by Lindsey Enloe
Business Success Coach

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 succeed, but when you are in the middle of the play, who can help you see through to the end? A coach.

Nothing is more exhilarating than the anticipation of starting up a new business idea or growing a business to the next level — until the details and day-to-day challenges start to seem daunting. Business planning is a tornado of required actions mixed with emotions that can sometimes seem to whirl around at breakneck speed. One day you just want to get started, another day you might stare at a blank computer screen wondering what the point of a business plan is anyway. Still other days, the ideas start to seem overwhelming and it seems much easier just to give up. The problem is that you have this entrepreneurial spark that sits in the back of your head spinning yet another idea to create or grow. So how do you keep going? How do you see through to the finish line? How do you really get into the business game?

Any athlete who really wants to compete gets a coach. You can gather a strong team of advisers, but they won’t hold you accountable to a set plan of actions and goals. You can read every book on business there is, but the books can’t provide detailed feedback on your unique ideas. You can write a plan, but the plan itself doesn’t challenge you to push further than you thought possible. A coach can provide that extra set of eyes that can objectively see the holes or potential pitfalls or even the strengths that you haven’t yet considered.

We can’t always do it on our own with just pure will, even when we have a great idea. So many things can get in the way. Lack of knowledge on where to start; inability to manage time and resources; inability to identify challenges; or the inability to look objectively at an idea to which we’ve become very emotionally attached. This is where a coach steps in.

When you are tired, coaching can reignite passion. When you are unclear, coaching can dig deeper into your potential by clarifying values and purpose. When you are feeling overwhelmed, coaching can discover your strengths and mobilize your talents. When things are moving too slowly, coaching can provide the fuel needed to push you and your business back up to speed. When you are stuck behind barriers, coaching can help identify and clear the obstacles to success. When you have reached a stalemate, coaching can revitalize you and uncover new opportunities.

You may very well be a brilliant entrepreneur and business owner. If so, have you reached your full potential? Have you reached every one of your business and personal goals? Have you considered expansion? Have you considered a new business? Are you equipped with the tools to make it happen? Do you know all the right questions to ask? Have you aligned your team with the best that there is? The world’s best will seek help while answering these questions.

Just as coaching is used from little league to professional sports, it can help on all levels of business development, from conception to expansion, and in small to large ventures alike. You can set your pace faster, set your goals higher, achieve success and perform better. Everyone benefits from that bird’s-eye view, which is what a coach provides. People come to business coaches for a variety of reasons. You may need an expert who isn’t blinded by the industry or by too many years of staring at the same numbers. You may need the accountability created by reporting to your coach weekly after setting personal commitments. Many times we get bogged down in the day-to-day operations and forget that there is a much bigger picture to look at if we want to grow. With ever-changing markets, you may need a coach to bounce ideas around with, in order to grow through the challenging times. You may simply need to rediscover the passion that created your brilliant business idea in the first place. You may need guidance to find the proper people to support your business and advise you in proper strategy. Finally, you may be looking for greater profits or returns with less work. Anyone can hang a shingle and be open for customers, but it takes more than a name and idea to really own a business.

In the end, however, coaching is more than just the bottom line. Coaching can help you discover a life of balance that works for you, especially important since a business can, at times, take over every aspect of your life. It can guide you in making better decisions about life and business. It can help you find ways to get more done in less time, and overcome the many potential barriers to success. Coaching will help you set and attain goals in life and business, and then push you to become the person and business owner that even you didn’t think was possible. If you really want to be a player in the game of business, don’t sit on the side lines; don’t wish and dream. Get a coach and make it all reality.

excerpted from The Plan-as-You-Go Business Plan by Tim Berry

“Please, can you recommend somebody to write my business plan for me? How much will it cost? How do I find somebody?”

“Where can I find (or buy) a business plan for a doggie daycare? For a resort? For a website selling environmentally-sensitive goods?”

