investors through online platforms like Kiva. Another option is crowdfunding , where you can raise funds for your business by asking a large group of people to contribute small amounts of money. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are good places to start.
What are the best small business grants?
Here are 19 small business grants you can apply to today. Eligibility criteria vary by provider, so make sure your business aligns with the grant's size, industry focus, and target demographics before applying.
How does copyright apply to my small business?
Copyright laws offer legal protection to creators of original works, allowing creators to control the use and distribution of their creations, which can include books, music, artwork, designs, and software. As a small business owner, you‘ll need to be aware of copyright law since you may encounter copyright issues if you create any original content, such as a brand logo, website content, blog posts, videos, or marketing materials. It’s important to ensure that you don't infringe on the copyright of others and to protect your own creative assets.
How can I protect the copyright of my creations?
Though copyright protection is automatic when you create something original, taking additional steps to protect your work is a good idea. Here are a few essential tips:
- Include copyright notices. Adding copyright notices on your creative works (e.g., “Copyright © [Year] [Your Business Name]”) helps deter potential infringers and informs others that your work is protected.
- Register your work. Registering your work with the appropriate copyright office can provide additional legal advantages and may be necessary in certain situations to enforce your rights in court.
- Consider licensing your work. Licensing allows you to permit others to use your work under specific conditions while still retaining your ownership rights. You can create licenses that determine how others can use your creations and even charge licensing fees.
Selecting a small business idea to work on is a personal decision. Money is important, but you’ll need more motivation than that to keep going.
Bounce ideas off your friends and family until you reach the perfect idea that works for your schedule, fulfills your life’s passion, and makes financial sense.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help throughout this process — and remember to have a little fun while you’re putting in the work.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2024 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Don't forget to share this post!
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Table of Contents
How to make a business plan
How to make a good business plan: step-by-step guide.
A business plan is a strategic roadmap used to navigate the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. It's the foundation upon which you build a successful business.
A well-crafted business plan can help you define your vision, clarify your goals, and identify potential problems before they arise.
But where do you start? How do you create a business plan that sets you up for success?
This article will explore the step-by-step process of creating a comprehensive business plan.
What is a business plan?
A business plan is a formal document that outlines a business's objectives, strategies, and operational procedures. It typically includes the following information about a company:
Products or services
Target market
Competitors
Marketing and sales strategies
Financial plan
Management team
A business plan serves as a roadmap for a company's success and provides a blueprint for its growth and development. It helps entrepreneurs and business owners organize their ideas, evaluate the feasibility, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.
As well as serving as a guide for business owners, a business plan can attract investors and secure funding. It demonstrates the company's understanding of the market, its ability to generate revenue and profits, and its strategy for managing risks and achieving success.
Business plan vs. business model canvas
A business plan may seem similar to a business model canvas, but each document serves a different purpose.
A business model canvas is a high-level overview that helps entrepreneurs and business owners quickly test and iterate their ideas. It is often a one-page document that briefly outlines the following:
Key partnerships
Key activities
Key propositions
Customer relationships
Customer segments
Key resources
Cost structure
Revenue streams
On the other hand, a Business Plan Template provides a more in-depth analysis of a company's strategy and operations. It is typically a lengthy document and requires significant time and effort to develop.
A business model shouldn’t replace a business plan, and vice versa. Business owners should lay the foundations and visually capture the most important information with a Business Model Canvas Template . Because this is a fast and efficient way to communicate a business idea, a business model canvas is a good starting point before developing a more comprehensive business plan.
A business plan can aim to secure funding from investors or lenders, while a business model canvas communicates a business idea to potential customers or partners.
Why is a business plan important?
A business plan is crucial for any entrepreneur or business owner wanting to increase their chances of success.
Here are some of the many benefits of having a thorough business plan.
Helps to define the business goals and objectives
A business plan encourages you to think critically about your goals and objectives. Doing so lets you clearly understand what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.
A well-defined set of goals, objectives, and key results also provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps keep business owners focused and motivated.
Guides decision-making
A business plan requires you to consider different scenarios and potential problems that may arise in your business. This awareness allows you to devise strategies to deal with these issues and avoid pitfalls.
With a clear plan, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions aligning with their overall business goals and objectives. This helps reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and ensures they make decisions with long-term success in mind.
Attracts investors and secures funding
Investors and lenders often require a business plan before considering investing in your business. A document that outlines the company's goals, objectives, and financial forecasts can help instill confidence in potential investors and lenders.
A well-written business plan demonstrates that you have thoroughly thought through your business idea and have a solid plan for success.
Identifies potential challenges and risks
A business plan requires entrepreneurs to consider potential challenges and risks that could impact their business. For example:
Is there enough demand for my product or service?
Will I have enough capital to start my business?
Is the market oversaturated with too many competitors?
What will happen if my marketing strategy is ineffective?
By identifying these potential challenges, entrepreneurs can develop strategies to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. This can reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and ensure the business is well-positioned to take on any challenges.
Provides a basis for measuring success
A business plan serves as a framework for measuring success by providing clear goals and financial projections . Entrepreneurs can regularly refer to the original business plan as a benchmark to measure progress. By comparing the current business position to initial forecasts, business owners can answer questions such as:
Are we where we want to be at this point?
Did we achieve our goals?
If not, why not, and what do we need to do?
After assessing whether the business is meeting its objectives or falling short, business owners can adjust their strategies as needed.
How to make a business plan step by step
The steps below will guide you through the process of creating a business plan and what key components you need to include.
1. Create an executive summary
Start with a brief overview of your entire plan. The executive summary should cover your business plan's main points and key takeaways.
Keep your executive summary concise and clear with the Executive Summary Template . The simple design helps readers understand the crux of your business plan without reading the entire document.
2. Write your company description
Provide a detailed explanation of your company. Include information on what your company does, the mission statement, and your vision for the future.
Provide additional background information on the history of your company, the founders, and any notable achievements or milestones.
3. Conduct a market analysis
Conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, and target market. This is best done with a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, identify your target market's needs, demographics, and behaviors.
Use the Competitive Analysis Template to brainstorm answers to simple questions like:
What does the current market look like?
Who are your competitors?
What are they offering?
What will give you a competitive advantage?
Who is your target market?
What are they looking for and why?
How will your product or service satisfy a need?
These questions should give you valuable insights into the current market and where your business stands.
4. Describe your products and services
Provide detailed information about your products and services. This includes pricing information, product features, and any unique selling points.
Use the Product/Market Fit Template to explain how your products meet the needs of your target market. Describe what sets them apart from the competition.
5. Design a marketing and sales strategy
Outline how you plan to promote and sell your products. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy should include information about your:
Pricing strategy
Advertising and promotional tactics
Sales channels
The Go to Market Strategy Template is a great way to visually map how you plan to launch your product or service in a new or existing market.
6. Determine budget and financial projections
Document detailed information on your business’ finances. Describe the current financial position of the company and how you expect the finances to play out.
Some details to include in this section are:
Startup costs
Revenue projections
Profit and loss statement
Funding you have received or plan to receive
Strategy for raising funds
7. Set the organization and management structure
Define how your company is structured and who will be responsible for each aspect of the business. Use the Business Organizational Chart Template to visually map the company’s teams, roles, and hierarchy.
As well as the organization and management structure, discuss the legal structure of your business. Clarify whether your business is a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or LLC.
8. Make an action plan
At this point in your business plan, you’ve described what you’re aiming for. But how are you going to get there? The Action Plan Template describes the following steps to move your business plan forward. Outline the next steps you plan to take to bring your business plan to fruition.
Types of business plans
Several types of business plans cater to different purposes and stages of a company's lifecycle. Here are some of the most common types of business plans.
Startup business plan
A startup business plan is typically an entrepreneur's first business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs articulate their business idea when starting a new business.
Not sure how to make a business plan for a startup? It’s pretty similar to a regular business plan, except the primary purpose of a startup business plan is to convince investors to provide funding for the business. A startup business plan also outlines the potential target market, product/service offering, marketing plan, and financial projections.
Strategic business plan
A strategic business plan is a long-term plan that outlines a company's overall strategy, objectives, and tactics. This type of strategic plan focuses on the big picture and helps business owners set goals and priorities and measure progress.
The primary purpose of a strategic business plan is to provide direction and guidance to the company's management team and stakeholders. The plan typically covers a period of three to five years.
Operational business plan
An operational business plan is a detailed document that outlines the day-to-day operations of a business. It focuses on the specific activities and processes required to run the business, such as:
Organizational structure
Staffing plan
Production plan
Quality control
Inventory management
Supply chain
The primary purpose of an operational business plan is to ensure that the business runs efficiently and effectively. It helps business owners manage their resources, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement.
Growth-business plan
A growth-business plan is a strategic plan that outlines how a company plans to expand its business. It helps business owners identify new market opportunities and increase revenue and profitability. The primary purpose of a growth-business plan is to provide a roadmap for the company's expansion and growth.
The 3 Horizons of Growth Template is a great tool to identify new areas of growth. This framework categorizes growth opportunities into three categories: Horizon 1 (core business), Horizon 2 (emerging business), and Horizon 3 (potential business).
One-page business plan
A one-page business plan is a condensed version of a full business plan that focuses on the most critical aspects of a business. It’s a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to quickly communicate their business idea to potential investors, partners, or employees.
A one-page business plan typically includes sections such as business concept, value proposition, revenue streams, and cost structure.
Best practices for how to make a good business plan
Here are some additional tips for creating a business plan:
Use a template
A template can help you organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your business ideas and strategies. Starting with a template can also save you time and effort when formatting your plan.
Miro’s extensive library of customizable templates includes all the necessary sections for a comprehensive business plan. With our templates, you can confidently present your business plans to stakeholders and investors.
Be practical
Avoid overestimating revenue projections or underestimating expenses. Your business plan should be grounded in practical realities like your budget, resources, and capabilities.
Be specific
Provide as much detail as possible in your business plan. A specific plan is easier to execute because it provides clear guidance on what needs to be done and how. Without specific details, your plan may be too broad or vague, making it difficult to know where to start or how to measure success.
Be thorough with your research
Conduct thorough research to fully understand the market, your competitors, and your target audience . By conducting thorough research, you can identify potential risks and challenges your business may face and develop strategies to mitigate them.
Get input from others
It can be easy to become overly focused on your vision and ideas, leading to tunnel vision and a lack of objectivity. By seeking input from others, you can identify potential opportunities you may have overlooked.
Review and revise regularly
A business plan is a living document. You should update it regularly to reflect market, industry, and business changes. Set aside time for regular reviews and revisions to ensure your plan remains relevant and effective.
Create a winning business plan to chart your path to success
Starting or growing a business can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, a well-written business plan can make or break your business’ success.
The purpose of a business plan is more than just to secure funding and attract investors. It also serves as a roadmap for achieving your business goals and realizing your vision. With the right mindset, tools, and strategies, you can develop a visually appealing, persuasive business plan.
Ready to make an effective business plan that works for you? Check out our library of ready-made strategy and planning templates and chart your path to success.
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Plans and pricing.
How to Write a Business Plan (Plus Examples & Templates)
Have you ever wondered how to write a business plan step by step? Mike Andes, told us:
This guide will help you write a business plan to impress investors.
Throughout this process, we’ll get information from Mike Andes, who started Augusta Lawn Care Services when he was 12 and turned it into a franchise with over 90 locations. He has gone on to help others learn how to write business plans and start businesses. He knows a thing or two about writing business plans!
We’ll start by discussing the definition of a business plan. Then we’ll discuss how to come up with the idea, how to do the market research, and then the important elements in the business plan format. Keep reading to start your journey!
What Is a Business Plan?
A business plan is simply a road map of what you are trying to achieve with your business and how you will go about achieving it. It should cover all elements of your business including:
- Finding customers
- Plans for developing a team
- Competition
- Legal structures
- Key milestones you are pursuing
If you aren’t quite ready to create a business plan, consider starting by reading our business startup guide .
Get a Business Idea
Before you can write a business plan, you have to have a business idea. You may see a problem that needs to be solved and have an idea how to solve it, or you might start by evaluating your interests and skills.
Mike told us, “The three things I suggest asking yourself when thinking about starting a business are:
- What am I good at?
- What would I enjoy doing?
- What can I get paid for?”
If all three of these questions don’t lead to at least one common answer, it will probably be a much harder road to success. Either there is not much market for it, you won’t be good at it, or you won’t enjoy doing it.
As Mike told us, “There’s enough stress starting and running a business that if you don’t like it or aren’t good at it, it’s hard to succeed.”
If you’d like to hear more about Mike’s approach to starting a business, check out our YouTube video
Conduct Market Analysis
Market analysis is focused on establishing if there is a target market for your products and services, how large the target market is, and identifying the demographics of people or businesses that would be interested in the product or service. The goal here is to establish how much money your business concept can make.
Product and Service Demand
A search engine is your best friend when trying to figure out if there is demand for your products and services. Personally, I love using presearch.org because it lets you directly search on a ton of different platforms including Google, Youtube, Twitter, and more. Check out the screenshot for the full list of search options.
With quick web searches, you can find out how many competitors you have, look through their reviews, and see if there are common complaints about the competitors. Bad reviews are a great place to find opportunities to offer better products or services.
If there are no similar products or services, you may have stumbled upon something new, or there may just be no demand for it. To find out, go talk to your most honest friend about the idea and see what they think. If they tell you it’s dumb or stare at you vacantly, there’s probably no market for it.
You can also conduct a survey through social media to get public opinion on your idea. Using Facebook Business Manager , you could get a feel for who would be interested in your product or service.
I ran a quick test of how many people between 18-65 you could reach in the U.S. during a week. It returned an estimated 700-2,000 for the total number of leads, which is enough to do a fairly accurate statistical analysis.
Identify Demographics of Target Market
Depending on what type of business you want to run, your target market will be different. The narrower the demographic, the fewer potential customers you’ll have. If you did a survey, you’ll be able to use that data to help define your target audience. Some considerations you’ll want to consider are:
- Other Interests
- Marital Status
- Do they have kids?
Once you have this information, it can help you narrow down your options for location and help define your marketing further. One resource that Mike recommended using is the Census Bureau’s Quick Facts Map . He told us,
“It helps you quickly evaluate what the best areas are for your business to be located.”
How to Write a Business Plan
Now that you’ve developed your idea a little and established there is a market for it, you can begin writing a business plan. Getting started is easier with the business plan template we created for you to download. I strongly recommend using it as it is updated to make it easier to create an action plan.
Each of the following should be a section of your business plan:
- Business Plan Cover Page
- Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Company Description
- Description of Products and Services
SWOT Analysis
- Competitor Data
- Competitive Analysis
- Marketing Expenses Strategy
Pricing Strategy
- Distribution Channel Assessment
- Operational Plan
- Management and Organizational Strategy
- Financial Statements and/or Financial Projections
We’ll look into each of these. Don’t forget to download our free business plan template (mentioned just above) so you can follow along as we go.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 1. Create a Cover Page
The first thing investors will see is the cover page for your business plan. Make sure it looks professional. A great cover page shows that you think about first impressions.
A good business plan should have the following elements on a cover page:
- Professionally designed logo
- Company name
- Mission or Vision Statement
- Contact Info
Basically, think of a cover page for your business plan like a giant business card. It is meant to capture people’s attention but be quickly processed.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 2. Create a Table of Contents
Most people are busy enough that they don’t have a lot of time. Providing a table of contents makes it easy for them to find the pages of your plan that are meaningful to them.
A table of contents will be immediately after the cover page, but you can include it after the executive summary. Including the table of contents immediately after the executive summary will help investors know what section of your business plan they want to review more thoroughly.
Check out Canva’s article about creating a table of contents . It has a ton of great information about creating easy access to each section of your business plan. Just remember that you’ll want to use different strategies for digital and hard copy business plans.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 3. Write an Executive Summary
An executive summary is where your business plan should catch the readers interest. It doesn’t need to be long, but should be quick and easy to read.
Mike told us,
How long should an executive summary bein an informal business plan?
For casual use, an executive summary should be similar to an elevator pitch, no more than 150-160 words, just enough to get them interested and wanting more. Indeed has a great article on elevator pitches . This can also be used for the content of emails to get readers’ attention.
It consists of three basic parts:
- An introduction to you and your business.
- What your business is about.
- A call to action
Example of an informal executive summary
One of the best elevator pitches I’ve used is:
So far that pitch has achieved a 100% success rate in getting partnerships for the business.
What should I include in an executive summary for investors?
Investors are going to need a more detailed executive summary if you want to secure financing or sell equity. The executive summary should be a brief overview of your entire business plan and include:
- Introduction of yourself and company.
- An origin story (Recognition of a problem and how you came to solution)
- An introduction to your products or services.
- Your unique value proposition. Make sure to include intellectual property.
- Where you are in the business life cycle
- Request and why you need it.
Successful business plan examples
The owner of Urbanity told us he spent 2 months writing a 75-page business plan and received a $250,000 loan from the bank when he was 23. Make your business plan as detailed as possible when looking for financing. We’ve provided a template to help you prepare the portions of a business plan that banks expect.
Here’s the interview with the owner of Urbanity:
When to write an executive summary?
Even though the summary is near the beginning of a business plan, you should write it after you complete the rest of a business plan. You can’t talk about revenue, profits, and expected expenditures if you haven’t done the market research and created a financial plan.
What mistakes do people make when writing an executive summary?
Business owners commonly go into too much detail about the following items in an executive summary:
- Marketing and sales processes
- Financial statements
- Organizational structure
- Market analysis
These are things that people will want to know later, but they don’t hook the reader. They won’t spark interest in your small business, but they’ll close the deal.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 4. Company Description
Every business plan should include a company description. A great business plan will include the following elements while describing the company:
- Mission statement
- Philosophy and vision
- Company goals
Target market
- Legal structure
Let’s take a look at what each section includes in a good business plan.
Mission Statement
A mission statement is a brief explanation of why you started the company and what the company’s main focus is. It should be no more than one or two sentences. Check out HubSpot’s article 27 Inspiring Mission Statement for a great read on informative and inspiring mission and vision statements.
Company Philosophy and Vision
The company philosophy is what drives your company. You’ll normally hear them called core values. These are the building blocks that make your company different. You want to communicate your values to customers, business owners, and investors as often as possible to build a company culture, but make sure to back them up.
What makes your company different?
Each company is different. Your new business should rise above the standard company lines of honesty, integrity, fun, innovation, and community when communicating your business values. The standard answers are corporate jargon and lack authenticity.
Examples of core values
One of my clients decided to add a core values page to their website. As a tech company they emphasized the values:
- Prioritize communication.
- Never stop learning.
- Be transparent.
- Start small and grow incrementally.
These values communicate how the owner and the rest of the company operate. They also show a value proposition and competitive advantage because they specifically focus on delivering business value from the start. These values also genuinely show what the company is about and customers recognize the sincerity. Indeed has a great blog about how to identify your core values .
What is a vision statement?
A vision statement communicate the long lasting change a business pursues. The vision helps investors and customers understand what your company is trying to accomplish. The vision statement goes beyond a mission statement to provide something meaningful to the community, customer’s lives, or even the world.
Example vision statements
The Alzheimer’s Association is a great example of a vision statement:
A world without Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia.
It clearly tells how they want to change the world. A world without Alzheimers might be unachievable, but that means they always have room for improvement.
Business Goals
You have to measure success against goals for a business plan to be meaningful. A business plan helps guide a company similar to how your GPS provides a road map to your favorite travel destination. A goal to make as much money as possible is not inspirational and sounds greedy.
Sure, business owners want to increase their profits and improve customer service, but they need to present an overview of what they consider success. The goals should help everyone prioritize their work.
How far in advance should a business plan?
Business planning should be done at least one year in advance, but many banks and investors prefer three to five year business plans. Longer plans show investors that the management team understands the market and knows the business is operating in a constantly shifting market. In addition, a plan helps businesses to adjust to changes because they have already considered how to handle them.
Example of great business goals
My all time-favorite long-term company goals are included in Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux . These goals were written in 2016 and drive the company’s decisions through 2026. They are the reason that investors are so forgiving when Elon Musk continually fails to meet his quarterly and annual goals.
If the progress aligns with the business plan investors are likely to continue to believe in the company. Just make sure the goals are reasonable or you’ll be discredited (unless you’re Elon Musk).
You did target market research before creating a business plan. Now it’s time to add it to the plan so others understand what your ideal customer looks like. As a new business owner, you may not be considered an expert in your field yet, so document everything. Make sure the references you use are from respectable sources.
Use information from the specific lender when you are applying for lending. Most lenders provide industry research reports and using their data can strengthen the position of your business plan.
