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How to write a business plan

Need help preparing a business plan?

Proper business planning is key to starting or growing your business. To get started, take a look at our most popular business planning articles. Or check out our free sample business plans.

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Starting a business

Are you starting a business?

It takes inspiration and energy to start a business, but Bplans is here to help. Kick-start your startup or small business with advice on startup strategy, financing, positioning, and more.

Growing a business

Are you growing a business?

Need real-world advice on how to take your small business to the next level? Make sure you have an up-to-date business plan, then check out our selection of articles on small business growth strategy.

Financing a business

Are you looking for financing?

Is it better to finance a business with outside investment or bootstrapping? What are the best ways to get funding to start or grow a business? Get help with these questions and more in our articles on small business finance.

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Buying a business

Are you buying a business?

Interested in buying a business but not sure where to start? Get a practical introduction to the art of acquisition with our articles below on how to buy a business. We can help jump-start the purchasing process with real-world advice on business valuation, the steps in the buying process, and more.

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Small business legal issues

Legal information and resources

Should you structure your new startup as an LLC, an S corp, or a sole proprietorship? What impact will that decision have on your tax situation? What are the must-have components of a partnership agreement? Get up to speed quickly with our selection of articles on incorporation, company structure, and other small business legal issues.

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Running an online business

Are you running an online business?

The Internet provides great opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but doing business online presents unique challenges and requires new skills. Get the knowledge you need with hands-on advice from experienced e-business experts in our Internet marketing articles.

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Be Realistic When you set your Measure of Success

All of us plan for success in our businesses. That’s IS the goal after all. To be successful. But how exactly do you determine IF you have succeeded? Regardless if you are a start up or an established business, you need to establish, right up front, during your business planning process, what success will look [...]

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Due Diligence is Necessary When Hiring Consultants

“Being big egzpurt, I am.” Just because someone bruits themselves this way doesn’t mean you should simply take them at their word.
It saddens me that I have to be mistrusting of people, but as one of my favorite aphorisms says, “Just because you’re not paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you.”
We start our businesses wanting [...]

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Precise, Accurate, Estimates are more than Guesses

When you are in the midst of creating your business’ planning forecasts, do you use Guess, Estimate, Accurate and Precise interchangably? I don’t. I believe there are very distinct differences in these words — they are not synonymous. Here’s how I see them.
Guess: Pulled out of thin air. "Oh yeah, sure, no problem, easy-peazy! I [...]

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The Weakest Link – Your Social Media Marketing “Killer App”

By helping you maximize “weak ties” Social Media Marketing provides small businesses with a powerful tool that doesn’t need an overwhelming amount of complexity to be useful. Its power is based on the simple human desire to be connected and the tools that now exist to enable you, as an individual to fill that desire.

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Does your business have a disaster recovery plan?

That is a scary question for lots, if not all businesses. We spend so much time focused on getting our businesses started, and then successfully running our businesses, that we give very little thought to disaster recovery planning. Really, planning for disaster sounds like we are betting on failure. Betting against ourselves. Yet we [...]

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Want to be a player? Get a coach!

by Lindsey Enloe
Business Success Coach
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Whether you are starting a new business or growing an existing business, this is not a game. It’s real life, everything is on the line, and there is no room for error. You walk onto the field each day, armed with a business plan as your playbook, and the motivation to [...]

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Pay Attention when your Business Plan says NO

I’m sure almost everyone is familiar with the story that Thomas Edison discovered 99 ways to NOT make a light bulb. That’s 99 no to reach 1 yes. The point here is that a negative result, proving something didn’t work or was not so, is just as valuable as a positive result. Sadly, scientific research [...]

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Establish a Records Retention Schedule for your Business

All of us know, or should know, that we need to save and safeguard our business records. When we start up it’s easy to hang on to every document, receipt, invoice, and business record. But after a few years we find that all these records we’ve been keeping are taking up more floor space in file cabinets [...]

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Social Media Marketing: The Marketing Skills you can learn from Obama

I was fascinated by the analysis of the Obama campaign. In many ways, Obama’s campaign and its success is a big, bright, “LCD sign” of the times. New media has come of age in a very public way.
Most people seem to agree that the campaign used a number of techniques to capture an audience and even [...]

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Getting Investment, Key Factor: Initial Valuation

Last night we were talking about getting angel investment, and valuation, which is one of if not the most important points in the discussion. Valuation is essentially price.
Say you want to bring in $150,000 from an angel investor. The immediate question from the investor will be something like: “at what valuation?” Sometimes that’s called “pre-money [...]

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