Forget it. You can’t. It won’t happen. Furthermore, the whole idea of finding a business plan for your business is off-kilter. I think it’s a new variation on the very bad idea of students buying term papers on the Web instead of writing them themselves; and in this case, it’s even worse, because it’s not just a term paper that you should have done once.

It isn’t something you just do and forget. It’s your business plan. Your business is unique. Buying a business plan makes about as much sense as buying a medical checkup already done and on paper, instead of going to a doctor.

Many people confuse the idea of sample business plans with somehow getting a business plan already done. That doesn’t work. Sample business plans can be useful in some cases because they can help you see what other people planned to do, in the best of cases in situations similar to yours. But their market is different from yours, their strategy is different, their resources are different, and their plan won’t work for your business.

Businesses aren’t built by recipes.

Okay, there are some exceptions to these rules.

Sometimes a person with knowledge and experience in the right field can help you develop your business plan, by asking you the right questions and helping you to think through your ideas.
Sometimes when you need help creating a document from your existing plan ideas, as long as the core content of the document is yours, you can work collaboratively with somebody to actually craft the thoughts onto paper. Most franchise businesses are formula businesses. The better franchises do work like recipes. You follow the steps. In fact, if it doesn’t work like that, you aren’t getting what you’re paying for as franchisee.

More important, notice how the plan-as-you-go business plan solves a lot of the stress related to finding a suitable existing business plan by focusing on doing only what you need, building it as you go, and developing it as you need it, in pieces.

Sample Business Plans Suck

The original title of this piece was “Business Plans Are Made, Not Found.” It comes from my childhood memories of the Wheaties ad campaign of the 1950s. The slogan was “Champions Are Made, Not Found.”

The same applies to business plans. You make one, you don’t find one. You develop your own.

This idea comes up a lot these days because — I think– of sample business plans. The spread of sample business plans is a real problem for the greater good of business planning. And unfortunately, I might be part of the problem. Gulp.

I started sample business plans at Palo Alto Software in 1987 with the first Business Plan Toolkit, which included the original versions of Acme Consulting and AMT, the computer reseller, which I had written for clients.

Digression: If you’re curious, Google one or the other and see how widespread it is. By the way, there are a few sites that use one of these examples with permission (the SBA, for example, has permission to use AMT as a sample on its site), but there are a lot of people just copying one and calling it their own. Seems like there are hundreds of them out there. Only a very, very few have permission. Most are pirates. End of digression.

We came up with the idea of including sample plans with the business-planning product to help people understand what a business plan looks like, what it covers, and how it comes together. We included 10 real sample plans in late 1994 when we released Business Plan Pro. People liked the samples, so we included more. We polled the users and came up with 20 real plans from real businesses to include with our second version in February of 1996, and 30 sample plans for the third version, in May of 1998. People really liked sample plans as part of the product.

Then the idea spread. People started buying and selling sample plans. Our life as market leader became very complicated when a competitor bought 100-some sample plans from a book compilation and included them as Adobe PDF files with some business plan software. That company didn’t tell their customers that the plans were just electronic documents, didn’t work with their software, and most didn’t even have financial information, but they did cause a stir in the market. We had to work like mad to get 250 real plans, all of which worked with Business Plan Pro and had financial data, to compete. We sponsored business plan competitions, and paid our customers, looking for real plans.

So the race was on. By this point we had our version 2002 (equivalent to the fifth version) of Business Plan Pro out. People started selling sample plans on the web, most of them poorly-disguised knock-offs of our sample plans exported from Business Plan Pro and massaged slightly. We’ve had several legal battles with people using our work to compete against us. We’re up to 500 sample business plans with Business Plan Pro now, and, frankly, I hate it.

Here’s the problem: when it was two sample plans or even 10 sample plans, people generally understood that they were supposed to give you an idea of what a plan is. Now with hundreds of sample plans available, some people naturally think their own business plan is supposed to be one of those 500.

Frankly, as author and professional business planner, I hate this idea. People are buying and selling finished business plans as if they were term papers (also a bad idea) for college students. That trend is really spreading, and it’s a mistake. Not just wrong because of plagiarism, but wrong because it doesn’t work and clouds business planning.