A small business plan should include a section on the external environment. Understanding the industry is crucial because we don’t plan a business in a vacuum. Make sure to research the industry trends, competitors, and forecasts. I personally prefer IBIS World for my business research. Make sure to answer questions like:
- What is the industry outlook long-term and short-term?
- How will your business take advantage of projected industry changes and trends?
- What might happen to your competitors and how will your business successfully compete?
Industry resources
Some helpful resources to help you establish more about your industry are:
- Trade Associations
- Federal Reserve
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
Legal Structure
There are five basic types of legal structures that most people will utilize:
- Sole proprietorships
- Limited Liability Companies (LLC)
Partnerships
Corporations.
- Franchises.
Each business structure has their pros and cons. An LLC is the most common legal structure due to its protection of personal assets and ease of setting up. Make sure to specify how ownership is divided and what roles each owner plays when you have more than one business owner.
You’ll have to decide which structure is best for you, but we’ve gathered information on each to make it easier.
Sole Proprietorship
A sole proprietorship is the easiest legal structure to set up but doesn’t protect the owner’s personal assets from legal issues. That means if something goes wrong, you could lose both your company and your home.
To start a sole proprietorship, fill out a special tax form called a Schedule C . Sole proprietors can also join the American Independent Business Alliance .
Limited Liability Company (LLC)
An LLC is the most common business structure used in the United States because an LLC protects the owner’s personal assets. It’s similar to partnerships and corporations, but can be a single-member LLC in most states. An LLC requires a document called an operating agreement.
Each state has different requirements. Here’s a link to find your state’s requirements . Delaware and Nevada are common states to file an LLC because they are really business-friendly. Here’s a blog on the top 10 states to get an LLC.
Partnerships are typically for legal firms. If you choose to use a partnership choose a Limited Liability Partnership. Alternatively, you can just use an LLC.
Corporations are typically for massive organizations. Corporations have taxes on both corporate and income tax so unless you plan on selling stock, you are better off considering an LLC with S-Corp status . Investopedia has good information corporations here .
There are several opportunities to purchase successful franchises. TopFranchise.com has a list of companies in a variety of industries that offer franchise opportunities. This makes it where an entrepreneur can benefit from the reputation of an established business that has already worked out many of the kinks of starting from scratch.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 5. Products and Services
This section of the business plan should focus on what you sell, how you source it, and how you sell it. You should include:
- Unique features that differentiate your business products from competitors
- Intellectual property
- Your supply chain
- Cost and pricing structure
Questions to answer about your products and services
Mike gave us a list of the most important questions to answer about your product and services:
- How will you be selling the product? (in person, ecommerce, wholesale, direct to consumer)?
- How do you let them know they need a product?
- How do you communicate the message?
- How will you do transactions?
- How much will you be selling it for?
- How many do you think you’ll sell and why?
Make sure to use the worksheet on our business plan template .
How to Write a Business Plan Step 6. Sales and Marketing Plan
The marketing and sales plan is focused on the strategy to bring awareness to your company and guides how you will get the product to the consumer. It should contain the following sections:
SWOT Analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Not only do you want to identify them, but you also want to document how the business plans to deal with them.
Business owners need to do a thorough job documenting how their service or product stacks up against the competition.
If proper research isn’t done, investors will be able to tell that the owner hasn’t researched the competition and is less likely to believe that the team can protect its service from threats by the more well-established competition. This is one of the most common parts of a presentation that trips up business owners presenting on Shark Tank .
SWOT Examples
Examples of strengths and weaknesses could be things like the lack of cash flow, intellectual property ownership, high costs of suppliers, and customers’ expectations on shipping times.
Opportunities could be ways to capitalize on your strengths or improve your weaknesses, but may also be gaps in the industry. This includes:
- Adding offerings that fit with your current small business
- Increase sales to current customers
- Reducing costs through bulk ordering
- Finding ways to reduce inventory
- And other areas you can improve
Threats will normally come from outside of the company but could also be things like losing a key member of the team. Threats normally come from competition, regulations, taxes, and unforeseen events.
The management team should use the SWOT analysis to guide other areas of business planning, but it absolutely has to be done before a business owner starts marketing.
Include Competitor Data in Your Business Plan
When you plan a business, taking into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is key to navigating the field. Providing an overview of your competition and where they are headed shows that you are invested in understanding the industry.
For smaller businesses, you’ll want to search both the company and the owners names to see what they are working on. For publicly held corporations, you can find their quarterly and annual reports on the SEC website .
What another business plans to do can impact your business. Make sure to include things that might make it attractive for bigger companies to outsource to a small business.
Marketing Strategy
The marketing and sales part of business plans should be focused on how you are going to make potential customers aware of your business and then sell to them.
If you haven’t already included it, Mike recommends:
“They’ll want to know about Demographics, ages, and wealth of your target market.”
Make sure to include the Total addressable market . The term refers to the value if you captured 100% of the market.
Advertising Strategy
You’ll explain what formats of advertising you’ll be using. Some possibilities are:
- Online: Facebook and Google are the big names to work with here.
- Print : Print can be used to reach broad groups or targeted markets. Check out this for tips .
- Radio : iHeartMedia is one of the best ways to advertise on the radio
- Cable television : High priced, hard to measure ROI, but here’s an explanation of the process
- Billboards: Attracting customers with billboards can be beneficial in high traffic areas.
You’ll want to define how you’ll be using each including frequency, duration, and cost. If you have the materials already created, including pictures or links to the marketing to show creative assets.
Mike told us “Most businesses are marketing digitally now due to Covid, but that’s not always the right answer.”
Make sure the marketing strategy will help team members or external marketing agencies stay within the brand guidelines .
This section of a business plan should be focused on pricing. There are a ton of pricing strategies that may work for different business plans. Which one will work for you depends on what kind of a business you run.
Some common pricing strategies are:
- Value-based pricing – Commonly used with home buying and selling or other products that are status symbols.
- Skimming pricing – Commonly seen in video game consoles, price starts off high to recoup expenses quickly, then reduces over time.
- Competition-based pricing – Pricing based on competitors’ pricing is commonly seen at gas stations.
- Freemium services – Commonly used for software, where there is a free plan, then purchase options for more functionality.
HubSpot has a great calculator and blog on pricing strategies.
Beyond explaining what strategy your business plans to use, you should include references for how you came to this pricing strategy and how it will impact your cash flow.
Distribution Plan
This part of a business plan is focused on how the product or service is going to go through the supply chain. These may include multiple divisions or multiple companies. Make sure to include any parts of the workflow that are automated so investors can see where cost savings are expected and when.
Supply Chain Examples
For instance, lawn care companies would need to cover aspects such as:
- Suppliers for lawn care equipment and tools
- Any chemicals or treatments needed
- Repair parts for sprinkler systems
- Vehicles to transport equipment and employees
- Insurance to protect the company vehicles and people.
Examples of Supply Chains
These are fairly flat supply chains compared to something like a clothing designer where the clothes would go through multiple vendors. A clothing company might have the following supply chain:
- Raw materials
- Shipping of raw materials
- Converting of raw materials to thread
- Shipping thread to produce garments
- Garment producer
- Shipping to company
- Company storage
- Shipping to retail stores
There have been advances such as print on demand that eliminate many of these steps. If you are designing completely custom clothing, all of this would need to be planned to keep from having business disruptions.
The main thing to include in the business plan is the list of suppliers, the path the supply chain follows, the time from order to the customer’s home, and the costs associated with each step of the process.
According to BizPlanReview , a business plan without this information is likely to get rejected because they have failed to research the key elements necessary to make sales to the customer.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 7. Company Organization and Operational Plan
This part of the business plan is focused on how the business model will function while serving customers. The business plan should provide an overview of how the team will manage the following aspects:
Quality Control
- Legal environment
Let’s look at each for some insight.
Production has already been discussed in previous sections so I won’t go into it much. When writing a business plan for investors, try to avoid repetition as it creates a more simple business plan.
If the organizational plan will be used by the team as an overview of how to perform the best services for the customer, then redundancy makes more sense as it communicates what is important to the business.
Quality control policies help to keep the team focused on how to verify that the company adheres to the business plan and meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Quality control can be anything from a standard that says “all labels on shirts can be no more than 1/16″ off center” to a defined checklist of steps that should be performed and filled out for every customer.
There are a variety of organizations that help define quality control including:
- International Organization for Standardization – Quality standards for energy, technology, food, production environments, and cybersecurity
- AICPA – Standard defined for accounting.
- The Joint Commission – Healthcare
- ASHRAE – HVAC best practices
You can find lists of the organizations that contribute most to the government regulation of industries on Open Secrets . Research what the leaders in your field are doing. Follow their example and implement it in your quality control plan.
For location, you should use information from the market research to establish where the location will be. Make sure to include the following in the location documentation.
- The size of your location
- The type of building (retail, industrial, commercial, etc.)
- Zoning restrictions – Urban Wire has a good map on how zoning works in each state
- Accessibility – Does it meet ADA requirements?
- Costs including rent, maintenance, utilities, insurance and any buildout or remodeling costs
- Utilities – b.e.f. has a good energy calculator .
Legal Environment
The legal requirement section is focused on defining how to meet the legal requirements for your industry. A good business plan should include all of the following:
- Any licenses and/or permits that are needed and whether you’ve obtained them
- Any trademarks, copyrights, or patents that you have or are in the process of applying for
- The insurance coverage your business requires and how much it costs
- Any environmental, health, or workplace regulations affecting your business
- Any special regulations affecting your industry
- Bonding requirements, if applicable
Your local SBA office can help you establish requirements in your area. I strongly recommend using them. They are a great resource.
Your business plan should include a plan for company organization and hiring. While you may be the only person with the company right now, down the road you’ll need more people. Make sure to consider and document the answers to the following questions:
- What is the current leadership structure and what will it look like in the future?
- What types of employees will you have? Are there any licensing or educational requirements?
- How many employees will you need?
- Will you ever hire freelancers or independent contractors?
- What is each position’s job description?
- What is the pay structure (hourly, salaried, base plus commission, etc.)?
- How do you plan to find qualified employees and contractors?
One of the most crucial parts of a business plan is the organizational chart. This simply shows the positions the company will need, who is in charge of them and the relationship of each of them. It will look similar to this:
Our small business plan template has a much more in-depth organizational chart you can edit to include when you include the organizational chart in your business plan.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 8. Financial Statements
No business plan is complete without financial statements or financial projections. The business plan format will be different based on whether you are writing a business plan to expand a business or a startup business plan. Let’s dig deeper into each.
Provide All Financial Income from an Existing Business
An existing business should use their past financial documents including the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement to find trends to estimate the next 3-5 years.
You can create easy trendlines in excel to predict future revenue, profit and loss, cash flow, and other changes in year-over-year performance. This will show your expected performance assuming business continues as normal.
If you are seeking an investment, then the business is probably not going to continue as normal. Depending on the financial plan and the purpose of getting financing, adjustments may be needed to the following:
- Higher Revenue if expanding business
- Lower Cost of Goods Sold if purchasing inventory with bulk discounts
- Adding interest if utilizing financing (not equity deal)
- Changes in expenses
- Addition of financing information to the cash flow statement
- Changes in Earnings per Share on the balance sheet
Financial modeling is a challenging subject, but there are plenty of low-cost courses on the subject. If you need help planning your business financial documentation take some time to watch some of them.
Make it a point to document how you calculated all the changes to the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in your business plan so that key team members or investors can verify your research.
Financial Projections For A Startup Business Plan
Unlike an existing business, a startup doesn’t have previous success to model its future performance. In this scenario, you need to focus on how to make a business plan realistic through the use of industry research and averages.
Mike gave the following advice in his interview:
Financial Forecasting Mistakes
One of the things a lot of inexperienced people use is the argument, “If I get one percent of the market, it is worth $100 million.” If you use this, investors are likely to file the document under bad business plan examples.
Let’s use custom t-shirts as an example.
Credence Research estimated in 2018 there were 11,334,800,000 custom t-shirts sold for a total of $206.12 Billion, with a 6% compound annual growth rate.
With that data, you can calculate that the industry will grow to $270 Billion in 2023 and that the average shirt sold creates $18.18 in revenue.
Combine that with an IBIS World estimate of 11,094 custom screen printers and that means even if you become an average seller, you’ll get .009% of the market.
Here’s a table for easier viewing of that information.
The point here is to make sure your business proposal examples make sense.
You’ll need to know industry averages such as cost of customer acquisition, revenue per customer, the average cost of goods sold, and admin costs to be able to create accurate estimates.
Our simple business plan templates walk you through most of these processes. If you follow them you’ll have a good idea of how to write a business proposal.
How to Write a Business Plan Step 9. Business Plan Example of Funding Requests
What is a business plan without a plan on how to obtain funding?
The Small Business Administration has an example for a pizza restaurant that theoretically needed nearly $20k to make it through their first month.
In our video, How to Start a $500K/Year T-Shirt Business (Pt. 1 ), Sanford Booth told us he needed about $200,000 to start his franchise and broke even after 4 months.
Freshbooks estimates it takes on average 2-3 years for a business to be profitable, which means the fictitious pizza company from the SBA could need up to $330k to make it through that time and still pay their bills for their home and pizza shop.
Not every business needs that much to start, but realistically it’s a good idea to assume that you need a fairly large cushion.
Ways to get funding for a small business
There are a variety of ways to cover this. the most common are:
- Bootstrapping – Using your savings without external funding.
- Taking out debt – loans, credit cards
- Equity, Seed Funding – Ownership of a percentage of the company in exchange for current funds
- Crowdsourcing – Promising a good for funding to create the product
Keep reading for more tips on how to write a business plan.
How funding will be used
When asking for business financing make sure to include:
- How much to get started?
- What is the minimum viable product and how soon can you make money?
- How will the money be spent?
Mike emphasized two aspects that should be included in every plan,
How to Write a Business Plan Resources
Here are some links to a business plan sample and business plan outline.
- Sample plan
It’s also helpful to follow some of the leading influencers in the business plan writing community. Here’s a list:
- Wise Plans – Shares a lot of information on starting businesses and is a business plan writing company.
- Optimus Business Plans – Another business plan writing company.
- Venture Capital – A venture capital thread that can help give you ideas.
How to Write a Business Plan: What’s Next?
We hope this guide about how to write a simple business plan step by step has been helpful. We’ve covered:
- The definition of a business plan
- Coming up with a business idea
- Performing market research
- The critical components of a business plan
- An example business plan
In addition, we provided you with a simple business plan template to assist you in the process of writing your startup business plan. The startup business plan template also includes a business model template that will be the key to your success.
Don’t forget to check out the rest of our business hub .
Have you written a business plan before? How did it impact your ability to achieve your goals?
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How to create a business plan: examples & free template.
Table of Contents
How to Write a Business Plan
Executive summary.
Overview and Business Objectives
Company description, define your target market, market analysis, swot analysis, competitive analysis, organization and management team, products and services offered, marketing and sales strategy, logistics and operations plan, financial projections plan, income statement, cash flow statement.
Section | Description | Example |
---|---|---|
Executive Summary | Brief overview of the business plan | Overview of EcoTech and its mission |
Overview & Objectives | Outline of company's goals and strategies | Market leadership in sustainable technology |
Company Description | Detailed explanation of the company and its unique selling proposition | EcoTech's history, mission, and vision |
Target Market | Description of ideal customers and their needs | Environmentally conscious consumers and businesses |
Market Analysis | Examination of industry trends, customer needs, and competitors | Trends in eco-friendly technology market |
SWOT Analysis | Evaluation of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats | Strengths and weaknesses of EcoTech |
Competitive Analysis | In-depth analysis of competitors and their strategies | Analysis of GreenTech and EarthSolutions |
Organization & Management | Overview of the company's structure and management team | Key roles and team members at EcoTech |
Products & Services | Description of offerings and their unique features | Energy-efficient lighting solutions, solar chargers |
Marketing & Sales | Outline of marketing channels and sales strategies | Digital advertising, content marketing, influencer partnerships |
Logistics & Operations | Details about daily operations, supply chain, inventory, and quality control | Partnerships with manufacturers, quality control |
Financial Projections | Forecast of revenue, expenses, and profit for the next 3-5 years | Projected growth in revenue and net profit |
Income Statement | Summary of company's revenues and expenses over a specified period | Revenue, Cost of Goods Sold, Gross Profit, Net Income |
Cash Flow Statement | Overview of cash inflows and outflows within the business | Net Cash from Operating Activities, Investing Activities, Financing Activities |
Tips on Writing a Business Plan
Free business plan template, what is a business plan, why you should write a business plan, what are the different types of business plans.
Type of Business Plan | Purpose | Key Components | Target Audience |
---|---|---|---|
Startup Business Plan | Outlines the company's mission, objectives, target market, competition, marketing strategies, and financial projections. | Mission Statement, Company Description, Market Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Organizational Structure, Marketing and Sales Strategy, Financial Projections. | Entrepreneurs, Investors |
Internal Business Plan | Serves as a management tool for guiding the company's growth, evaluating its progress, and ensuring that all departments are aligned with the overall vision. | Strategies, Milestones, Deadlines, Resource Allocation. | Internal Team Members |
Strategic Business Plan | Outlines long-term goals and the steps to achieve them. | SWOT Analysis, Market Research, Competitive Analysis, Long-Term Goals. | Executives, Managers, Investors |
Feasibility Business Plan | Assesses the viability of a business idea. | Market Demand, Competition, Financial Projections, Potential Obstacles. | Entrepreneurs, Investors |
Growth Business Plan | Focuses on strategies for scaling up an existing business. | Market Analysis, New Product/Service Offerings, Financial Projections. | Business Owners, Investors |
Operational Business Plan | Outlines the company's day-to-day operations. | Processes, Procedures, Organizational Structure. | Managers, Employees |
Lean Business Plan | A simplified, agile version of a traditional plan, focusing on key elements. | Value Proposition, Customer Segments, Revenue Streams, Cost Structure. | Entrepreneurs, Startups |
One-Page Business Plan | A concise summary of your company's key objectives, strategies, and milestones. | Key Objectives, Strategies, Milestones. | Entrepreneurs, Investors, Partners |
Nonprofit Business Plan | Outlines the mission, goals, target audience, fundraising strategies, and budget allocation for nonprofit organizations. | Mission Statement, Goals, Target Audience, Fundraising Strategies, Budget. | Nonprofit Leaders, Board Members, Donors |
Franchise Business Plan | Focuses on the franchisor's requirements, as well as the franchisee's goals, strategies, and financial projections. | Franchise Agreement, Brand Standards, Marketing Efforts, Operational Procedures, Financial Projections. | Franchisors, Franchisees, Investors |
Using Business Plan Software
Software | Key Features | User Interface | Additional Features |
---|---|---|---|
LivePlan | Over 500 sample plans, financial forecasting tools, progress tracking against KPIs | User-friendly, visually appealing | Allows creation of professional-looking business plans |
Upmetrics | Customizable templates, financial forecasting tools, collaboration capabilities | Simple and intuitive | Provides a resource library for business planning |
Bizplan | Drag-and-drop builder, modular sections, financial forecasting tools, progress tracking | Simple, visually engaging | Designed to simplify the business planning process |
Enloop | Industry-specific templates, financial forecasting tools, automatic business plan generation, unique performance score | Robust, user-friendly | Offers a free version, making it accessible for businesses on a budget |
Tarkenton GoSmallBiz | Guided business plan builder, customizable templates, financial projection tools | User-friendly | Offers CRM tools, legal document templates, and additional resources for small businesses |
Business Plan FAQs
What is a good business plan, what are the 3 main purposes of a business plan, can i write a business plan by myself, is it possible to create a one-page business plan, how long should a business plan be, what is a business plan outline, what are the 5 most common business plan mistakes, what questions should be asked in a business plan, what’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan, how is business planning for a nonprofit different.
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How To Write A Business Plan (2024 Guide)
Updated: Apr 17, 2024, 11:59am
Table of Contents
Brainstorm an executive summary, create a company description, brainstorm your business goals, describe your services or products, conduct market research, create financial plans, bottom line, frequently asked questions.
Every business starts with a vision, which is distilled and communicated through a business plan. In addition to your high-level hopes and dreams, a strong business plan outlines short-term and long-term goals, budget and whatever else you might need to get started. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to write a business plan that you can stick to and help guide your operations as you get started.
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Drafting the Summary
An executive summary is an extremely important first step in your business. You have to be able to put the basic facts of your business in an elevator pitch-style sentence to grab investors’ attention and keep their interest. This should communicate your business’s name, what the products or services you’re selling are and what marketplace you’re entering.
Ask for Help
When drafting the executive summary, you should have a few different options. Enlist a few thought partners to review your executive summary possibilities to determine which one is best.
After you have the executive summary in place, you can work on the company description, which contains more specific information. In the description, you’ll need to include your business’s registered name , your business address and any key employees involved in the business.
The business description should also include the structure of your business, such as sole proprietorship , limited liability company (LLC) , partnership or corporation. This is the time to specify how much of an ownership stake everyone has in the company. Finally, include a section that outlines the history of the company and how it has evolved over time.
Wherever you are on the business journey, you return to your goals and assess where you are in meeting your in-progress targets and setting new goals to work toward.
Numbers-based Goals
Goals can cover a variety of sections of your business. Financial and profit goals are a given for when you’re establishing your business, but there are other goals to take into account as well with regard to brand awareness and growth. For example, you might want to hit a certain number of followers across social channels or raise your engagement rates.
Another goal could be to attract new investors or find grants if you’re a nonprofit business. If you’re looking to grow, you’ll want to set revenue targets to make that happen as well.
Intangible Goals
Goals unrelated to traceable numbers are important as well. These can include seeing your business’s advertisement reach the general public or receiving a terrific client review. These goals are important for the direction you take your business and the direction you want it to go in the future.
The business plan should have a section that explains the services or products that you’re offering. This is the part where you can also describe how they fit in the current market or are providing something necessary or entirely new. If you have any patents or trademarks, this is where you can include those too.
If you have any visual aids, they should be included here as well. This would also be a good place to include pricing strategy and explain your materials.
This is the part of the business plan where you can explain your expertise and different approach in greater depth. Show how what you’re offering is vital to the market and fills an important gap.
You can also situate your business in your industry and compare it to other ones and how you have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Other than financial goals, you want to have a budget and set your planned weekly, monthly and annual spending. There are several different costs to consider, such as operational costs.
Business Operations Costs
Rent for your business is the first big cost to factor into your budget. If your business is remote, the cost that replaces rent will be the software that maintains your virtual operations.
Marketing and sales costs should be next on your list. Devoting money to making sure people know about your business is as important as making sure it functions.
Other Costs
Although you can’t anticipate disasters, there are likely to be unanticipated costs that come up at some point in your business’s existence. It’s important to factor these possible costs into your financial plans so you’re not caught totally unaware.
Business plans are important for businesses of all sizes so that you can define where your business is and where you want it to go. Growing your business requires a vision, and giving yourself a roadmap in the form of a business plan will set you up for success.
How do I write a simple business plan?
When you’re working on a business plan, make sure you have as much information as possible so that you can simplify it to the most relevant information. A simple business plan still needs all of the parts included in this article, but you can be very clear and direct.
What are some common mistakes in a business plan?
The most common mistakes in a business plan are common writing issues like grammar errors or misspellings. It’s important to be clear in your sentence structure and proofread your business plan before sending it to any investors or partners.
What basic items should be included in a business plan?
When writing out a business plan, you want to make sure that you cover everything related to your concept for the business, an analysis of the industry―including potential customers and an overview of the market for your goods or services―how you plan to execute your vision for the business, how you plan to grow the business if it becomes successful and all financial data around the business, including current cash on hand, potential investors and budget plans for the next few years.
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How to Write a Business Plan in 9 Steps (+ Template and Examples)
Every successful business has one thing in common, a good and well-executed business plan. A business plan is more than a document, it is a complete guide that outlines the goals your business wants to achieve, including its financial goals . It helps you analyze results, make strategic decisions, show your business operations and growth.
If you want to start a business or already have one and need to pitch it to investors for funding, writing a good business plan improves your chances of attracting financiers. As a startup, if you want to secure loans from financial institutions, part of the requirements involve submitting your business plan.
Writing a business plan does not have to be a complicated or time-consuming process. In this article, you will learn the step-by-step process for writing a successful business plan.
You will also learn what you need a business plan for, tips and strategies for writing a convincing business plan, business plan examples and templates that will save you tons of time, and the alternatives to the traditional business plan.
Let’s get started.
What Do You Need A Business Plan For?
Businesses create business plans for different purposes such as to secure funds, monitor business growth, measure your marketing strategies, and measure your business success.
1. Secure Funds
One of the primary reasons for writing a business plan is to secure funds, either from financial institutions/agencies or investors.
For you to effectively acquire funds, your business plan must contain the key elements of your business plan . For example, your business plan should include your growth plans, goals you want to achieve, and milestones you have recorded.
A business plan can also attract new business partners that are willing to contribute financially and intellectually. If you are writing a business plan to a bank, your project must show your traction , that is, the proof that you can pay back any loan borrowed.
Also, if you are writing to an investor, your plan must contain evidence that you can effectively utilize the funds you want them to invest in your business. Here, you are using your business plan to persuade a group or an individual that your business is a source of a good investment.
2. Monitor Business Growth
A business plan can help you track cash flows in your business. It steers your business to greater heights. A business plan capable of tracking business growth should contain:
- The business goals
- Methods to achieve the goals
- Time-frame for attaining those goals
A good business plan should guide you through every step in achieving your goals. It can also track the allocation of assets to every aspect of the business. You can tell when you are spending more than you should on a project.
You can compare a business plan to a written GPS. It helps you manage your business and hints at the right time to expand your business.
3. Measure Business Success
A business plan can help you measure your business success rate. Some small-scale businesses are thriving better than more prominent companies because of their track record of success.
Right from the onset of your business operation, set goals and work towards them. Write a plan to guide you through your procedures. Use your plan to measure how much you have achieved and how much is left to attain.
You can also weigh your success by monitoring the position of your brand relative to competitors. On the other hand, a business plan can also show you why you have not achieved a goal. It can tell if you have elapsed the time frame you set to attain a goal.
4. Document Your Marketing Strategies
You can use a business plan to document your marketing plans. Every business should have an effective marketing plan.
Competition mandates every business owner to go the extraordinary mile to remain relevant in the market. Your business plan should contain your marketing strategies that work. You can measure the success rate of your marketing plans.
In your business plan, your marketing strategy must answer the questions:
- How do you want to reach your target audience?
- How do you plan to retain your customers?
- What is/are your pricing plans?
- What is your budget for marketing?
How to Write a Business Plan Step-by-Step
1. create your executive summary.
The executive summary is a snapshot of your business or a high-level overview of your business purposes and plans . Although the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, most people write it last. The length of the executive summary is not more than two pages.
Generally, there are nine sections in a business plan, the executive summary should condense essential ideas from the other eight sections.
A good executive summary should do the following:
- A Snapshot of Growth Potential. Briefly inform the reader about your company and why it will be successful)
- Contain your Mission Statement which explains what the main objective or focus of your business is.
- Product Description and Differentiation. Brief description of your products or services and why it is different from other solutions in the market.
- The Team. Basic information about your company’s leadership team and employees
- Business Concept. A solid description of what your business does.
- Target Market. The customers you plan to sell to.
- Marketing Strategy. Your plans on reaching and selling to your customers
- Current Financial State. Brief information about what revenue your business currently generates.
- Projected Financial State. Brief information about what you foresee your business revenue to be in the future.
The executive summary is the make-or-break section of your business plan. If your summary cannot in less than two pages cannot clearly describe how your business will solve a particular problem of your target audience and make a profit, your business plan is set on a faulty foundation.
Avoid using the executive summary to hype your business, instead, focus on helping the reader understand the what and how of your plan.
View the executive summary as an opportunity to introduce your vision for your company. You know your executive summary is powerful when it can answer these key questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- What sector or industry are you in?
- What are your products and services?
- What is the future of your industry?
- Is your company scaleable?
- Who are the owners and leaders of your company? What are their backgrounds and experience levels?
- What is the motivation for starting your company?
- What are the next steps?
Writing the executive summary last although it is the most important section of your business plan is an excellent idea. The reason why is because it is a high-level overview of your business plan. It is the section that determines whether potential investors and lenders will read further or not.
The executive summary can be a stand-alone document that covers everything in your business plan. It is not uncommon for investors to request only the executive summary when evaluating your business. If the information in the executive summary impresses them, they will ask for the complete business plan.
If you are writing your business plan for your planning purposes, you do not need to write the executive summary.
2. Add Your Company Overview
The company overview or description is the next section in your business plan after the executive summary. It describes what your business does.
Adding your company overview can be tricky especially when your business is still in the planning stages. Existing businesses can easily summarize their current operations but may encounter difficulties trying to explain what they plan to become.
Your company overview should contain the following:
- What products and services you will provide
- Geographical markets and locations your company have a presence
- What you need to run your business
- Who your target audience or customers are
- Who will service your customers
- Your company’s purpose, mission, and vision
- Information about your company’s founders
- Who the founders are
- Notable achievements of your company so far
When creating a company overview, you have to focus on three basics: identifying your industry, identifying your customer, and explaining the problem you solve.
If you are stuck when creating your company overview, try to answer some of these questions that pertain to you.
- Who are you targeting? (The answer is not everyone)
- What pain point does your product or service solve for your customers that they will be willing to spend money on resolving?
- How does your product or service overcome that pain point?
- Where is the location of your business?
- What products, equipment, and services do you need to run your business?
- How is your company’s product or service different from your competition in the eyes of your customers?
- How many employees do you need and what skills do you require them to have?
After answering some or all of these questions, you will get more than enough information you need to write your company overview or description section. When writing this section, describe what your company does for your customers.
The company description or overview section contains three elements: mission statement, history, and objectives.
- Mission Statement
The mission statement refers to the reason why your business or company is existing. It goes beyond what you do or sell, it is about the ‘why’. A good mission statement should be emotional and inspirational.
Your mission statement should follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid). For example, Shopify’s mission statement is “Make commerce better for everyone.”
When describing your company’s history, make it simple and avoid the temptation of tying it to a defensive narrative. Write it in the manner you would a profile. Your company’s history should include the following information:
- Founding Date
- Major Milestones
- Location(s)
- Flagship Products or Services
- Number of Employees
- Executive Leadership Roles
When you fill in this information, you use it to write one or two paragraphs about your company’s history.
Business Objectives
Your business objective must be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.) Failure to clearly identify your business objectives does not inspire confidence and makes it hard for your team members to work towards a common purpose.
3. Perform Market and Competitive Analyses to Proof a Big Enough Business Opportunity
The third step in writing a business plan is the market and competitive analysis section. Every business, no matter the size, needs to perform comprehensive market and competitive analyses before it enters into a market.
Performing market and competitive analyses are critical for the success of your business. It helps you avoid entering the right market with the wrong product, or vice versa. Anyone reading your business plans, especially financiers and financial institutions will want to see proof that there is a big enough business opportunity you are targeting.
This section is where you describe the market and industry you want to operate in and show the big opportunities in the market that your business can leverage to make a profit. If you noticed any unique trends when doing your research, show them in this section.
Market analysis alone is not enough, you have to add competitive analysis to strengthen this section. There are already businesses in the industry or market, how do you plan to take a share of the market from them?
You have to clearly illustrate the competitive landscape in your business plan. Are there areas your competitors are doing well? Are there areas where they are not doing so well? Show it.
Make it clear in this section why you are moving into the industry and what weaknesses are present there that you plan to explain. How are your competitors going to react to your market entry? How do you plan to get customers? Do you plan on taking your competitors' competitors, tap into other sources for customers, or both?
Illustrate the competitive landscape as well. What are your competitors doing well and not so well?
Answering these questions and thoughts will aid your market and competitive analysis of the opportunities in your space. Depending on how sophisticated your industry is, or the expectations of your financiers, you may need to carry out a more comprehensive market and competitive analysis to prove that big business opportunity.
Instead of looking at the market and competitive analyses as one entity, separating them will make the research even more comprehensive.
Market Analysis
Market analysis, boarding speaking, refers to research a business carried out on its industry, market, and competitors. It helps businesses gain a good understanding of their target market and the outlook of their industry. Before starting a company, it is vital to carry out market research to find out if the market is viable.
The market analysis section is a key part of the business plan. It is the section where you identify who your best clients or customers are. You cannot omit this section, without it your business plan is incomplete.
A good market analysis will tell your readers how you fit into the existing market and what makes you stand out. This section requires in-depth research, it will probably be the most time-consuming part of the business plan to write.
- Market Research
To create a compelling market analysis that will win over investors and financial institutions, you have to carry out thorough market research . Your market research should be targeted at your primary target market for your products or services. Here is what you want to find out about your target market.
- Your target market’s needs or pain points
- The existing solutions for their pain points
- Geographic Location
- Demographics
The purpose of carrying out a marketing analysis is to get all the information you need to show that you have a solid and thorough understanding of your target audience.
Only after you have fully understood the people you plan to sell your products or services to, can you evaluate correctly if your target market will be interested in your products or services.
You can easily convince interested parties to invest in your business if you can show them you thoroughly understand the market and show them that there is a market for your products or services.
How to Quantify Your Target Market
One of the goals of your marketing research is to understand who your ideal customers are and their purchasing power. To quantify your target market, you have to determine the following:
- Your Potential Customers: They are the people you plan to target. For example, if you sell accounting software for small businesses , then anyone who runs an enterprise or large business is unlikely to be your customers. Also, individuals who do not have a business will most likely not be interested in your product.
- Total Households: If you are selling household products such as heating and air conditioning systems, determining the number of total households is more important than finding out the total population in the area you want to sell to. The logic is simple, people buy the product but it is the household that uses it.
- Median Income: You need to know the median income of your target market. If you target a market that cannot afford to buy your products and services, your business will not last long.
- Income by Demographics: If your potential customers belong to a certain age group or gender, determining income levels by demographics is necessary. For example, if you sell men's clothes, your target audience is men.
What Does a Good Market Analysis Entail?
Your business does not exist on its own, it can only flourish within an industry and alongside competitors. Market analysis takes into consideration your industry, target market, and competitors. Understanding these three entities will drastically improve your company’s chances of success.
You can view your market analysis as an examination of the market you want to break into and an education on the emerging trends and themes in that market. Good market analyses include the following:
- Industry Description. You find out about the history of your industry, the current and future market size, and who the largest players/companies are in your industry.
- Overview of Target Market. You research your target market and its characteristics. Who are you targeting? Note, it cannot be everyone, it has to be a specific group. You also have to find out all information possible about your customers that can help you understand how and why they make buying decisions.
- Size of Target Market: You need to know the size of your target market, how frequently they buy, and the expected quantity they buy so you do not risk overproducing and having lots of bad inventory. Researching the size of your target market will help you determine if it is big enough for sustained business or not.
- Growth Potential: Before picking a target market, you want to be sure there are lots of potential for future growth. You want to avoid going for an industry that is declining slowly or rapidly with almost zero growth potential.
- Market Share Potential: Does your business stand a good chance of taking a good share of the market?
- Market Pricing and Promotional Strategies: Your market analysis should give you an idea of the price point you can expect to charge for your products and services. Researching your target market will also give you ideas of pricing strategies you can implement to break into the market or to enjoy maximum profits.
- Potential Barriers to Entry: One of the biggest benefits of conducting market analysis is that it shows you every potential barrier to entry your business will likely encounter. It is a good idea to discuss potential barriers to entry such as changing technology. It informs readers of your business plan that you understand the market.
- Research on Competitors: You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and how you can exploit them for the benefit of your business. Find patterns and trends among your competitors that make them successful, discover what works and what doesn’t, and see what you can do better.
The market analysis section is not just for talking about your target market, industry, and competitors. You also have to explain how your company can fill the hole you have identified in the market.
Here are some questions you can answer that can help you position your product or service in a positive light to your readers.
- Is your product or service of superior quality?
- What additional features do you offer that your competitors do not offer?
- Are you targeting a ‘new’ market?
Basically, your market analysis should include an analysis of what already exists in the market and an explanation of how your company fits into the market.
Competitive Analysis
In the competitive analysis section, y ou have to understand who your direct and indirect competitions are, and how successful they are in the marketplace. It is the section where you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, the advantage(s) they possess in the market and show the unique features or qualities that make you different from your competitors.
Many businesses do market analysis and competitive analysis together. However, to fully understand what the competitive analysis entails, it is essential to separate it from the market analysis.
Competitive analysis for your business can also include analysis on how to overcome barriers to entry in your target market.
The primary goal of conducting a competitive analysis is to distinguish your business from your competitors. A strong competitive analysis is essential if you want to convince potential funding sources to invest in your business. You have to show potential investors and lenders that your business has what it takes to compete in the marketplace successfully.
Competitive analysis will s how you what the strengths of your competition are and what they are doing to maintain that advantage.
When doing your competitive research, you first have to identify your competitor and then get all the information you can about them. The idea of spending time to identify your competitor and learn everything about them may seem daunting but it is well worth it.
Find answers to the following questions after you have identified who your competitors are.
- What are your successful competitors doing?
- Why is what they are doing working?
- Can your business do it better?
- What are the weaknesses of your successful competitors?
- What are they not doing well?
- Can your business turn its weaknesses into strengths?
- How good is your competitors’ customer service?
- Where do your competitors invest in advertising?
- What sales and pricing strategies are they using?
- What marketing strategies are they using?
- What kind of press coverage do they get?
- What are their customers saying about your competitors (both the positive and negative)?
If your competitors have a website, it is a good idea to visit their websites for more competitors’ research. Check their “About Us” page for more information.
If you are presenting your business plan to investors, you need to clearly distinguish yourself from your competitors. Investors can easily tell when you have not properly researched your competitors.
Take time to think about what unique qualities or features set you apart from your competitors. If you do not have any direct competition offering your product to the market, it does not mean you leave out the competitor analysis section blank. Instead research on other companies that are providing a similar product, or whose product is solving the problem your product solves.
The next step is to create a table listing the top competitors you want to include in your business plan. Ensure you list your business as the last and on the right. What you just created is known as the competitor analysis table.
Direct vs Indirect Competition
You cannot know if your product or service will be a fit for your target market if you have not understood your business and the competitive landscape.
There is no market you want to target where you will not encounter competition, even if your product is innovative. Including competitive analysis in your business plan is essential.
If you are entering an established market, you need to explain how you plan to differentiate your products from the available options in the market. Also, include a list of few companies that you view as your direct competitors The competition you face in an established market is your direct competition.
In situations where you are entering a market with no direct competition, it does not mean there is no competition there. Consider your indirect competition that offers substitutes for the products or services you offer.
For example, if you sell an innovative SaaS product, let us say a project management software , a company offering time management software is your indirect competition.
There is an easy way to find out who your indirect competitors are in the absence of no direct competitors. You simply have to research how your potential customers are solving the problems that your product or service seeks to solve. That is your direct competition.
Factors that Differentiate Your Business from the Competition
There are three main factors that any business can use to differentiate itself from its competition. They are cost leadership, product differentiation, and market segmentation.
1. Cost Leadership
A strategy you can impose to maximize your profits and gain an edge over your competitors. It involves offering lower prices than what the majority of your competitors are offering.
A common practice among businesses looking to enter into a market where there are dominant players is to use free trials or pricing to attract as many customers as possible to their offer.
2. Product Differentiation
Your product or service should have a unique selling proposition (USP) that your competitors do not have or do not stress in their marketing.
Part of the marketing strategy should involve making your products unique and different from your competitors. It does not have to be different from your competitors, it can be the addition to a feature or benefit that your competitors do not currently have.
3. Market Segmentation
As a new business seeking to break into an industry, you will gain more success from focusing on a specific niche or target market, and not the whole industry.
If your competitors are focused on a general need or target market, you can differentiate yourself from them by having a small and hyper-targeted audience. For example, if your competitors are selling men’s clothes in their online stores , you can sell hoodies for men.
4. Define Your Business and Management Structure
The next step in your business plan is your business and management structure. It is the section where you describe the legal structure of your business and the team running it.
Your business is only as good as the management team that runs it, while the management team can only strive when there is a proper business and management structure in place.
If your company is a sole proprietor or a limited liability company (LLC), a general or limited partnership, or a C or an S corporation, state it clearly in this section.
Use an organizational chart to show the management structure in your business. Clearly show who is in charge of what area in your company. It is where you show how each key manager or team leader’s unique experience can contribute immensely to the success of your company. You can also opt to add the resumes and CVs of the key players in your company.
The business and management structure section should show who the owner is, and other owners of the businesses (if the business has other owners). For businesses or companies with multiple owners, include the percent ownership of the various owners and clearly show the extent of each others’ involvement in the company.
Investors want to know who is behind the company and the team running it to determine if it has the right management to achieve its set goals.
Management Team
The management team section is where you show that you have the right team in place to successfully execute the business operations and ideas. Take time to create the management structure for your business. Think about all the important roles and responsibilities that you need managers for to grow your business.
Include brief bios of each key team member and ensure you highlight only the relevant information that is needed. If your team members have background industry experience or have held top positions for other companies and achieved success while filling that role, highlight it in this section.