I get the question all the time: “Do you have a plan for X?”

Which brings me back to the title of this sidebar (which was originally a blog post). I want to tell everybody that finding a business plan you can use is a really, really bad idea. You make a plan; you don’t find one. Obviously, every business is unique. Every business plan is unique. Even if you happened to find a business plan for a business very much like yours, it would never have the same owners, the same management team, the same strategy, and probably not the same market or location either.

Sure, I recognize that a sample plan can help in several ways. You can find out how somebody else defined the units and prices in a business, what her expense projections were and for what categories, and how she described her market.

But I strongly recommend you start at zero, and write your own plan. Refer to samples for some hard points, perhaps, but start with an empty plan. If you’re using Business Plan Pro, the wizard takes you through the process step by step, tells you what you need to include and why, so that you just tell your own story and do your own numbers. If you start with somebody else’s plan it’s going to be very hard to distinguish your own ideas from hers. You’re going to end up with a hodgepodge of rehash.

(Note: this article is an excerpt from The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, published by Entrepreneur Press, written by Tim Berry, and bundled with Business Plan Pro. It is reproduced here with permission of the publisher.)

Think of your business plan as a matter of blocks, like interrelated pieces. You don’t have to have the whole block structure done before you take any next steps. Start your blocks where you like. Some common blocks are the mantra, the sales forecast, the mission statement , the keys to success, maybe a break-even analysis, or a SWOT, or how about the heart of your plan, as in the whole discussion of who needs your product or service and why and what it is? A sales forecast is a block, and so is an employee or personnel plan, as in laying out month by month how many people will be working in your company, and how much each of them will be paid.

The key here is that you don’t get bogged down on having a finished business plan before you do anything else. You’re planning as you go. You’ve heard the stories of people who spent months developing their plan, but never get started. So instead of that, think of the blocks. Choose where you want to start. Get going.

Start Wherever You Like

The blocks idea also saves you from the tyranny of sequence. You don’t have to start at the beginning and work through to the end. You can jump in and start wherever you want.

• Mission statement, maybe? Define for yourself what your company will do for its customers, for its employees, and for its owners. Mission statements are a bit last century, perhaps doomed forever to Dilbert-related derision, but that’s still where some people start.
• Maybe you’re a numbers person. That’s OK don’t apologize — business planning needs that, too. I was a literature major in college but I still like to start my business planning with a sales forecast. Then I’ll do some conceptual work, then go back to costs and expenses, classic budgeting work, then back to basics.
• Business plans have hearts, like artichokes do. In both, their hearts are their core, the best part. I thought of this analogy when somebody I know and respect suggested that the heart of a business plan is the marketing plan, meaning its identity, positioning, differentiation, the sense of what business you’re in and why people buy from you. That’s a great place to start.
• Some plans start with a product or prototype product. Maybe your first block is a bill of materials for manufacturing the new thing. That’s OK too; that’s a block, you can jump in there.
• There are lots more blocks. The mantra. The vision. A market analysis. A market forecast. Personnel strategy. Financial strategy. Some people like to build an equity plan first, focusing on how many shares exist, how many the founders get, and how many the investors get.

Don’t Worry About Finishing

A good business plan is never done. It’s the launch of a planning process, and you want to understand from the very beginning that if you ever think your plan is done, your business is probably finished. You’ll have to review and revise regularly to keep your business going. Assumptions will change, your forecasts will be wrong, and the art of management will be figuring out when to revise the plan to accommodate changing reality, and when to stick to the parts of the plan that will work if you hold your course. That’s paradox, of course, and that’s why we (owners and managers) do it instead of computers.

(Additional note, for Business Plan Pro users: your outline view makes it easy to jump around as suggested here. Tim)

A common technique used to write a business plan is to use a business plan template, business plan example, or a business plan outline. You may see these terms as you browse the Web, but what do they mean?