A common mistake that many startups make is assigning C-level titles such as (CMO and CEO) to everyone on their team. It is unrealistic for a small business to have those titles. While it may look good on paper for the ego of your team members, it can prevent investors from investing in your business.
Instead of building an unrealistic management structure that does not fit your business reality, it is best to allow business titles to grow as the business grows. Starting everyone at the top leaves no room for future change or growth, which is bad for productivity.
Your management team does not have to be complete before you start writing your business plan. You can have a complete business plan even when there are managerial positions that are empty and need filling.
If you have management gaps in your team, simply show the gaps and indicate you are searching for the right candidates for the role(s). Investors do not expect you to have a full management team when you are just starting your business.
Key Questions to Answer When Structuring Your Management Team
- Who are the key leaders?
- What experiences, skills, and educational backgrounds do you expect your key leaders to have?
- Do your key leaders have industry experience?
- What positions will they fill and what duties will they perform in those positions?
- What level of authority do the key leaders have and what are their responsibilities?
- What is the salary for the various management positions that will attract the ideal candidates?
Additional Tips for Writing the Management Structure Section
1. Avoid Adding ‘Ghost’ Names to Your Management Team
There is always that temptation to include a ‘ghost’ name to your management team to attract and influence investors to invest in your business. Although the presence of these celebrity management team members may attract the attention of investors, it can cause your business to lose any credibility if you get found out.
Seasoned investors will investigate further the members of your management team before committing fully to your business If they find out that the celebrity name used does not play any actual role in your business, they will not invest and may write you off as dishonest.
2. Focus on Credentials But Pay Extra Attention to the Roles
Investors want to know the experience that your key team members have to determine if they can successfully reach the company’s growth and financial goals.
While it is an excellent boost for your key management team to have the right credentials, you also want to pay extra attention to the roles they will play in your company.
Organizational Chart
Adding an organizational chart in this section of your business plan is not necessary, you can do it in your business plan’s appendix.
If you are exploring funding options, it is not uncommon to get asked for your organizational chart. The function of an organizational chart goes beyond raising money, you can also use it as a useful planning tool for your business.
An organizational chart can help you identify how best to structure your management team for maximum productivity and point you towards key roles you need to fill in the future.
You can use the organizational chart to show your company’s internal management structure such as the roles and responsibilities of your management team, and relationships that exist between them.
5. Describe Your Product and Service Offering
In your business plan, you have to describe what you sell or the service you plan to offer. It is the next step after defining your business and management structure. The products and services section is where you sell the benefits of your business.
Here you have to explain how your product or service will benefit your customers and describe your product lifecycle. It is also the section where you write down your plans for intellectual property like patent filings and copyrighting.
The research and development that you are undertaking for your product or service need to be explained in detail in this section. However, do not get too technical, sell the general idea and its benefits.
If you have any diagrams or intricate designs of your product or service, do not include them in the products and services section. Instead, leave them for the addendum page. Also, if you are leaving out diagrams or designs for the addendum, ensure you add this phrase “For more detail, visit the addendum Page #.”
Your product and service section in your business plan should include the following:
- A detailed explanation that clearly shows how your product or service works.
- The pricing model for your product or service.
- Your business’ sales and distribution strategy.
- The ideal customers that want your product or service.
- The benefits of your products and services.
- Reason(s) why your product or service is a better alternative to what your competitors are currently offering in the market.
- Plans for filling the orders you receive
- If you have current or pending patents, copyrights, and trademarks for your product or service, you can also discuss them in this section.
What to Focus On When Describing the Benefits, Lifecycle, and Production Process of Your Products or Services
In the products and services section, you have to distill the benefits, lifecycle, and production process of your products and services.
When describing the benefits of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.
- Unique features
- Translating the unique features into benefits
- The emotional, psychological, and practical payoffs to attract customers
- Intellectual property rights or any patents
When describing the product life cycle of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.
- Upsells, cross-sells, and down-sells
- Time between purchases
- Plans for research and development.
When describing the production process for your products or services, you need to think about the following:
- The creation of new or existing products and services.
- The sources for the raw materials or components you need for production.
- Assembling the products
- Maintaining quality control
- Supply-chain logistics (receiving the raw materials and delivering the finished products)
- The day-to-day management of the production processes, bookkeeping, and inventory.
Tips for Writing the Products or Services Section of Your Business Plan
1. Avoid Technical Descriptions and Industry Buzzwords
The products and services section of your business plan should clearly describe the products and services that your company provides. However, it is not a section to include technical jargons that anyone outside your industry will not understand.
A good practice is to remove highly detailed or technical descriptions in favor of simple terms. Industry buzzwords are not necessary, if there are simpler terms you can use, then use them. If you plan to use your business plan to source funds, making the product or service section so technical will do you no favors.
2. Describe How Your Products or Services Differ from Your Competitors
When potential investors look at your business plan, they want to know how the products and services you are offering differ from that of your competition. Differentiating your products or services from your competition in a way that makes your solution more attractive is critical.
If you are going the innovative path and there is no market currently for your product or service, you need to describe in this section why the market needs your product or service.
For example, overnight delivery was a niche business that only a few companies were participating in. Federal Express (FedEx) had to show in its business plan that there was a large opportunity for that service and they justified why the market needed that service.
3. Long or Short Products or Services Section
Should your products or services section be short? Does the long products or services section attract more investors?
There are no straightforward answers to these questions. Whether your products or services section should be long or relatively short depends on the nature of your business.
If your business is product-focused, then automatically you need to use more space to describe the details of your products. However, if the product your business sells is a commodity item that relies on competitive pricing or other pricing strategies, you do not have to use up so much space to provide significant details about the product.
Likewise, if you are selling a commodity that is available in numerous outlets, then you do not have to spend time on writing a long products or services section.
The key to the success of your business is most likely the effectiveness of your marketing strategies compared to your competitors. Use more space to address that section.
If you are creating a new product or service that the market does not know about, your products or services section can be lengthy. The reason why is because you need to explain everything about the product or service such as the nature of the product, its use case, and values.
A short products or services section for an innovative product or service will not give the readers enough information to properly evaluate your business.
4. Describe Your Relationships with Vendors or Suppliers
Your business will rely on vendors or suppliers to supply raw materials or the components needed to make your products. In your products and services section, describe your relationships with your vendors and suppliers fully.
Avoid the mistake of relying on only one supplier or vendor. If that supplier or vendor fails to supply or goes out of business, you can easily face supply problems and struggle to meet your demands. Plan to set up multiple vendor or supplier relationships for better business stability.
5. Your Primary Goal Is to Convince Your Readers
The primary goal of your business plan is to convince your readers that your business is viable and to create a guide for your business to follow. It applies to the products and services section.
When drafting this section, think like the reader. See your reader as someone who has no idea about your products and services. You are using the products and services section to provide the needed information to help your reader understand your products and services. As a result, you have to be clear and to the point.
While you want to educate your readers about your products or services, you also do not want to bore them with lots of technical details. Show your products and services and not your fancy choice of words.
Your products and services section should provide the answer to the “what” question for your business. You and your management team may run the business, but it is your products and services that are the lifeblood of the business.
Key Questions to Answer When Writing your Products and Services Section
Answering these questions can help you write your products and services section quickly and in a way that will appeal to your readers.
- Are your products existing on the market or are they still in the development stage?
- What is your timeline for adding new products and services to the market?
- What are the positives that make your products and services different from your competitors?
- Do your products and services have any competitive advantage that your competitors’ products and services do not currently have?
- Do your products or services have any competitive disadvantages that you need to overcome to compete with your competitors? If your answer is yes, state how you plan to overcome them,
- How much does it cost to produce your products or services? How much do you plan to sell it for?
- What is the price for your products and services compared to your competitors? Is pricing an issue?
- What are your operating costs and will it be low enough for you to compete with your competitors and still take home a reasonable profit margin?
- What is your plan for acquiring your products? Are you involved in the production of your products or services?
- Are you the manufacturer and produce all the components you need to create your products? Do you assemble your products by using components supplied by other manufacturers? Do you purchase your products directly from suppliers or wholesalers?
- Do you have a steady supply of products that you need to start your business? (If your business is yet to kick-off)
- How do you plan to distribute your products or services to the market?
You can also hint at the marketing or promotion plans you have for your products or services such as how you plan to build awareness or retain customers. The next section is where you can go fully into details about your business’s marketing and sales plan.
6. Show and Explain Your Marketing and Sales Plan
Providing great products and services is wonderful, but it means nothing if you do not have a marketing and sales plan to inform your customers about them. Your marketing and sales plan is critical to the success of your business.
The sales and marketing section is where you show and offer a detailed explanation of your marketing and sales plan and how you plan to execute it. It covers your pricing plan, proposed advertising and promotion activities, activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success, and the benefits of your products and services.
There are several ways you can approach your marketing and sales strategy. Ideally, your marketing and sales strategy has to fit the unique needs of your business.
In this section, you describe how the plans your business has for attracting and retaining customers, and the exact process for making a sale happen. It is essential to thoroughly describe your complete marketing and sales plans because you are still going to reference this section when you are making financial projections for your business.
Outline Your Business’ Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
The sales and marketing section is where you outline your business’s unique selling proposition (USP). When you are developing your unique selling proposition, think about the strongest reasons why people should buy from you over your competition. That reason(s) is most likely a good fit to serve as your unique selling proposition (USP).
Target Market and Target Audience
Plans on how to get your products or services to your target market and how to get your target audience to buy them go into this section. You also highlight the strengths of your business here, particularly what sets them apart from your competition.
Before you start writing your marketing and sales plan, you need to have properly defined your target audience and fleshed out your buyer persona. If you do not first understand the individual you are marketing to, your marketing and sales plan will lack any substance and easily fall.
Creating a Smart Marketing and Sales Plan
Marketing your products and services is an investment that requires you to spend money. Like any other investment, you have to generate a good return on investment (ROI) to justify using that marketing and sales plan. Good marketing and sales plans bring in high sales and profits to your company.
Avoid spending money on unproductive marketing channels. Do your research and find out the best marketing and sales plan that works best for your company.
Your marketing and sales plan can be broken into different parts: your positioning statement, pricing, promotion, packaging, advertising, public relations, content marketing, social media, and strategic alliances.
Your Positioning Statement
Your positioning statement is the first part of your marketing and sales plan. It refers to the way you present your company to your customers.
Are you the premium solution, the low-price solution, or are you the intermediary between the two extremes in the market? What do you offer that your competitors do not that can give you leverage in the market?
Before you start writing your positioning statement, you need to spend some time evaluating the current market conditions. Here are some questions that can help you to evaluate the market
- What are the unique features or benefits that you offer that your competitors lack?
- What are your customers’ primary needs and wants?
- Why should a customer choose you over your competition? How do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition?
- How does your company’s solution compare with other solutions in the market?
After answering these questions, then you can start writing your positioning statement. Your positioning statement does not have to be in-depth or too long.
All you need to explain with your positioning statement are two focus areas. The first is the position of your company within the competitive landscape. The other focus area is the core value proposition that sets your company apart from other alternatives that your ideal customer might consider.
Here is a simple template you can use to develop a positioning statement.
For [description of target market] who [need of target market], [product or service] [how it meets the need]. Unlike [top competition], it [most essential distinguishing feature].
For example, let’s create the positioning statement for fictional accounting software and QuickBooks alternative , TBooks.
“For small business owners who need accounting services, TBooks is an accounting software that helps small businesses handle their small business bookkeeping basics quickly and easily. Unlike Wave, TBooks gives small businesses access to live sessions with top accountants.”
You can edit this positioning statement sample and fill it with your business details.
After writing your positioning statement, the next step is the pricing of your offerings. The overall positioning strategy you set in your positioning statement will often determine how you price your products or services.
Pricing is a powerful tool that sends a strong message to your customers. Failure to get your pricing strategy right can make or mar your business. If you are targeting a low-income audience, setting a premium price can result in low sales.
You can use pricing to communicate your positioning to your customers. For example, if you are offering a product at a premium price, you are sending a message to your customers that the product belongs to the premium category.
Basic Rules to Follow When Pricing Your Offering
Setting a price for your offering involves more than just putting a price tag on it. Deciding on the right pricing for your offering requires following some basic rules. They include covering your costs, primary and secondary profit center pricing, and matching the market rate.
- Covering Your Costs: The price you set for your products or service should be more than it costs you to produce and deliver them. Every business has the same goal, to make a profit. Depending on the strategy you want to use, there are exceptions to this rule. However, the vast majority of businesses follow this rule.
- Primary and Secondary Profit Center Pricing: When a company sets its price above the cost of production, it is making that product its primary profit center. A company can also decide not to make its initial price its primary profit center by selling below or at even with its production cost. It rather depends on the support product or even maintenance that is associated with the initial purchase to make its profit. The initial price thus became its secondary profit center.
- Matching the Market Rate: A good rule to follow when pricing your products or services is to match your pricing with consumer demand and expectations. If you price your products or services beyond the price your customer perceives as the ideal price range, you may end up with no customers. Pricing your products too low below what your customer perceives as the ideal price range may lead to them undervaluing your offering.
Pricing Strategy
Your pricing strategy influences the price of your offering. There are several pricing strategies available for you to choose from when examining the right pricing strategy for your business. They include cost-plus pricing, market-based pricing, value pricing, and more.
- Cost-plus Pricing: This strategy is one of the simplest and oldest pricing strategies. Here you consider the cost of producing a unit of your product and then add a profit to it to arrive at your market price. It is an effective pricing strategy for manufacturers because it helps them cover their initial costs. Another name for the cost-plus pricing strategy is the markup pricing strategy.
- Market-based Pricing: This pricing strategy analyses the market including competitors’ pricing and then sets a price based on what the market is expecting. With this pricing strategy, you can either set your price at the low-end or high-end of the market.
- Value Pricing: This pricing strategy involves setting a price based on the value you are providing to your customer. When adopting a value-based pricing strategy, you have to set a price that your customers are willing to pay. Service-based businesses such as small business insurance providers , luxury goods sellers, and the fashion industry use this pricing strategy.
After carefully sorting out your positioning statement and pricing, the next item to look at is your promotional strategy. Your promotional strategy explains how you plan on communicating with your customers and prospects.
As a business, you must measure all your costs, including the cost of your promotions. You also want to measure how much sales your promotions bring for your business to determine its usefulness. Promotional strategies or programs that do not lead to profit need to be removed.
There are different types of promotional strategies you can adopt for your business, they include advertising, public relations, and content marketing.
Advertising
Your business plan should include your advertising plan which can be found in the marketing and sales plan section. You need to include an overview of your advertising plans such as the areas you plan to spend money on to advertise your business and offers.
Ensure that you make it clear in this section if your business will be advertising online or using the more traditional offline media, or the combination of both online and offline media. You can also include the advertising medium you want to use to raise awareness about your business and offers.
Some common online advertising mediums you can use include social media ads, landing pages, sales pages, SEO, Pay-Per-Click, emails, Google Ads, and others. Some common traditional and offline advertising mediums include word of mouth, radios, direct mail, televisions, flyers, billboards, posters, and others.
A key component of your advertising strategy is how you plan to measure the effectiveness and success of your advertising campaign. There is no point in sticking with an advertising plan or medium that does not produce results for your business in the long run.
Public Relations
A great way to reach your customers is to get the media to cover your business or product. Publicity, especially good ones, should be a part of your marketing and sales plan. In this section, show your plans for getting prominent reviews of your product from reputable publications and sources.
Your business needs that exposure to grow. If public relations is a crucial part of your promotional strategy, provide details about your public relations plan here.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a popular promotional strategy used by businesses to inform and attract their customers. It is about teaching and educating your prospects on various topics of interest in your niche, it does not just involve informing them about the benefits and features of the products and services you have,
Businesses publish content usually for free where they provide useful information, tips, and advice so that their target market can be made aware of the importance of their products and services. Content marketing strategies seek to nurture prospects into buyers over time by simply providing value.
Your company can create a blog where it will be publishing content for its target market. You will need to use the best website builder such as Wix and Squarespace and the best web hosting services such as Bluehost, Hostinger, and other Bluehost alternatives to create a functional blog or website.
If content marketing is a crucial part of your promotional strategy (as it should be), detail your plans under promotions.
Including high-quality images of the packaging of your product in your business plan is a lovely idea. You can add the images of the packaging of that product in the marketing and sales plan section. If you are not selling a product, then you do not need to include any worry about the physical packaging of your product.
When organizing the packaging section of your business plan, you can answer the following questions to make maximum use of this section.
- Is your choice of packaging consistent with your positioning strategy?
- What key value proposition does your packaging communicate? (It should reflect the key value proposition of your business)
- How does your packaging compare to that of your competitors?
Social Media
Your 21st-century business needs to have a good social media presence. Not having one is leaving out opportunities for growth and reaching out to your prospect.
You do not have to join the thousands of social media platforms out there. What you need to do is join the ones that your customers are active on and be active there.
Businesses use social media to provide information about their products such as promotions, discounts, the benefits of their products, and content on their blogs.
Social media is also a platform for engaging with your customers and getting feedback about your products or services. Make no mistake, more and more of your prospects are using social media channels to find more information about companies.
You need to consider the social media channels you want to prioritize your business (prioritize the ones your customers are active in) and your branding plans in this section.
Strategic Alliances
If your company plans to work closely with other companies as part of your sales and marketing plan, include it in this section. Prove details about those partnerships in your business plan if you have already established them.
Strategic alliances can be beneficial for all parties involved including your company. Working closely with another company in the form of a partnership can provide access to a different target market segment for your company.
The company you are partnering with may also gain access to your target market or simply offer a new product or service (that of your company) to its customers.
Mutually beneficial partnerships can cover the weaknesses of one company with the strength of another. You should consider strategic alliances with companies that sell complimentary products to yours. For example, if you provide printers, you can partner with a company that produces ink since the customers that buy printers from you will also need inks for printing.
Steps Involved in Creating a Marketing and Sales Plan
1. Focus on Your Target Market
Identify who your customers are, the market you want to target. Then determine the best ways to get your products or services to your potential customers.
2. Evaluate Your Competition
One of the goals of having a marketing plan is to distinguish yourself from your competition. You cannot stand out from them without first knowing them in and out.
You can know your competitors by gathering information about their products, pricing, service, and advertising campaigns.
These questions can help you know your competition.
- What makes your competition successful?
- What are their weaknesses?
- What are customers saying about your competition?
3. Consider Your Brand
Customers' perception of your brand has a strong impact on your sales. Your marketing and sales plan should seek to bolster the image of your brand. Before you start marketing your business, think about the message you want to pass across about your business and your products and services.
4. Focus on Benefits
The majority of your customers do not view your product in terms of features, what they want to know is the benefits and solutions your product offers. Think about the problems your product solves and the benefits it delivers, and use it to create the right sales and marketing message.
Your marketing plan should focus on what you want your customer to get instead of what you provide. Identify those benefits in your marketing and sales plan.
5. Focus on Differentiation
Your marketing and sales plan should look for a unique angle they can take that differentiates your business from the competition, even if the products offered are similar. Some good areas of differentiation you can use are your benefits, pricing, and features.
Key Questions to Answer When Writing Your Marketing and Sales Plan
- What is your company’s budget for sales and marketing campaigns?
- What key metrics will you use to determine if your marketing plans are successful?
- What are your alternatives if your initial marketing efforts do not succeed?
- Who are the sales representatives you need to promote your products or services?
- What are the marketing and sales channels you plan to use? How do you plan to get your products in front of your ideal customers?
- Where will you sell your products?
You may want to include samples of marketing materials you plan to use such as print ads, website descriptions, and social media ads. While it is not compulsory to include these samples, it can help you better communicate your marketing and sales plan and objectives.
The purpose of the marketing and sales section is to answer this question “How will you reach your customers?” If you cannot convincingly provide an answer to this question, you need to rework your marketing and sales section.
7. Clearly Show Your Funding Request
If you are writing your business plan to ask for funding from investors or financial institutions, the funding request section is where you will outline your funding requirements. The funding request section should answer the question ‘How much money will your business need in the near future (3 to 5 years)?’
A good funding request section will clearly outline and explain the amount of funding your business needs over the next five years. You need to know the amount of money your business needs to make an accurate funding request.
Also, when writing your funding request, provide details of how the funds will be used over the period. Specify if you want to use the funds to buy raw materials or machinery, pay salaries, pay for advertisements, and cover specific bills such as rent and electricity.
In addition to explaining what you want to use the funds requested for, you need to clearly state the projected return on investment (ROI) . Investors and creditors want to know if your business can generate profit for them if they put funds into it.
Ensure you do not inflate the figures and stay as realistic as possible. Investors and financial institutions you are seeking funds from will do their research before investing money in your business.
If you are not sure of an exact number to request from, you can use some range of numbers as rough estimates. Add a best-case scenario and a work-case scenario to your funding request. Also, include a description of your strategic future financial plans such as selling your business or paying off debts.
Funding Request: Debt or Equity?
When making your funding request, specify the type of funding you want. Do you want debt or equity? Draw out the terms that will be applicable for the funding, and the length of time the funding request will cover.
Case for Equity
If your new business has not yet started generating profits, you are most likely preparing to sell equity in your business to raise capital at the early stage. Equity here refers to ownership. In this case, you are selling a portion of your company to raise capital.
Although this method of raising capital for your business does not put your business in debt, keep in mind that an equity owner may expect to play a key role in company decisions even if he does not hold a major stake in the company.
Most equity sales for startups are usually private transactions . If you are making a funding request by offering equity in exchange for funding, let the investor know that they will be paid a dividend (a share of the company’s profit). Also, let the investor know the process for selling their equity in your business.
Case for Debt
You may decide not to offer equity in exchange for funds, instead, you make a funding request with the promise to pay back the money borrowed at the agreed time frame.
When making a funding request with an agreement to pay back, note that you will have to repay your creditors both the principal amount borrowed and the interest on it. Financial institutions offer this type of funding for businesses.
Large companies combine both equity and debt in their capital structure. When drafting your business plan, decide if you want to offer both or one over the other.
Before you sell equity in exchange for funding in your business, consider if you are willing to accept not being in total control of your business. Also, before you seek loans in your funding request section, ensure that the terms of repayment are favorable.
You should set a clear timeline in your funding request so that potential investors and creditors can know what you are expecting. Some investors and creditors may agree to your funding request and then delay payment for longer than 30 days, meanwhile, your business needs an immediate cash injection to operate efficiently.
Additional Tips for Writing the Funding Request Section of your Business Plan
The funding request section is not necessary for every business, it is only needed by businesses who plan to use their business plan to secure funding.
If you are adding the funding request section to your business plan, provide an itemized summary of how you plan to use the funds requested. Hiring a lawyer, accountant, or other professionals may be necessary for the proper development of this section.
You should also gather and use financial statements that add credibility and support to your funding requests. Ensure that the financial statements you use should include your projected financial data such as projected cash flows, forecast statements, and expenditure budgets.
If you are an existing business, include all historical financial statements such as cash flow statements, balance sheets and income statements .
Provide monthly and quarterly financial statements for a year. If your business has records that date back beyond the one-year mark, add the yearly statements of those years. These documents are for the appendix section of your business plan.
8. Detail Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projections
If you used the funding request section in your business plan, supplement it with a financial plan, metrics, and projections. This section paints a picture of the past performance of your business and then goes ahead to make an informed projection about its future.
The goal of this section is to convince readers that your business is going to be a financial success. It outlines your business plan to generate enough profit to repay the loan (with interest if applicable) and to generate a decent return on investment for investors.
If you have an existing business already in operation, use this section to demonstrate stability through finance. This section should include your cash flow statements, balance sheets, and income statements covering the last three to five years. If your business has some acceptable collateral that you can use to acquire loans, list it in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.
Apart from current financial statements, this section should also contain a prospective financial outlook that spans the next five years. Include forecasted income statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets, and capital expenditure budget.
If your business is new and is not yet generating profit, use clear and realistic projections to show the potentials of your business.
When drafting this section, research industry norms and the performance of comparable businesses. Your financial projections should cover at least five years. State the logic behind your financial projections. Remember you can always make adjustments to this section as the variables change.
The financial plan, metrics, and projection section create a baseline which your business can either exceed or fail to reach. If your business fails to reach your projections in this section, you need to understand why it failed.
Investors and loan managers spend a lot of time going through the financial plan, metrics, and projection section compared to other parts of the business plan. Ensure you spend time creating credible financial analyses for your business in this section.
Many entrepreneurs find this section daunting to write. You do not need a business degree to create a solid financial forecast for your business. Business finances, especially for startups, are not as complicated as they seem. There are several online tools and templates that make writing this section so much easier.
Use Graphs and Charts
The financial plan, metrics, and projection section is a great place to use graphs and charts to tell the financial story of your business. Charts and images make it easier to communicate your finances.
Accuracy in this section is key, ensure you carefully analyze your past financial statements properly before making financial projects.
Address the Risk Factors and Show Realistic Financial Projections
Keep your financial plan, metrics, and projection realistic. It is okay to be optimistic in your financial projection, however, you have to justify it.
You should also address the various risk factors associated with your business in this section. Investors want to know the potential risks involved, show them. You should also show your plans for mitigating those risks.
What You Should In The Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection Section of Your Business Plan
The financial plan, metrics, and projection section of your business plan should have monthly sales and revenue forecasts for the first year. It should also include annual projections that cover 3 to 5 years.
A three-year projection is a basic requirement to have in your business plan. However, some investors may request a five-year forecast.
Your business plan should include the following financial statements: sales forecast, personnel plan, income statement, income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and an exit strategy.
1. Sales Forecast
Sales forecast refers to your projections about the number of sales your business is going to record over the next few years. It is typically broken into several rows, with each row assigned to a core product or service that your business is offering.
One common mistake people make in their business plan is to break down the sales forecast section into long details. A sales forecast should forecast the high-level details.
For example, if you are forecasting sales for a payroll software provider, you could break down your forecast into target market segments or subscription categories.
Your sales forecast section should also have a corresponding row for each sales row to cover the direct cost or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). The objective of these rows is to show the expenses that your business incurs in making and delivering your product or service.
Note that your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) should only cover those direct costs incurred when making your products. Other indirect expenses such as insurance, salaries, payroll tax, and rent should not be included.
For example, the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for a restaurant is the cost of ingredients while for a consulting company it will be the cost of paper and other presentation materials.
2. Personnel Plan
The personnel plan section is where you provide details about the payment plan for your employees. For a small business, you can easily list every position in your company and how much you plan to pay in the personnel plan.
However, for larger businesses, you have to break the personnel plan into functional groups such as sales and marketing.
The personnel plan will also include the cost of an employee beyond salary, commonly referred to as the employee burden. These costs include insurance, payroll taxes , and other essential costs incurred monthly as a result of having employees on your payroll.
3. Income Statement
The income statement section shows if your business is making a profit or taking a loss. Another name for the income statement is the profit and loss (P&L). It takes data from your sales forecast and personnel plan and adds other ongoing expenses you incur while running your business.
Every business plan should have an income statement. It subtracts your business expenses from its earnings to show if your business is generating profit or incurring losses.
The income statement has the following items: sales, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), gross margin, operating expenses, total operating expenses, operating income , total expenses, and net profit.
- Sales refer to the revenue your business generates from selling its products or services. Other names for sales are income or revenue.
- Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) refers to the total cost of selling your products. Other names for COGS are direct costs or cost of sales. Manufacturing businesses use the Costs of Goods Manufactured (COGM) .
- Gross Margin is the figure you get when you subtract your COGS from your sales. In your income statement, you can express it as a percentage of total sales (Gross margin / Sales = Gross Margin Percent).
- Operating Expenses refer to all the expenses you incur from running your business. It exempts the COGS because it stands alone as a core part of your income statement. You also have to exclude taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Your operating expenses include salaries, marketing expenses, research and development (R&D) expenses, and other expenses.
- Total Operating Expenses refers to the sum of all your operating expenses including those exemptions named above under operating expenses.
- Operating Income refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It is simply known as the acronym EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). Calculating your operating income is simple, all you need to do is to subtract your COGS and total operating expenses from your sales.
- Total Expenses refer to the sum of your operating expenses and your business’ interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
- Net profit shows whether your business has made a profit or taken a loss during a given timeframe.
4. Cash Flow Statement
The cash flow statement tracks the money you have in the bank at any given point. It is often confused with the income statement or the profit and loss statement. They are both different types of financial statements. The income statement calculates your profits and losses while the cash flow statement shows you how much you have in the bank.
5. Balance Sheet
The balance sheet is a financial statement that provides an overview of the financial health of your business. It contains information about the assets and liabilities of your company, and owner’s or shareholders’ equity.
You can get the net worth of your company by subtracting your company’s liabilities from its assets.
6. Exit Strategy
The exit strategy refers to a probable plan for selling your business either to the public in an IPO or to another company. It is the last thing you include in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.
You can choose to omit the exit strategy from your business plan if you plan to maintain full ownership of your business and do not plan on seeking angel investment or virtual capitalist (VC) funding.
Investors may want to know what your exit plan is. They invest in your business to get a good return on investment.
Your exit strategy does not have to include long and boring details. Ensure you identify some interested parties who may be interested in buying the company if it becomes a success.
Key Questions to Answer with Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection
Your financial plan, metrics, and projection section helps investors, creditors, or your internal managers to understand what your expenses are, the amount of cash you need, and what it takes to make your company profitable. It also shows what you will be doing with any funding.
You do not need to show actual financial data if you do not have one. Adding forecasts and projections to your financial statements is added proof that your strategy is feasible and shows investors you have planned properly.
Here are some key questions to answer to help you develop this section.
- What is your sales forecast for the next year?
- When will your company achieve a positive cash flow?
- What are the core expenses you need to operate?
- How much money do you need upfront to operate or grow your company?
- How will you use the loans or investments?
9. Add an Appendix to Your Business Plan
Adding an appendix to your business plan is optional. It is a useful place to put any charts, tables, legal notes, definitions, permits, résumés, and other critical information that do not fit into other sections of your business plan.
The appendix section is where you would want to include details of a patent or patent-pending if you have one. You can always add illustrations or images of your products here. It is the last section of your business plan.
When writing your business plan, there are details you cut short or remove to prevent the entire section from becoming too lengthy. There are also details you want to include in the business plan but are not a good fit for any of the previous sections. You can add that additional information to the appendix section.
Businesses also use the appendix section to include supporting documents or other materials specially requested by investors or lenders.
You can include just about any information that supports the assumptions and statements you made in the business plan under the appendix. It is the one place in the business plan where unrelated data and information can coexist amicably.
If your appendix section is lengthy, try organizing it by adding a table of contents at the beginning of the appendix section. It is also advisable to group similar information to make it easier for the reader to access them.
A well-organized appendix section makes it easier to share your information clearly and concisely. Add footnotes throughout the rest of the business plan or make references in the plan to the documents in the appendix.
The appendix section is usually only necessary if you are seeking funding from investors or lenders, or hoping to attract partners.
People reading business plans do not want to spend time going through a heap of backup information, numbers, and charts. Keep these documents or information in the Appendix section in case the reader wants to dig deeper.
Common Items to Include in the Appendix Section of Your Business Plan
The appendix section includes documents that supplement or support the information or claims given in other sections of the business plans. Common items you can include in the appendix section include:
- Additional data about the process of manufacturing or creation
- Additional description of products or services such as product schematics
- Additional financial documents or projections
- Articles of incorporation and status
- Backup for market research or competitive analysis
- Bank statements
- Business registries
- Client testimonials (if your business is already running)
- Copies of insurances
- Credit histories (personal or/and business)
- Deeds and permits
- Equipment leases
- Examples of marketing and advertising collateral
- Industry associations and memberships
- Images of product
- Intellectual property
- Key customer contracts
- Legal documents and other contracts
- Letters of reference
- Links to references
- Market research data
- Organizational charts
- Photographs of potential facilities
- Professional licenses pertaining to your legal structure or type of business
- Purchase orders
- Resumes of the founder(s) and key managers
- State and federal identification numbers or codes
- Trademarks or patents’ registrations
Avoid using the appendix section as a place to dump any document or information you feel like adding. Only add documents or information that you support or increase the credibility of your business plan.
Tips and Strategies for Writing a Convincing Business Plan
To achieve a perfect business plan, you need to consider some key tips and strategies. These tips will raise the efficiency of your business plan above average.
1. Know Your Audience
When writing a business plan, you need to know your audience . Business owners write business plans for different reasons. Your business plan has to be specific. For example, you can write business plans to potential investors, banks, and even fellow board members of the company.
The audience you are writing to determines the structure of the business plan. As a business owner, you have to know your audience. Not everyone will be your audience. Knowing your audience will help you to narrow the scope of your business plan.
Consider what your audience wants to see in your projects, the likely questions they might ask, and what interests them.
- A business plan used to address a company's board members will center on its employment schemes, internal affairs, projects, stakeholders, etc.
- A business plan for financial institutions will talk about the size of your market and the chances for you to pay back any loans you demand.
- A business plan for investors will show proof that you can return the investment capital within a specific time. In addition, it discusses your financial projections, tractions, and market size.
2. Get Inspiration from People
Writing a business plan from scratch as an entrepreneur can be daunting. That is why you need the right inspiration to push you to write one. You can gain inspiration from the successful business plans of other businesses. Look at their business plans, the style they use, the structure of the project, etc.
To make your business plan easier to create, search companies related to your business to get an exact copy of what you need to create an effective business plan. You can also make references while citing examples in your business plans.
When drafting your business plan, get as much help from others as you possibly can. By getting inspiration from people, you can create something better than what they have.
3. Avoid Being Over Optimistic
Many business owners make use of strong adjectives to qualify their content. One of the big mistakes entrepreneurs make when preparing a business plan is promising too much.
The use of superlatives and over-optimistic claims can prepare the audience for more than you can offer. In the end, you disappoint the confidence they have in you.
In most cases, the best option is to be realistic with your claims and statistics. Most of the investors can sense a bit of incompetency from the overuse of superlatives. As a new entrepreneur, do not be tempted to over-promise to get the interests of investors.
The concept of entrepreneurship centers on risks, nothing is certain when you make future analyses. What separates the best is the ability to do careful research and work towards achieving that, not promising more than you can achieve.
To make an excellent first impression as an entrepreneur, replace superlatives with compelling data-driven content. In this way, you are more specific than someone promising a huge ROI from an investment.
4. Keep it Simple and Short
When writing business plans, ensure you keep them simple throughout. Irrespective of the purpose of the business plan, your goal is to convince the audience.
One way to achieve this goal is to make them understand your proposal. Therefore, it would be best if you avoid the use of complex grammar to express yourself. It would be a huge turn-off if the people you want to convince are not familiar with your use of words.
Another thing to note is the length of your business plan. It would be best if you made it as brief as possible.
You hardly see investors or agencies that read through an extremely long document. In that case, if your first few pages can’t convince them, then you have lost it. The more pages you write, the higher the chances of you derailing from the essential contents.
To ensure your business plan has a high conversion rate, you need to dispose of every unnecessary information. For example, if you have a strategy that you are not sure of, it would be best to leave it out of the plan.
5. Make an Outline and Follow Through
A perfect business plan must have touched every part needed to convince the audience. Business owners get easily tempted to concentrate more on their products than on other sections. Doing this can be detrimental to the efficiency of the business plan.
For example, imagine you talking about a product but omitting or providing very little information about the target audience. You will leave your clients confused.
To ensure that your business plan communicates your full business model to readers, you have to input all the necessary information in it. One of the best ways to achieve this is to design a structure and stick to it.
This structure is what guides you throughout the writing. To make your work easier, you can assign an estimated word count or page limit to every section to avoid making it too bulky for easy reading. As a guide, the necessary things your business plan must contain are:
- Table of contents
- Introduction
- Product or service description
- Target audience
- Market size
- Competition analysis
- Financial projections
Some specific businesses can include some other essential sections, but these are the key sections that must be in every business plan.
6. Ask a Professional to Proofread
When writing a business plan, you must tie all loose ends to get a perfect result. When you are done with writing, call a professional to go through the document for you. You are bound to make mistakes, and the way to correct them is to get external help.
You should get a professional in your field who can relate to every section of your business plan. It would be easier for the professional to notice the inner flaws in the document than an editor with no knowledge of your business.
In addition to getting a professional to proofread, get an editor to proofread and edit your document. The editor will help you identify grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and inappropriate writing styles.
Writing a business plan can be daunting, but you can surmount that obstacle and get the best out of it with these tips.
Business Plan Examples and Templates That’ll Save You Tons of Time
1. hubspot's one-page business plan.
The one-page business plan template by HubSpot is the perfect guide for businesses of any size, irrespective of their business strategy. Although the template is condensed into a page, your final business plan should not be a page long! The template is designed to ask helpful questions that can help you develop your business plan.
Hubspot’s one-page business plan template is divided into nine fields:
- Business opportunity
- Company description
- Industry analysis
- Target market
- Implementation timeline
- Marketing plan
- Financial summary
- Funding required
2. Bplan’s Free Business Plan Template
Bplans' free business plan template is investor-approved. It is a rich template used by prestigious educational institutions such as Babson College and Princeton University to teach entrepreneurs how to create a business plan.
The template has six sections: the executive summary, opportunity, execution, company, financial plan, and appendix. There is a step-by-step guide for writing every little detail in the business plan. Follow the instructions each step of the way and you will create a business plan that impresses investors or lenders easily.
3. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template
HubSpot’s downloadable business plan template is a more comprehensive option compared to the one-page business template by HubSpot. This free and downloadable business plan template is designed for entrepreneurs.
The template is a comprehensive guide and checklist for business owners just starting their businesses. It tells you everything you need to fill in each section of the business plan and how to do it.
There are nine sections in this business plan template: an executive summary, company and business description, product and services line, market analysis, marketing plan, sales plan, legal notes, financial considerations, and appendix.
4. Business Plan by My Own Business Institute
My Own Business Institute (MOBI) which is a part of Santa Clara University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers a free business plan template. You can either copy the free business template from the link provided above or download it as a Word document.
The comprehensive template consists of a whopping 15 sections.
- The Business Profile
- The Vision and the People
- Home-Based Business and Freelance Business Opportunities
- Organization
- Licenses and Permits
- Business Insurance
- Communication Tools
- Acquisitions
- Location and Leasing
- Accounting and Cash Flow
- Opening and Marketing
- Managing Employees
- Expanding and Handling Problems
There are lots of helpful tips on how to fill each section in the free business plan template by MOBI.
5. Score's Business Plan Template for Startups
Score is an American nonprofit organization that helps entrepreneurs build successful companies. This business plan template for startups by Score is available for free download. The business plan template asks a whooping 150 generic questions that help entrepreneurs from different fields to set up the perfect business plan.
The business plan template for startups contains clear instructions and worksheets, all you have to do is answer the questions and fill the worksheets.
There are nine sections in the business plan template: executive summary, company description, products and services, marketing plan, operational plan, management and organization, startup expenses and capitalization, financial plan, and appendices.
The ‘refining the plan’ resource contains instructions that help you modify your business plan to suit your specific needs, industry, and target audience. After you have completed Score’s business plan template, you can work with a SCORE mentor for expert advice in business planning.
6. Minimalist Architecture Business Plan Template by Venngage
The minimalist architecture business plan template is a simple template by Venngage that you can customize to suit your business needs .
There are five sections in the template: an executive summary, statement of problem, approach and methodology, qualifications, and schedule and benchmark. The business plan template has instructions that guide users on what to fill in each section.
7. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template
The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers two free business plan templates, filled with practical real-life examples that you can model to create your business plan. Both free business plan templates are written by fictional business owners: Rebecca who owns a consulting firm, and Andrew who owns a toy company.
There are five sections in the two SBA’s free business plan templates.
- Executive Summary
- Company Description
- Service Line
- Marketing and Sales
8. The $100 Startup's One-Page Business Plan
The one-page business plan by the $100 startup is a simple business plan template for entrepreneurs who do not want to create a long and complicated plan . You can include more details in the appendices for funders who want more information beyond what you can put in the one-page business plan.
There are five sections in the one-page business plan such as overview, ka-ching, hustling, success, and obstacles or challenges or open questions. You can answer all the questions using one or two sentences.
9. PandaDoc’s Free Business Plan Template
The free business plan template by PandaDoc is a comprehensive 15-page document that describes the information you should include in every section.
There are 11 sections in PandaDoc’s free business plan template.
- Executive summary
- Business description
- Products and services
- Operations plan
- Management organization
- Financial plan
- Conclusion / Call to action
- Confidentiality statement
You have to sign up for its 14-day free trial to access the template. You will find different business plan templates on PandaDoc once you sign up (including templates for general businesses and specific businesses such as bakeries, startups, restaurants, salons, hotels, and coffee shops)
PandaDoc allows you to customize its business plan templates to fit the needs of your business. After editing the template, you can send it to interested parties and track opens and views through PandaDoc.
10. Invoiceberry Templates for Word, Open Office, Excel, or PPT
InvoiceBerry is a U.K based online invoicing and tracking platform that offers free business plan templates in .docx, .odt, .xlsx, and .pptx formats for freelancers and small businesses.
Before you can download the free business plan template, it will ask you to give it your email address. After you complete the little task, it will send the download link to your inbox for you to download. It also provides a business plan checklist in .xlsx file format that ensures you add the right information to the business plan.
Alternatives to the Traditional Business Plan
A business plan is very important in mapping out how one expects their business to grow over a set number of years, particularly when they need external investment in their business. However, many investors do not have the time to watch you present your business plan. It is a long and boring read.
Luckily, there are three alternatives to the traditional business plan (the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck). These alternatives are less laborious and easier and quicker to present to investors.
Business Model Canvas (BMC)
The business model canvas is a business tool used to present all the important components of setting up a business, such as customers, route to market, value proposition, and finance in a single sheet. It provides a very focused blueprint that defines your business initially which you can later expand on if needed.
The sheet is divided mainly into company, industry, and consumer models that are interconnected in how they find problems and proffer solutions.
Segments of the Business Model Canvas
The business model canvas was developed by founder Alexander Osterwalder to answer important business questions. It contains nine segments.
- Key Partners: Who will be occupying important executive positions in your business? What do they bring to the table? Will there be a third party involved with the company?
- Key Activities: What important activities will production entail? What activities will be carried out to ensure the smooth running of the company?
- The Product’s Value Propositions: What does your product do? How will it be different from other products?
- Customer Segments: What demography of consumers are you targeting? What are the habits of these consumers? Who are the MVPs of your target consumers?
- Customer Relationships: How will the team support and work with its customer base? How do you intend to build and maintain trust with the customer?
- Key Resources: What type of personnel and tools will be needed? What size of the budget will they need access to?
- Channels: How do you plan to create awareness of your products? How do you intend to transport your product to the customer?
- Cost Structure: What is the estimated cost of production? How much will distribution cost?
- Revenue Streams: For what value are customers willing to pay? How do they prefer to pay for the product? Are there any external revenues attached apart from the main source? How do the revenue streams contribute to the overall revenue?
Lean Canvas
The lean canvas is a problem-oriented alternative to the standard business model canvas. It was proposed by Ash Maurya, creator of Lean Stack as a development of the business model generation. It uses a more problem-focused approach and it majorly targets entrepreneurs and startup businesses.
Lean Canvas uses the same 9 blocks concept as the business model canvas, however, they have been modified slightly to suit the needs and purpose of a small startup. The key partners, key activities, customer relationships, and key resources are replaced by new segments which are:
- Problem: Simple and straightforward number of problems you have identified, ideally three.
- Solution: The solutions to each problem.
- Unfair Advantage: Something you possess that can't be easily bought or replicated.
- Key Metrics: Important numbers that will tell how your business is doing.
Startup Pitch Deck
While the business model canvas compresses into a factual sheet, startup pitch decks expand flamboyantly.
Pitch decks, through slides, convey your business plan, often through graphs and images used to emphasize estimations and observations in your presentation. Entrepreneurs often use pitch decks to fully convince their target audience of their plans before discussing funding arrangements.
Considering the likelihood of it being used in a small time frame, a good startup pitch deck should ideally contain 20 slides or less to have enough time to answer questions from the audience.
Unlike the standard and lean business model canvases, a pitch deck doesn't have a set template on how to present your business plan but there are still important components to it. These components often mirror those of the business model canvas except that they are in slide form and contain more details.
Using Airbnb (one of the most successful start-ups in recent history) for reference, the important components of a good slide are listed below.
- Cover/Introduction Slide: Here, you should include your company's name and mission statement. Your mission statement should be a very catchy tagline. Also, include personal information and contact details to provide an easy link for potential investors.
- Problem Slide: This slide requires you to create a connection with the audience or the investor that you are pitching. For example in their pitch, Airbnb summarized the most important problems it would solve in three brief points – pricing of hotels, disconnection from city culture, and connection problems for local bookings.
- Solution Slide: This slide includes your core value proposition. List simple and direct solutions to the problems you have mentioned
- Customer Analysis: Here you will provide information on the customers you will be offering your service to. The identity of your customers plays an important part in fundraising as well as the long-run viability of the business.
- Market Validation: Use competitive analysis to show numbers that prove the presence of a market for your product, industry behavior in the present and the long run, as well as the percentage of the market you aim to attract. It shows that you understand your competitors and customers and convinces investors of the opportunities presented in the market.
- Business Model: Your business model is the hook of your presentation. It may vary in complexity but it should generally include a pricing system informed by your market analysis. The goal of the slide is to confirm your business model is easy to implement.
- Marketing Strategy: This slide should summarize a few customer acquisition methods that you plan to use to grow the business.
- Competitive Advantage: What this slide will do is provide information on what will set you apart and make you a more attractive option to customers. It could be the possession of technology that is not widely known in the market.
- Team Slide: Here you will give a brief description of your team. Include your key management personnel here and their specific roles in the company. Include their educational background, job history, and skillsets. Also, talk about their accomplishments in their careers so far to build investors' confidence in members of your team.
- Traction Slide: This validates the company’s business model by showing growth through early sales and support. The slide aims to reduce any lingering fears in potential investors by showing realistic periodic milestones and profit margins. It can include current sales, growth, valuable customers, pre-orders, or data from surveys outlining current consumer interest.
- Funding Slide: This slide is popularly referred to as ‘the ask'. Here you will include important details like how much is needed to get your business off the ground and how the funding will be spent to help the company reach its goals.
- Appendix Slides: Your pitch deck appendix should always be included alongside a standard pitch presentation. It consists of additional slides you could not show in the pitch deck but you need to complement your presentation.
It is important to support your calculations with pictorial renditions. Infographics, such as pie charts or bar graphs, will be more effective in presenting the information than just listing numbers. For example, a six-month graph that shows rising profit margins will easily look more impressive than merely writing it.
Lastly, since a pitch deck is primarily used to secure meetings and you may be sharing your pitch with several investors, it is advisable to keep a separate public version that doesn't include financials. Only disclose the one with projections once you have secured a link with an investor.
Advantages of the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck over the Traditional Business Plan
- Time-Saving: Writing a detailed traditional business plan could take weeks or months. On the other hand, all three alternatives can be done in a few days or even one night of brainstorming if you have a comprehensive understanding of your business.
- Easier to Understand: Since the information presented is almost entirely factual, it puts focus on what is most important in running the business. They cut away the excess pages of fillers in a traditional business plan and allow investors to see what is driving the business and what is getting in the way.
- Easy to Update: Businesses typically present their business plans to many potential investors before they secure funding. What this means is that you may regularly have to amend your presentation to update statistics or adjust to audience-specific needs. For a traditional business plan, this could mean rewriting a whole section of your plan. For the three alternatives, updating is much easier because they are not voluminous.
- Guide for a More In-depth Business Plan: All three alternatives have the added benefit of being able to double as a sketch of your business plan if the need to create one arises in the future.
Business Plan FAQ
Business plans are important for any entrepreneur who is looking for a framework to run their company over some time or seeking external support. Although they are essential for new businesses, every company should ideally have a business plan to track their growth from time to time. They can be used by startups seeking investments or loans to convey their business ideas or an employee to convince his boss of the feasibility of starting a new project. They can also be used by companies seeking to recruit high-profile employee targets into key positions or trying to secure partnerships with other firms.
Business plans often vary depending on your target audience, the scope, and the goals for the plan. Startup plans are the most common among the different types of business plans. A start-up plan is used by a new business to present all the necessary information to help get the business up and running. They are usually used by entrepreneurs who are seeking funding from investors or bank loans. The established company alternative to a start-up plan is a feasibility plan. A feasibility plan is often used by an established company looking for new business opportunities. They are used to show the upsides of creating a new product for a consumer base. Because the audience is usually company people, it requires less company analysis. The third type of business plan is the lean business plan. A lean business plan is a brief, straight-to-the-point breakdown of your ideas and analysis for your business. It does not contain details of your proposal and can be written on one page. Finally, you have the what-if plan. As it implies, a what-if plan is a preparation for the worst-case scenario. You must always be prepared for the possibility of your original plan being rejected. A good what-if plan will serve as a good plan B to the original.
A good business plan has 10 key components. They include an executive plan, product analysis, desired customer base, company analysis, industry analysis, marketing strategy, sales strategy, financial projection, funding, and appendix. Executive Plan Your business should begin with your executive plan. An executive plan will provide early insight into what you are planning to achieve with your business. It should include your mission statement and highlight some of the important points which you will explain later. Product Analysis The next component of your business plan is your product analysis. A key part of this section is explaining the type of item or service you are going to offer as well as the market problems your product will solve. Desired Consumer Base Your product analysis should be supplemented with a detailed breakdown of your desired consumer base. Investors are always interested in knowing the economic power of your market as well as potential MVP customers. Company Analysis The next component of your business plan is your company analysis. Here, you explain how you want to run your business. It will include your operational strategy, an insight into the workforce needed to keep the company running, and important executive positions. It will also provide a calculation of expected operational costs. Industry Analysis A good business plan should also contain well laid out industry analysis. It is important to convince potential investors you know the companies you will be competing with, as well as your plans to gain an edge on the competition. Marketing Strategy Your business plan should also include your marketing strategy. This is how you intend to spread awareness of your product. It should include a detailed explanation of the company brand as well as your advertising methods. Sales Strategy Your sales strategy comes after the market strategy. Here you give an overview of your company's pricing strategy and how you aim to maximize profits. You can also explain how your prices will adapt to market behaviors. Financial Projection The financial projection is the next component of your business plan. It explains your company's expected running cost and revenue earned during the tenure of the business plan. Financial projection gives a clear idea of how your company will develop in the future. Funding The next component of your business plan is funding. You have to detail how much external investment you need to get your business idea off the ground here. Appendix The last component of your plan is the appendix. This is where you put licenses, graphs, or key information that does not fit in any of the other components.
The business model canvas is a business management tool used to quickly define your business idea and model. It is often used when investors need you to pitch your business idea during a brief window.
A pitch deck is similar to a business model canvas except that it makes use of slides in its presentation. A pitch is not primarily used to secure funding, rather its main purpose is to entice potential investors by selling a very optimistic outlook on the business.
Business plan competitions help you evaluate the strength of your business plan. By participating in business plan competitions, you are improving your experience. The experience provides you with a degree of validation while practicing important skills. The main motivation for entering into the competitions is often to secure funding by finishing in podium positions. There is also the chance that you may catch the eye of a casual observer outside of the competition. These competitions also provide good networking opportunities. You could meet mentors who will take a keen interest in guiding you in your business journey. You also have the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs whose ideas can complement yours.
Exlore Further
- 12 Key Elements of a Business Plan (Top Components Explained)
- 13 Sources of Business Finance For Companies & Sole Traders
- 5 Common Types of Business Structures (+ Pros & Cons)
- How to Buy a Business in 8 Steps (+ Due Diligence Checklist)
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Martin luenendonk.
Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.
This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.
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Business plans might seem like an old-school stiff-collared practice, but they deserve a place in the startup realm, too. It’s probably not going to be the frame-worthy document you hang in the office—yet, it may one day be deserving of the privilege.
Whether you’re looking to win the heart of an angel investor or convince a bank to lend you money, you’ll need a business plan. And not just any ol’ notes and scribble on the back of a pizza box or napkin—you’ll need a professional, standardized report.
Bah. Sounds like homework, right?
Yes. Yes, it does.
However, just like bookkeeping, loan applications, and 404 redirects, business plans are an essential step in cementing your business foundation.
Don’t worry. We’ll show you how to write a business plan without boring you to tears. We’ve jam-packed this article with all the business plan examples, templates, and tips you need to take your non-existent proposal from concept to completion.
Table of Contents
What Is a Business Plan?
Tips to Make Your Small Business Plan Ironclad
How to Write a Business Plan in 6 Steps
Startup Business Plan Template
Business Plan Examples
Work on Making Your Business Plan
How to Write a Business Plan FAQs
What is a business plan why do you desperately need one.
A business plan is a roadmap that outlines:
- Who your business is, what it does, and who it serves
- Where your business is now
- Where you want it to go
- How you’re going to make it happen
- What might stop you from taking your business from Point A to Point B
- How you’ll overcome the predicted obstacles
While it’s not required when starting a business, having a business plan is helpful for a few reasons:
- Secure a Bank Loan: Before approving you for a business loan, banks will want to see that your business is legitimate and can repay the loan. They want to know how you’re going to use the loan and how you’ll make monthly payments on your debt. Lenders want to see a sound business strategy that doesn’t end in loan default.
- Win Over Investors: Like lenders, investors want to know they’re going to make a return on their investment. They need to see your business plan to have the confidence to hand you money.
- Stay Focused: It’s easy to get lost chasing the next big thing. Your business plan keeps you on track and focused on the big picture. Your business plan can prevent you from wasting time and resources on something that isn’t aligned with your business goals.
Beyond the reasoning, let’s look at what the data says:
- Simply writing a business plan can boost your average annual growth by 30%
- Entrepreneurs who create a formal business plan are 16% more likely to succeed than those who don’t
- A study looking at 65 fast-growth companies found that 71% had small business plans
- The process and output of creating a business plan have shown to improve business performance
Convinced yet? If those numbers and reasons don’t have you scrambling for pen and paper, who knows what will.
Don’t Skip: Business Startup Costs Checklist
Before we get into the nitty-gritty steps of how to write a business plan, let’s look at some high-level tips to get you started in the right direction:
Be Professional and Legit
You might be tempted to get cutesy or revolutionary with your business plan—resist the urge. While you should let your brand and creativity shine with everything you produce, business plans fall more into the realm of professional documents.
Think of your business plan the same way as your terms and conditions, employee contracts, or financial statements. You want your plan to be as uniform as possible so investors, lenders, partners, and prospective employees can find the information they need to make important decisions.
If you want to create a fun summary business plan for internal consumption, then, by all means, go right ahead. However, for the purpose of writing this external-facing document, keep it legit.
Know Your Audience
Your official business plan document is for lenders, investors, partners, and big-time prospective employees. Keep these names and faces in your mind as you draft your plan.
Think about what they might be interested in seeing, what questions they’ll ask, and what might convince (or scare) them. Cut the jargon and tailor your language so these individuals can understand.
Remember, these are busy people. They’re likely looking at hundreds of applicants and startup investments every month. Keep your business plan succinct and to the point. Include the most pertinent information and omit the sections that won’t impact their decision-making.
Invest Time Researching
You might not have answers to all the sections you should include in your business plan. Don’t skip over these!
Your audience will want:
- Detailed information about your customers
- Numbers and solid math to back up your financial claims and estimates
- Deep insights about your competitors and potential threats
- Data to support market opportunities and strategy
Your answers can’t be hypothetical or opinionated. You need research to back up your claims. If you don’t have that data yet, then invest time and money in collecting it. That information isn’t just critical for your business plan—it’s essential for owning, operating, and growing your company.
Stay Realistic
Your business may be ambitious, but reign in the enthusiasm just a teeny-tiny bit. The last thing you want to do is have an angel investor call BS and say “I’m out” before even giving you a chance.
The folks looking at your business and evaluating your plan have been around the block—they know a thing or two about fact and fiction. Your plan should be a blueprint for success. It should be the step-by-step roadmap for how you’re going from Point A to Point B.
How to Write a Business Plan—6 Essential Elements
Not every business plan looks the same, but most share a few common elements. Here’s what they typically include:
- Executive Summary
- Business Overview
- Products and Services
- Market Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
- Financial Strategy
Below, we’ll break down each of these sections in more detail.
1. Executive Summary
While your executive summary is the first page of your business plan, it’s the section you’ll write last. That’s because it summarizes your entire business plan into a succinct one-pager.
Begin with an executive summary that introduces the reader to your business and gives them an overview of what’s inside the business plan.
Your executive summary highlights key points of your plan. Consider this your elevator pitch. You want to put all your juiciest strengths and opportunities strategically in this section.
2. Business Overview
In this section, you can dive deeper into the elements of your business, including answering:
- What’s your business structure? Sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation, etc.
- Where is it located?
- Who owns the business? Does it have employees?
- What problem does it solve, and how?
- What’s your mission statement? Your mission statement briefly describes why you are in business. To write a proper mission statement, brainstorm your business’s core values and who you serve.
Don’t overlook your mission statement. This powerful sentence or paragraph could be the inspiration that drives an investor to take an interest in your business. Here are a few examples of powerful mission statements that just might give you the goosebumps:
- Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
- Tesla: To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
- InvisionApp : Question Assumptions. Think Deeply. Iterate as a Lifestyle. Details, Details. Design is Everywhere. Integrity.
- TED : Spread ideas.
- Warby Parker : To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially conscious businesses.
3. Products and Services
As the owner, you know your business and the industry inside and out. However, whoever’s reading your document might not. You’re going to need to break down your products and services in minute detail.
For example, if you own a SaaS business, you’re going to need to explain how this business model works and what you’re selling.
You’ll need to include:
- What services you sell: Describe the services you provide and how these will help your target audience.
- What products you sell: Describe your products (and types if applicable) and how they will solve a need for your target and provide value.
- How much you charge: If you’re selling services, will you charge hourly, per project, retainer, or a mixture of all of these? If you’re selling products, what are the price ranges?
4. Market Analysis
Your market analysis essentially explains how your products and services address customer concerns and pain points. This section will include research and data on the state and direction of your industry and target market.
This research should reveal lucrative opportunities and how your business is uniquely positioned to seize the advantage. You’ll also want to touch on your marketing strategy and how it will (or does) work for your audience.
Include a detailed analysis of your target customers. This describes the people you serve and sell your product to. Be careful not to go too broad here—you don’t want to fall into the common entrepreneurial trap of trying to sell to everyone and thereby not differentiating yourself enough to survive the competition.
The market analysis section will include your unique value proposition. Your unique value proposition (UVP) is the thing that makes you stand out from your competitors. This is your key to success.
If you don’t have a UVP, you don’t have a way to take on competitors who are already in this space. Here’s an example of an ecommerce internet business plan outlining their competitive edge:
FireStarters’ competitive advantage is offering product lines that make a statement but won’t leave you broke. The major brands are expensive and not distinctive enough to satisfy the changing taste of our target customers. FireStarters offers products that are just ahead of the curve and so affordable that our customers will return to the website often to check out what’s new.
5. Competitive Analysis
Your competitive analysis examines the strengths and weaknesses of competing businesses in your market or industry. This will include direct and indirect competitors. It can also include threats and opportunities, like economic concerns or legal restraints.
The best way to sum up this section is with a classic SWOT analysis. This will explain your company’s position in relation to your competitors.
6. Financial Strategy
Your financial strategy will sum up your revenue, expenses, profit (or loss), and financial plan for the future. It’ll explain how you make money, where your cash flow goes, and how you’ll become profitable or stay profitable.
This is one of the most important sections for lenders and investors. Have you ever watched Shark Tank? They always ask about the company’s financial situation. How has it performed in the past? What’s the ongoing outlook moving forward? How does the business plan to make it happen?
Answer all of these questions in your financial strategy so that your audience doesn’t have to ask. Go ahead and include forecasts and graphs in your plan, too:
- Balance sheet: This includes your assets, liabilities, and equity.
- Profit & Loss (P&L) statement: This details your income and expenses over a given period.
- Cash flow statement: Similar to the P&L, this one will show all cash flowing into and out of the business each month.
It takes cash to change the world—lenders and investors get it. If you’re short on funding, explain how much money you’ll need and how you’ll use the capital. Where are you looking for financing? Are you looking to take out a business loan, or would you rather trade equity for capital instead?
Read More: 16 Financial Concepts Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know
Startup Business Plan Template (Copy/Paste Outline)
Ready to write your own business plan? Copy/paste the startup business plan template below and fill in the blanks.
Executive Summary Remember, do this last. Summarize who you are and your business plan in one page.
Business Overview Describe your business. What’s it do? Who owns it? How’s it structured? What’s the mission statement?
Products and Services Detail the products and services you offer. How do they work? What do you charge?
Market Analysis Write about the state of the market and opportunities. Use date. Describe your customers. Include your UVP.
Competitive Analysis Outline the competitors in your market and industry. Include threats and opportunities. Add a SWOT analysis of your business.
Financial Strategy Sum up your revenue, expenses, profit (or loss), and financial plan for the future. If you’re applying for a loan, include how you’ll use the funding to progress the business.
5 Frame-Worthy Business Plan Examples
Want to explore other templates and examples? We got you covered. Check out these 5 business plan examples you can use as inspiration when writing your plan:
- SBA Wooden Grain Toy Company
- SBA We Can Do It Consulting
- OrcaSmart Business Plan Sample
- Plum Business Plan Template
- PandaDoc Free Business Plan Templates
Get to Work on Making Your Business Plan
If you find you’re getting stuck on perfecting your document, opt for a simple one-page business plan —and then get to work. You can always polish up your official plan later as you learn more about your business and the industry.
Remember, business plans are not a requirement for starting a business—they’re only truly essential if a bank or investor is asking for it.
Ask others to review your business plan. Get feedback from other startups and successful business owners. They’ll likely be able to see holes in your planning or undetected opportunities—just make sure these individuals aren’t your competitors (or potential competitors).
Your business plan isn’t a one-and-done report—it’s a living, breathing document. You’ll make changes to it as you grow and evolve. When the market or your customers change, your plan will need to change to adapt.
That means when you’re finished with this exercise, it’s not time to print your plan out and stuff it in a file cabinet somewhere. No, it should sit on your desk as a day-to-day reference. Use it (and update it) as you make decisions about your product, customers, and financial plan.
Review your business plan frequently, update it routinely, and follow the path you’ve developed to the future you’re building.
Keep Learning: New Product Development Process in 8 Easy Steps
What financial information should be included in a business plan?
Be as detailed as you can without assuming too much. For example, include your expected revenue, expenses, profit, and growth for the future.
What are some common mistakes to avoid when writing a business plan?
The most common mistake is turning your business plan into a textbook. A business plan is an internal guide and an external pitching tool. Cut the fat and only include the most relevant information to start and run your business.
Who should review my business plan before I submit it?
Co-founders, investors, or a board of advisors. Otherwise, reach out to a trusted mentor, your local chamber of commerce, or someone you know that runs a business.
Ready to Write Your Business Plan?
Don’t let creating a business plan hold you back from starting your business. Writing documents might not be your thing—that doesn’t mean your business is a bad idea.
Let us help you get started.
Join our free training to learn how to start an online side hustle in 30 days or less. We’ll provide you with a proven roadmap for how to find, validate, and pursue a profitable business idea (even if you have zero entrepreneurial experience).
Stuck on the ideas part? No problem. When you attend the masterclass, we’ll send you a free ebook with 100 of the hottest side hustle trends right now. It’s chock full of brilliant business ideas to get you up and running in the right direction.
About Jesse Sumrak
Jesse Sumrak is a writing zealot focused on creating killer content. He’s spent almost a decade writing about startup, marketing, and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped business. A writer by day and a peak bagger by night (and early early morning), you can usually find Jesse preparing for the apocalypse on a precipitous peak somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
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How to Write a Business Plan for a Small Business
Noah Parsons
24 min. read
Updated September 2, 2024
Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated.
In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.
- The basics of writing a business plan
If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan .
You understand that writing a business plan helps you:
- Raise money
- Grow strategically
- Keep your business on the right track
As you start to write your business plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .
At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.
Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow.
A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals.
After writing your business plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business.
We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.
There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create.
It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.
Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan
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- What to include in your business plan
Executive summary
The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.
Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan.
In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .
Your executive summary should include:
- A summary of the problem you are solving
- A description of your product or service
- An overview of your target market
- A brief description of your team
- A summary of your financials
- Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)
Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary
Products and services description
When writing a business plan, the produces and services section is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service.
This is usually called a problem and solution statement .
To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.
This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.
Market analysis
Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business.
A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .
Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market.
Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.”
Related: Target market examples
Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.
Next, provide any additional information you have about your market.
What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.
Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis
Competitive analysis
Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers.
Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service.
For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.
A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.
Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan
Marketing and sales plan
The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics.
The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement .
This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning.
For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.
Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy .
This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services.
While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer.
If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process.
A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.
Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.
Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan
Business operations
When writing a business plan, the operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like.
Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:
- Supply chain management
- Manufacturing processes
- Equipment and technology
- Distribution
Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains.
These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.
If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.
For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.
Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan
Key milestones and metrics
Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.
Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:
- A description of each task
- The proposed due date
- Who is responsible for each task
If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap.
Possible milestones might be:
- Website launch date
- Store or office opening date
- First significant sales
- Break even date
- Business licenses and approvals
You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:
- Conversion rates
- Customer acquisition costs
- Profit per customer
- Repeat purchases
It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.
Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan
Organization and management team
Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.
Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality.
Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before?
If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.
Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:
- Sole proprietor
- Partnership
Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided?
Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.
Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team
Financial plan
The last section of your business plan is your financial plan and forecasts.
Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast.
A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:
- Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
- Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
- Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
- Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
- Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business.
A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.
Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets
This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.
Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.
Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.
Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix
Optional: Business plan cover page
Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.
Your cover page should be simple and include:
- Company logo
- Business name
- Value proposition (optional)
- Business plan title
- Completion and/or update date
- Address and contact information
- Confidentiality statement
Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.
Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page
How to use AI to help write your business plan
Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.
The best way to use AI to write a business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity.
AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers.
There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.
Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan
- Writing tips and strategies
To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .
Determine why you are writing a business plan
Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project.
For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure.
If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.
Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.
Keep things concise
Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it.
So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.
Have someone review your business plan
Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.
Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.
If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.
Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started
Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template.
There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).
But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses.
Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples .
We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started.
Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:
Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.
- Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality.
- Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
- Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
- Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
- Presenting your business plan
The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.
With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas.
A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.
Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck
Use your business plan to manage your business
One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.
And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.
That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.
Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:
- Did you meet your sales goals?
- Is spending following your budget?
- Has anything gone differently than what you expected?
Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets.
Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees.
Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.
A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.
Learn More: How to run a regular plan review
How to write a business plan FAQ
What is a business plan?
A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.
What are the benefits of writing a business plan?
A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.
Writing a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.
What are the 7 steps of writing a business plan?
The seven steps to writing a business plan include:
- Write a brief executive summary
- Describe your products and services.
- Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
- Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
- Outline your organizational structure and management team.
- Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
- Add any additional documents to your appendix.
What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?
There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:
- 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
- Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
- Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
- Failing to establish a sound business model.
- Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.
What questions should be answered in a business plan?
Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.
However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:
- How will your business make money?
- Is there a need for your product or service?
- Who are your customers?
- How are you different from the competition?
- How will you reach your customers?
- How will you measure success?
How long should a business plan be?
The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.
If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.
What are the different types of business plans?
While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.
Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.
Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.
One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.
Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.
What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?
A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.
However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.
Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.
Table of Contents
- Use AI to help write your plan
- Common planning mistakes
- Manage with your business plan
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How To Write a Business Plan
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Starting a business is a wild ride, and a solid business plan can be the key to keeping you on track. A business plan is essentially a roadmap for your business — outlining your goals, strategies, market analysis and financial projections. Not only will it guide your decision-making, a business plan can help you secure funding with a loan or from investors .
Writing a business plan can seem like a huge task, but taking it one step at a time can break the plan down into manageable milestones. Here is our step-by-step guide on how to write a business plan.
Table of contents
- Write your executive summary
- Do your market research homework
- Set your business goals and objectives
- Plan your business strategy
- Describe your product or service
- Crunch the numbers
- Finalize your business plan
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Step 1: Write your executive summary
Though this will be the first page of your business plan , we recommend you actually write the executive summary last. That’s because an executive summary highlights what’s to come in the business plan but in a more condensed fashion.
An executive summary gives stakeholders who are reading your business plan the key points quickly without having to comb through pages and pages. Be sure to cover each successive point in a concise manner, and include as much data as necessary to support your claims.
You’ll cover other things too, but answer these basic questions in your executive summary:
- Idea: What’s your business concept? What problem does your business solve? What are your business goals?
- Product: What’s your product/service and how is it different?
- Market: Who’s your audience? How will you reach customers?
- Finance: How much will your idea cost? And if you’re seeking funding, how much money do you need? How much do you expect to earn? If you’ve already started, where is your revenue at now?
Step 2: Do your market research homework
The next step in writing a business plan is to conduct market research . This involves gathering information about your target market (or customer persona), your competition, and the industry as a whole. You can use a variety of research methods such as surveys, focus groups, and online research to gather this information. Your method may be formal or more casual, just make sure that you’re getting good data back.
This research will help you to understand the needs of your target market and the potential demand for your product or service—essential aspects of starting and growing a successful business.
Step 3: Set your business goals and objectives
Once you’ve completed your market research, you can begin to define your business goals and objectives. What is the problem you want to solve? What’s your vision for the future? Where do you want to be in a year from now?
Use this step to decide what you want to achieve with your business, both in the short and long term. Try to set SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound benchmarks—that will help you to stay focused and motivated as you build your business.
Step 4: Plan your business strategy
Your business strategy is how you plan to reach your goals and objectives. This includes details on positioning your product or service, marketing and sales strategies, operational plans, and the organizational structure of your small business.
Make sure to include key roles and responsibilities for each team member if you’re in a business entity with multiple people.
Step 5: Describe your product or service
In this section, get into the nitty-gritty of your product or service. Go into depth regarding the features, benefits, target market, and any patents or proprietary tech you have. Make sure to paint a clear picture of what sets your product apart from the competition—and don’t forget to highlight any customer benefits.
Step 6: Crunch the numbers
Financial analysis is an essential part of your business plan. If you’re already in business that includes your profit and loss statement , cash flow statement and balance sheet .
These financial projections will give investors and lenders an understanding of the financial health of your business and the potential return on investment.
You may want to work with a financial professional to ensure your financial projections are realistic and accurate.
Step 7: Finalize your business plan
Once you’ve completed everything, it's time to finalize your business plan. This involves reviewing and editing your plan to ensure that it is clear, concise, and easy to understand.
You should also have someone else review your plan to get a fresh perspective and identify any areas that may need improvement. You could even work with a free SCORE mentor on your business plan or use a SCORE business plan template for more detailed guidance.
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The takeaway
Writing a business plan is an essential process for any forward-thinking entrepreneur or business owner. A business plan requires a lot of up-front research, planning, and attention to detail, but it’s worthwhile. Creating a comprehensive business plan can help you achieve your business goals and secure the funding you need.
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- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Products and Services
The fourth in a comprehensive series to help you craft the perfect business plan for your startup.
This article is part of a series on how to write a great business plan .
In the Products and Services section of your business plan, you will clearly describe--yep--the products and services your business will provide.
Keep in mind that highly detailed or technical descriptions are not necessary and definitely not recommended. Use simple terms and avoid industry buzzwords so your readers can easily understand.
On the other hand, describing how the company's products and services will differ from the competition is critical. So is describing why your products and services are needed if no market currently exists. (For example, before there was Federal Express, overnight delivery was a niche business served by small companies. FedEx had to define the opportunity for a new, large-scale service and justify why customers needed--and would actually use --that service.)
Patents, copyrights, and trademarks you own or have applied for should also be listed in this section.
Depending on the nature of your business, your Products and Services section could be very long or relatively short. If your business is product-focused, you will want to spend more time describing those products.
If you plan to sell a commodity item and the key to your success lies in, say, competitive pricing, you probably don't need to provide significant product detail. Or if you plan to sell a commodity readily available in a variety of outlets, the key to your business may not be the commodity itself but your ability to market in a more cost-effective way than your competition.
But if you're creating a new product (or service), make sure you thoroughly explain the nature of the product, its uses, and its value, etc.--otherwise your readers will not have enough information to evaluate your business.
Key questions to answer:
- Are products or services in development or existing (and on the market)?
- What is the timeline for bringing new products and services to market?
- What makes your products or services different? Are there competitive advantages compared with offerings from other competitors? Are there competitive disadvantages you will need to overcome? (And if so, how?)
- Is price an issue? Will your operating costs be low enough to allow a reasonable profit margin?
- How will you acquire your products? Are you the manufacturer? Do you assemble products using components provided by others? Do you purchase products from suppliers or wholesalers? If your business takes off, is a steady supply of products available?
In the cycling rental business example we've been using, products and services could be a relatively simple section to complete or it could be fairly involved. It depends on the nature of the products the company plans to rent to customers.
If Blue Mountain Cycling Rentals plans to market itself as a provider of high-end bikes, describing those bikes--and the sources for those bikes--is important, since "high-end cycling rentals" is intended to be a market differentiation. If the company plans to be the low-cost provider, then describing specific brands of equipment is probably not necessary.
Also, keep in mind that if a supplier runs out of capacity--or goes out of business altogether--you may not have a sufficient supply to meet your demand. Plan to set up multiple vendor or supplier relationships, and describe those relationships fully.
Remember, the primary goal of your business plan is to convince you that the business is viable--and to create a road map for you to follow.
The Products and Services section for our cycling rental business could start something like this:
Product Description
Blue Mountain Cycle Rentals will provide a comprehensive line of bicycles and cycling equipment for all ages and levels of ability. Since the typical customer seeks medium-quality equipment and excellent services at competitive prices, we will focus on providing brands like Trek bikes, Shimano footwear, and Giro helmets. These manufacturers have a widespread reputation as mid- to high-level quality, unlike equipment typically found in the rental market.
The following is a breakdown of anticipated rental price points, per day and per week:
Bicycle $30 $120
Helmet $6 $30
- Customers can extend the rental term online without visiting the store.
- A grace period of two hours will be applied to all rentals; customers who return equipment within that two-hour period will not be charged an additional fee.
Competition
Blue Mountain Cycle Rentals will have clear advantages over its primary competitors, the bike shops located in Harrisonburg, Virginia:
- Newer equipment inventory with higher perceived quality
- Price points 15 percent below the competition
- Online renewals offering greater convenience
- A liberal return grace period that will reinforce our reputation as a customer-friendly rental experience
Future Products
Expansion will allow us to move product offerings into new equipment sales. We will also explore maintenance and fitting services, leveraging our existing maintenance staff to provide value-added services at a premium price.
(And so on...)
When you draft your Products and Services section, think of your reader as a person who knows little to nothing about your business. Be clear and to the point.
Think of it this way: The Products and Services section answers the "what" question for your business. Make sure you fully understand the "what" factor; you may run the business, but your products and services are its lifeblood.
Now let's take a look at the next major section of your business plan: the Market Opportunities .
More in this series:
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Key Concepts
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: the Executive Summary
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Overview and Objectives
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Market Opportunities
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Sales and Marketing
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Competitive Analysis
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Operations
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Management Team
- How to Write a Great Business Plan: Financial Analysis
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11 Business Models
Choosing the right business model is a critical step for any entrepreneur aiming to build a successful company. The business model not only defines how you deliver value to your customers but also how you capture value for your business. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore 11 innovative business models that are shaping industries today. We'll delve into how they work, key considerations for implementation, potential revenue streams, and real-world examples.
1. Consumer Products
Overview: This model involves creating and selling physical or digital products directly to consumers. Companies may also offer subscription services to provide ongoing value.
Key Considerations:
Product Differentiation: Standing out in a crowded market through innovation, design, or branding.
Supply Chain Management: Ensuring efficient production and distribution.
Customer Loyalty: Building a strong brand to encourage repeat purchases.
Revenue Streams:
Sales of individual units (one-time purchases).
Subscription models for recurring revenue.
Bundling products with services.
Apple: Offers consumer electronics with a focus on design and user experience.
Tesla: Sells electric vehicles with innovative technology.
Amazon (Echo, Kindle): Provides devices that integrate with its services.
2. Online Marketplaces
Overview: Online marketplaces connect buyers and sellers, facilitating transactions in a virtual environment. They often succeed by reducing friction in markets that previously faced trust or accessibility issues.
Network Effect: Success depends on achieving a critical mass of buyers and sellers.
Trust and Safety: Implementing measures to ensure secure and reliable transactions.
Competitive Landscape: May require significant investment to stand out among other marketplaces.
Transaction fees or commissions on sales.
Listing fees for sellers.
Premium services for enhanced visibility.
Airbnb: Connects travelers with hosts offering accommodations.
Uber: Links riders with drivers for transportation services.
eBay: Facilitates auctions and sales between individuals and businesses.
3. Software as a Service (SaaS) - Vertical
Overview: Vertical SaaS focuses on delivering software solutions tailored to the specific needs of a particular industry or sector. By addressing unique pain points, these services optimize workflows, reduce errors, and drive efficiency.
Market Saturation: Established industries may already have dominant software providers.
Differentiation: It's crucial to offer unique features or better user experiences to stand out.
Customization vs. Scalability: Balancing bespoke solutions with the ability to scale without becoming a service-heavy business.
Subscription fees based on user seats or features accessed.
Procore: Construction management software streamlining project workflows.
Toast: Restaurant management platform integrating ordering, payroll, and analytics.
Mindbody: Provides management solutions for the wellness industry.
4. SaaS - Freemium
Overview: Freemium SaaS offers a basic version of a software product for free, with the option to upgrade to a paid version that includes additional features or benefits. The goal is to attract a wide user base and convert a portion into paying customers.
Feature Delineation: Deciding which features to offer for free and which to reserve for paid tiers is critical.
User Conversion: Requires strategies to encourage free users to upgrade.
Cost Management: Must balance the costs of supporting free users with revenue from paid users.
Subscription fees for premium features.
Advertising within the free version.
Slack: Offers free messaging with limits; paid plans unlock more features.
Dropbox: Provides free cloud storage with options for more space and features at a cost.
Zoom: Free video conferencing with time and participant limitations; paid plans remove these restrictions.
5. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Overview: IaaS companies provide essential computing resources like storage, networking, and processing power on a pay-as-you-go basis. They cater to businesses needing scalable and flexible IT infrastructure without the overhead of maintaining physical hardware.
Capital Intensive: Requires significant investment in data centers and technology infrastructure.
Technical Expertise: Necessitates a top-tier development team to ensure reliability and scalability.
Competitive Edge: Success often depends on being cost-effective and offering superior performance.
Metered billing based on usage (e.g., per hour of computing power, per gigabyte of storage).
Amazon Web Services (AWS): Provides a wide range of cloud services to businesses globally.
Twilio: Offers communication APIs for messaging, voice, and video.
Stripe: Delivers payment processing infrastructure for online businesses.
6. Social Networking Platforms
Overview: Social networks enable users to create profiles, share content, and interact with others. They can focus on broad connections or target specific interests and demographics.
User Engagement: Keeping users active and engaged is essential for longevity.
Content Moderation: Balancing freedom of expression with the need to prevent harmful content.
Regulatory Compliance: Navigating laws related to privacy, data protection, and online behavior.
Advertising targeted based on user data.
Premium features or subscriptions for enhanced experiences.
Facebook: Global platform for connecting and sharing with others.
Instagram: Visual content sharing focused on photos and videos.
LinkedIn: Professional networking site for career development and opportunities.
7. Business-to-Business (B2B) Services
Overview: B2B service companies offer specialized services to other businesses, such as consulting, marketing, or outsourcing complex tasks. They often provide expertise that companies lack internally.
Expertise and Reputation: Success relies on specialized knowledge and a strong track record.
Relationship Management: Building and maintaining client relationships is crucial.
Competition: Must continually innovate to stay ahead of competitors and disruptive technologies.
Project-based fees.
Retainer agreements for ongoing services.
McKinsey & Company: Global management consulting firm.
PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers): Offers assurance, tax, and consulting services.
Accenture: Provides professional services in strategy, consulting, and digital transformation.
8. Entertainment Services
Overview: Entertainment services provide content designed to captivate audiences, including streaming media, music, gaming, and live events. Success often comes from delivering high-quality content that encourages repeat engagement.
Content Acquisition: Securing rights to popular content or producing original works.
Changing Consumer Preferences: Staying ahead of trends and adapting to new consumption habits.
Technological Advances: Embracing new technologies like virtual reality or interactive media.
Subscription fees for access to content libraries.
Pay-per-view or rental fees for individual titles.
Advertising in ad-supported models.
Netflix: Streaming service offering a vast array of movies and TV shows.
Spotify: Music streaming platform with free and premium tiers.
Disney+: Provides access to Disney's extensive content catalog.
9. Aggregator Platforms
Overview: Aggregator platforms compile information, reviews, or tutorials to attract a specific audience. They monetize by directing users to partner vendors or marketplaces, earning commissions or fees per transaction.
Content Quality: Must provide valuable and trustworthy information to retain users.
SEO Dependency: Reliant on search engine algorithms for traffic; changes can significantly impact visibility.
Competition: High competition requires strategies to differentiate and become the preferred destination.
Advertising revenue from displayed ads.
Affiliate commissions from referred sales.
Premium listings for vendors.
Zillow: Aggregates real estate listings and information.
TripAdvisor: Provides travel reviews and booking options.
Reddit: Hosts communities and discussions, monetizing through ads and premium features.
10. Developer Tools
Overview: Developer tools are specialized software solutions designed to assist developers in coding, testing, and deploying applications. This niche within SaaS targets a highly technical audience, often incorporating open-source elements.
High Expectations: Developers demand robust, efficient, and reliable tools.
Community Engagement: Active participation and contribution to developer communities are vital.
Open Source Norms: Offering open-source options can be essential to gain trust and adoption.
Freemium models with paid premium features.
Subscriptions for enterprise-level support or additional capabilities.
Usage-based billing for API calls or resources consumed.
GitHub: A platform for version control and collaboration with paid private repositories.
HashiCorp: Provides infrastructure automation tools with open-source and enterprise versions.
Hugging Face: Offers NLP tools and models with options for premium services.
11. Government Solutions
Overview: Businesses in this model provide specialized products or services to government agencies, including defense, law enforcement, and public administration sectors.
Complex Sales Cycles: Navigating government procurement processes requires patience and expertise.
Regulatory Compliance: Must adhere to strict regulations and security standards.
Relationship Building: Establishing credibility and trust is essential for long-term contracts.
Subscription-based services.
Project-based fees for specific initiatives.
Anduril Industries: Develops advanced defense technology solutions.
SpaceX: Contracts with government agencies for space exploration and satellite launches.
Understanding these diverse business models can help entrepreneurs identify the best approach for their startups. Whether you're leveraging open-source communities, providing specialized SaaS solutions, or creating the next big social network, aligning your business model with your product and target market is crucial for success.
At Plannit AI, we're committed to supporting entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey. Our AI-driven business planning tools can help you refine your business model, create professional plans, and connect with a community of like-minded individuals.
Need help choosing the right business model for your startup? Contact us or try our AI-powered business planning tool today!
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Johnson & Johnson to pay $6.5 billion to resolve nearly all talc ovarian cancer lawsuits in U.S.
Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday said it plans to pay $6.5 billion over 25 years to settle nearly all of the thousands of lawsuits in the U.S. claiming its talc-based products caused ovarian cancer, pending approval of the claimants.
Those cases have for decades caused financial and public relations trouble for J&J, which contends that its now-discontinued talc baby powder and other talc products are safe for consumers. About 99% of the talc-related lawsuits filed against J&J and its subsidiaries stem from ovarian cancer.
The company recorded a charge of about $2.7 billion in the first quarter to raise its reserve for talc claims to about $11 billion.
The deal, pending approval by claimants, would allow J&J to resolve the lawsuits through a third bankruptcy filing of a subsidiary company, LTL Management. Courts have rebuffed J&J’s two previous efforts to resolve the lawsuits through the bankruptcy of that subsidiary, which was created to absorb the company’s talc liabilities.
J&J will begin a three-month voting period for claimants, in hopes of reaching a 75% support threshold needed for a bankruptcy settlement that would end the litigation entirely and prevent future lawsuits. Claimants did not have the opportunity to vote in LTL Management’s previous bankruptcy cases, J&J executives said on a call with investors on Wednesday.
J&J has the “significant support of the overwhelming majority of the claimants” based on conversations with their lawyers or representation, the executives added.
“We firmly believe this plan is in the best interest of claimants and should receive a favorable and immediate confirmation from the bankruptcy court,” said Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, during the call.
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He contended the settlement is a far better recovery for claimants than would be likely in a trial.
“As that track record shows, most of bearing claimants have not recovered, nor are they expected to ever recover anything at trial,” Haas said. “At the rate at which use cases have been tried, it would take decades to try the remaining cases meaning most claimants will never see their day in court.”
Still, litigation has resulted in some large verdicts for claimants. That includes a roughly $2 billion award in favor of 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in J&J’s talc products.
Shares of J&J rose more than 2% in premarket trading Wednesday.
J&J said the remaining pending lawsuits relate to a rare cancer called mesothelioma and will be addressed outside of the new settlement plan. The pharmaceutical giant said it has already resolved 95% of mesothelioma lawsuits filed to date.
J&J noted on Wednesday that it has reached “final and comprehensive” settlements to resolve an investigation by a coalition of more than 40 states into claims the company misled patients about the safety of its talc baby powder and other talc-based products.
The company has also reached an agreement in principle to resolve claims brought by suppliers of its talc, which include Imerys Talc America, Cyprus Mines Corporation and their related parties.
Annika Kim Constantino covers the biotech and pharmaceutical industry for CNBC Digital.
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‘It’s pretty exciting’: How Area15 plans to attract more visitors to Vegas
The immersive area draws younger visitors and an expansion is expected to attract millions more a year.
Area15, the Las Vegas experiential and art immersion attraction celebrating its fourth anniversary this month, will expand by more than 35 acres with a hotel and housing units in addition to the Universal Destinations and Experiences’ Horror Unleashed themed attraction that will open next year.
The Las Vegas City Council is expected next month to formally establish a tourism improvement district that will enable Area15 to improve water and sewer lines to support the phased project expected to be built over several years.
A tourism improvement district is an economic development tool designed to attract retail outlets and grow visitation.
“There’s a lot coming, and it’s pretty exciting,” Area15 CEO Winston Fisher said in an interview with the Review-Journal.
“Las Vegas is one of the most creative towns in the world, so we’re just expanding on that. You might think we’re crazy, but we take creativity and storytelling really seriously and we’re a platform for storytellers to come to life.”
Horror Unleashed
That starts with Universal’s Horror Unleashed, expected to be open in time for Halloween 2025. While the company has similar attractions at theme parks worldwide, the Las Vegas version will be the first stand-alone horror attraction built.
Horror Unleashed will include interactive experiences year-round from the horror-film genre as well as some rides, Fisher said.
Because the infrastructure in the vicinity of the expansion supports mostly single-story buildings and what Area15 is proposing will have greater density than what exists, the proposed tourism improvement district will enable developers to use sales tax proceeds to support building the updated infrastructure.
In order to win approval for what is being called the New Vegas Immersive District Project, Area15 representatives appeared before the Las Vegas City Council and the Nevada Commission on Tourism in public hearings to convince them that the tourism-based project would bring in out-of-state visitors, new retail businesses, and would not take revenue from existing establishments.
The process to develop a tourism district began more than a year ago. Area15 hired Johnson Consulting Group to draft a report on the project’s magnitude. According to the study, the expansion of Area15 would add the 100,000-square-foot horror-themed immersive entertainment experience; 418,000 square feet of new retail space; 320,000 square feet of office space; a 200-room nongaming hotel; and 585 multifamily housing units that would be separate from the existing Area15 property, but a new residential neighborhood.
Expansion means growth
According to the study, by 2037, the prospective year of stabilization, the expanded attraction would add 6.9 million annual visitors, $796 million in annual on-site spending and $1.4 billion in indirect and induced spending, 4,086 jobs and $384 million in increased earnings, and $15.8 million in eligible sales tax revenue. The study said 56 percent of the spending would come from non-Nevada residents and there’d be no measurable displacement of sales and use tax projected.
The report also said there would be no additional stress on police and fire protection services.
Proponents of the improvement district appeared before the City Council Aug. 21 and the Commission on Tourism — led by Lt. Gov. and former City Councilman Stavros Anthony — on Sept. 11. Government officials unanimously approved the district with the council planning to introduce an ordinance establishing the new district in October.
Fisher, whose company has a 100-year track record of diverse real estate investments, said Area15 can help drive greater numbers of visitors to Las Vegas.
“We’re going to continue to curate and foster best-in-class experiences that want to be in Vegas and help Vegas continue (to grow),” Fisher said. “I said to somebody the other day why are we not going for 60 million visitors? Vegas could do it. Let’s not shoot for 42 to 45 (million), let’s shoot for 60.”
Young visitors
In its first four years of operation, Area15 has expanded the market, particularly for the younger visitors the city covets.
According to a 2024 year-to-date study conducted by Drive Research, Area15 has become a go-to destination for younger demographics visiting Las Vegas, particularly those aged 18 to 34. The study said 27 percent of visitors surveyed at Area15 were aged 18 to 24 and 42 percent were aged 25 to 34. Those figures starkly contrast with the broader Las Vegas visitor demographics surveyed by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. An LVCVA visitor profile said visitors aged 21 to 29 comprised just 12.7 percent of total visitors, and those aged 30 to 39 made up 28.3 percent.
“Four years ago, we set out to redefine what entertainment means in Las Vegas,” Fisher said. “Area15 has become the demonstrated thought leader for fusing immersive attractions and entertainment, and we’re elated to spearhead the future of the experience economy, making it the place to be for the next generation of Las Vegas visitors.”
Although Fisher said the goal is to complete the Area15 expansion as quickly as possible, representatives of the company told the City Council that the development pace, particularly for the hotel and housing units, would depend on regional economics and the success of the existing attractions and Horror Unleashed.
Area15 already is home to a variety of immersive experiences, including Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart, Illuminarium, Five Iron Golf, Dueling Axes and Laser Maze.
Additional experiences coming soon include iFLY Indoor Skydiving, Lionsgate’s John Wick Experience, and Superplastic.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at [email protected] or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
The group is asking for its class-action lawsuit against five Las Vegas casino operators and a software company be allowed to move forward.
Neon City Festival organizers plan to bring an art and music installation previously seen at Burning Man for the inaugural free festival event.
Airport officials are considering a massive modernization at Harry Reid International Airport that will expand Terminal 1 from 39 to 65 gates.
The $3 billion grant for the Las Vegas-to-Southern California high-speed rail project has been signed by the Federal Railroad Administration.
The Dallas-based airline also addresses the future of its popular “bags fly free” program.
Dozens of resort-casinos in the resort corridor and near Fremont Street have pools several levels up, giving an overview of their surroundings.
Strip-goers can now boogie-down during the winter months, with a 70s themed roller-skating rink.
When the Boring Company’s Vegas Loop eventually hauls passengers to and from Harry Reid International Airport, Tesla’s CyberTrucks will play a big role.
The hotel-casino has had service issues at several of the property’s hotel elevators, according to inspection reports and guest complaints.
The airline’s plan to add nonstop flights to 45 cities, including Las Vegas, from this city began as an experiment during the coronavirus pandemic
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Michael Andretti hands over control of race team to business partner. Formula 1 plans in limbo
FILE - Team owner Michael Andretti looks on during practice for the IndyCar Detroit Grand Prix auto racing doubleheader on Belle Isle in Detroit, June 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
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Michael Andretti has restructured Andretti Global to give co-owner Dan Towriss control of the organization while Andretti will stay on as a strategic advisor of the team he has led since 2002.
Andretti in early 2023 confirmed he’d sold part of the company to Towriss, owner of Gainbridge and holding company Group 1001. Gainbridge is one of the largest sponsors in IndyCar and also sponsors Andretti driver Colton Herta’s car and the Indianapolis 500.
The team has rapidly expanded with Towriss’ influx of cash, and Towriss has been part of Andretti’s push to join Formula 1. Andretti is still listed as CEO and chairman of Andretti Global, which is the name the team changed to when Towriss became part of the ownership group.
Towriss is listed on the team’s official website as a partner who “with a genuine passion for motorsports and deep partnerships in the industry, Dan is changing the way people look at the business of motorsports.”
“Michael’s goal has been to transition to a more strategic role with Andretti Global and focus less on the operational side of the race team,” the team said in a Friday statement. “Michael and Dan Towriss have been working closely on developing this new structure, one which Michael is excited to see take shape under Dan’s guidance.
“Michael remains engaged and will continue to serve as a strategic advisor and key ambassador.”
The transition was first reported by Sportico, a publication owned by Roger Penske’s son. Andretti and Penske have been at odds the entire season with Andretti complaining at the March season-opening race that Penske was not spending enough to properly market the series and if he wasn’t willing to pump in the needed cash, he said Penske should sell IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The comments infuriated Penske, and his leadership group slowly began dealing more directly with Towriss instead of Andretti. The amplification of the resentment between Andretti and Penske grew as the season went on and in late August, Andretti leadership noted there was a clear conflict of interest when Penske driver Josef Newgarden was not penalized for various maneuvers while winning at Gateway outside St. Louis.
Andretti Global said it would share more details of the leadership changes “after Michael and Dan have had an opportunity to speak to the team.”
Andretti Global fielded three IndyCar teams this season — for Herta, Marcus Ericsson and Kyle Kirkwood — and won the season finale with Herta at Nashville Superspeedway.
Herta scored the only two victories of the year for the team, which has not won an IndyCar championship since 2012. With Herta’s win in the season finale, he surged to second in the final IndyCar standings.
Andretti drivers have won the Indianapolis 500 five times. Michael Andretti’s 42 career IndyCar victories ranks fifth on the all-time list.
It was not immediately clear what happens next with Andretti’s ongoing effort to enter F1, which has been heavily blocked by both the owners of F1 and the majority of the 10 existing teams on the F1 grid. Liberty Media, which owns F1, has admitted it is under investigation by the Department of Justice for possible antitrust violations in not allowing Andretti into F1.
Andretti and his father, Mario, in 2021 formed a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that was separate from Andretti Global and called Andretti Acquisition. The SPAC was designed to raise cash in an IPO to buy and take public another business.
Andretti in March closed a merger with Zapata Computing Holdings, a generative AI company. Andretti Global is Zapata’s largest customer, while Zapata is a sponsor of the motorsports team.
Zapata, per filings, is paying Andretti Global $9 million under the agreements while Andretti Global is paying Zapata $6 million. The agreements expire at the end of 2024, per Sportico.
Michael Andretti holds nearly 13% of the diluted equity of Zapata.
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Trump’s promises would spike inflation and wipe out jobs, study finds
Former President Donald Trump has promised to attack the United States affordability crisis by imposing immense tariffs, carrying out unprecedented deportations and even influencing interest rate decisions.
However, a new analysis finds that the Republican presidential nominee’s plans for tariffs, deportations and the Federal Reserve would not only fail to solve inflation – they would make it much worse.
The Trump agenda would cause weaker economic growth, higher inflation and lower employment, according to a working paper released Thursday by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. In some cases, the damage could continue through 2040.
“We find that ironically, despite his ‘make the foreigners pay’ rhetoric, this package of policies does more damage to the US economy than to any other in the world,” the Peterson Institute working paper from researchers Warwick McKibbin, Megan Hogan and Marcus Noland concluded.
The paper represents the most comprehensive analysis to date on the combined impact of Trump’s trade, immigration and Fed proposals.
The findings are stark.
Even in a “low” scenario where only 1.3 million undocumented workers are deported and other countries opt not to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs, employment (measured as hours worked) would fall by 2.7% in 2028 relative to a baseline forecast, according to the paper.
Inflation would climb to 6% by 2026, the researchers found. By 2028, consumer prices are 20% higher.
US gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic growth, would be 2.8% lower than otherwise by the end of Trump’s four-year term.
The researchers also modeled a “high” scenario that incorporates retaliatory tariffs from other nations and 8.3 million undocumented workers getting deported. In that scenario, employment would be 9% lower than baseline by 2028 and inflation would surge to 9.3% by 2026. GDP would be 9.7% lower than otherwise.
The changes proposed by Trump would “cause a large inflationary impulse and a significant loss of employment (particularly in manufacturing and agriculture) in the US economy,” the paper found, adding that in some cases benefits would be conferred onto other economies.
A loss of Fed independence would cause “permanently higher inflation” that “leads to ever-increasing prices across the US economy,” the paper said. By 2040, prices would be about 41% higher than otherwise, the researchers said.
The analysis assumes that the 2017 Trump tax cuts are extended, though it does not incorporate his proposals to end taxes on overtime, tips and Social Security benefits.
The No. 1 issue
The Trump campaign responded by reiterating its past argument that experts warning against Trump policies will ultimately be proven wrong.
“Time warp alert! Just like 2016, Wall Street forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions,” Brian Hughes, Trump campaign senior advisor, said in a statement to CNN. “In fact, then – as now – Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries.”
The Peterson Institute findings come as a CNN poll out this week finds that the economy remains far and away the No. 1 issue for voters. About 4 in 10 likely voters (41%) say the economy is the most important issue for them, well ahead of the next-closest issue of protecting democracy at 21%.
Despite warnings from mainstream economists about the damage that some of Trump’s economic policies would do, the former president still has an edge on the critical issue. Likely voters say they trust Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris to handle the economy (50% Trump to 39% Harris).
A Covid-like ‘shock’
The paper found that all three of Trump’s policies on immigration, trade and the Fed would “cause a decline in US production and employment…as well as higher US inflation.”
But the most damaging element of these policies would be his immigration crackdown.
Trump has called for deporting perhaps 15 to 20 million undocumented people in an effort to fight crime, bring down inflation and help workers.
“People pouring into the country are killing the jobs of Black and Hispanic people,” Trump said on Tuesday during a speech in Georgia.
McKibbin, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, told CNN in a phone interview that mass deportations would cause a Covid-like “shock” to the supply of workers. He noted that an estimated 16% of workers in agriculture are undocumented.
“Can you imagine taking 16% out of the labor force in agriculture?” McKibbin said, adding that the cost of food would go up. “And unless you let them back in, you will have a permanent loss of supply.”
‘Greatest things ever invented’
On the trade front, Trump has held up tariffs as a way to create a “manufacturing renaissance” in the US. He has proposed a 10% to 20% across-the-board tariff on all US imports as well as a 60% tariff on goods from China.
At an event in Michigan last week, Trump praised tariffs as the “greatest things ever invented.” In Georgia this week, Trump said the word “tariff” is “one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.”
Yet the Peterson Institute research finds that Trump’s tariff and other plans would backfire – hurting manufacturing more than any sector. That means the same factory workers Trump says he is trying to help would be hurt the most.
“If other countries retaliate, as many likely would, a recession in the year after the increase in tariffs would be a serious threat,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN in an email.
Fed interference
In what would be a significant break from recent history, Trump has indicated that he would try to exert direct power over Fed policy on interest rates .
Last month, Trump said he feels “strongly” that the president should “have at least a say in there,” noting that he has “made a lot of money” and was “very successful.”
Trump later walked the comments back a bit, telling Bloomberg that a president “certainly can be talking about interest rates,” but that “doesn’t mean I’m calling the shots.”
The Peterson Institute researchers noted that the concern is that the president would “press the Fed” to keep rates artificially low to boost the economy.
The paper found that erosion of Fed independence would cause higher inflation, capital outflows, a significant loss of value for the US dollar and higher unemployment – all of which would “worsen American living standards.”
“Countries that have independent central banks have much lower inflation,” said McKibbin, noting that Argentina’s central bank has grappled with political interference and today it has the highest inflation in the world .
Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who was nominated by Trump in 2017, cautioned against any effort to interfere with Fed independence.
“People have found over time that insulating the central bank from direct control by political authorities avoids making monetary policy in a way that favors, maybe, people in office as opposed to people who are not in office,” Powell said in response to a question from CNN. “We do our work to serve all Americans. We’re not serving any politician, any political figure, any cause, any issue, nothing.”
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News Analysis
Harris Now Has an Economic Plan. Can It Best Trump’s Promises?
A central question in the final stretch of the election is if Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposals will cohere into an economic argument that can top former President Donald J. Trump’s.
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By Andrew Duehren and Jim Tankersley
Reporting from Washington
Vice President Kamala Harris has a plan for the economy: a glossy, 82-page booklet detailing proposals on housing, taxes and health care that her campaign handed out to supporters gathered at a campaign event in Pittsburgh this week.
Former President Donald J. Trump has nothing so detailed. The issues section of his campaign website is spare. He has coughed up a string of four- or five-word slogans promising tax cuts, some of which even his advisers cannot fully explain. He has toyed with a tariff as high as 20 percent on every good imported into the United States, promised to deport millions of immigrants to reduce the demand for housing and boasted that he can halve energy prices in a year.
Even with such an improvisational, loosely defined agenda, he is still leading Ms. Harris on the economy in polls, though his advantage is shrinking in some surveys. Many economists have warned that Mr. Trump’s promises , if turned into concrete policy, could slow growth, raise consumer prices and balloon the federal deficit.
But many voters find Mr. Trump’s punchy promises easy to grasp. His basic message of lower taxes, less regulation and less trade with other countries helped carry him to the White House once before. A majority of Americans fondly remember the economy in the first three years of his administration, before the pandemic and years of elevated inflation.
A central question in the final stretch of the presidential race is if Ms. Harris’s more detailed — but in many cases still not fully formed — stack of policy proposals will cohere into an economic argument that can top that.
To a remarkable degree in a deeply polarized country, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump have many of the same stated goals for the economy. Lower costs. Reduce regulations. Cut taxes for the middle class. Incentivize corporations to build their products in the United States.
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The European Union is planning to vote Oct. 4 on whether to impose tariffs as high as 45% on imported electric vehicles made in China, according to people familiar with the matter.
A central question in the final stretch of the election is if Vice President Kamala Harris's proposals will cohere into an economic argument that can top former President Donald J. Trump's.