Business plan template

A “business plan template” is a term used to describe a business plan outline that possibly has some sort of “fill in the blank” system to help you create your own plan. Using a “fill in the blank” approach to creating a business plan is not a serious way to write a plan, and it will not help you succeed in planning your business or securing financing.

“Business plan template” also is used to describe a sample business plan or general business plan outline.

Example business plan

An “example business plan” is another term that describes a sample business plan. A sample business plan is a full business plan that is either the plan of a real business or based on a real business. It shows you the actual text, financials, and charts for the business.
We have over 100 free business plans here on Bplans.com for you to view, and over 500 sample business plans contained in Business Plan Pro that can be viewed and edited for your own plan.

Business plan outline

Another term you’ll often hear is “business plan outline.” This term is used to refer to the basic structure of a business plan. While you can find some generic business plan outlines in books or on the Web, an outline should change to fit the type of business you’re involved in. For example, the business plan outline for a restaurant should be different from the business plan outline for a day care. For this reason, we don’t recommend using generic business plan outlines.
Business Plan Pro contains an EasyPlan Wizard that asks you questions when you first start writing your plan. As you answer the questions, the Wizard will create the correct business plan outline that you need for your specific business. It’s the fastest and easiest way to create the correct business plan outline to use for your plan.

Business plan software

Business Plan Pro If you’re looking to work with a business plan outline, example business plan, or business plan template, Business Plan Pro is an excellent choice. It contains over 500 sample business plans which can be used to help create your own plan.

Sample business plans

The plans listed below can work as a business plan template for your plan, and are all included in Business Plan Pro.
Studio 67 – restaurant business plan
Studio67 is a medium-sized restaurant focusing on organic foods and an intriguing atmosphere, in a prime neighborhood of Portland.

AMT Computers – computer hardware business plan
AMT is an ongoing business computer reseller that also provides service and support.


Javanet Internet Cafe – coffee shop business plan
JavaNet is a startup business that will provide a unique forum for communication and entertainment through the medium of the Internet.

• Browse all free sample business plans

The classic uses are seeking investment or applying for a loan. There are also the obvious communication with employees, partners, family members, consultants. And there is valuation, sometimes for tax purposes, sometimes for growth, divorce, estates.

Too many people think of business plans as something you do to start a company, apply for a loan, or find investors. Yes, they are vital for those purposes, but there’s a lot more to it. Preparing a business plan is an organized, logical way to look at all of the important aspects of a business. First, decide what you will use the plan for, such as to:

• Define and fix objectives, and programs to achieve those objectives.
• Create regular business review and course correction.
• Define a new business.
• Support a loan application.
• Define agreements between partners.
• Set a value on a business for sale or legal purposes.
• Evaluate a new product line, promotion, or expansion.

You need a business plan if you’re running a business.
A business plan is like a map and a compass for a business. Without it you’re traveling blind. With a plan you set objectives, establish priorities, and provide for cash flow.

You need a business plan if you’re applying for a business loan.
Most banks require it, and even those that don’t strictly require it expect it. They expect it to be a summary of the business, with some predictable key points.

You need a business plan if you’re looking for business investment.
The plan won’t get you the investment, but not having a plan will mean you won’t get investment. Investors require a business plan. They invest in the people, the idea, the track records, the market, the technology, and other factors; but they look to the business plan to define and explain the business.

You need a business plan if you’re working with partners.
The business plan defines agreements between partners about what’s going to happen.

You need a business plan to communicate with a management team.
The day-to-day business routine is distracting, problems come up, opportunities appear, and commitments should be followed and tracked. How do you know where you are in business without establishing where you started and where you intended to go? How can people commit to a plan they can’t see?

You need a business plan to sell a business, or to set a value on a business for tax or other purposes such as estate planning, or divorce.

Sadly, many of the people who need a plan don’t know they need it. They get trapped by the myths of business planning. They don’t realize that plans are not just for start-ups, loans, or investment. They don’t realize that business plans are easier to develop than most people think. To succeed in business you simply must plan the steps, set priorities, allocate resources, and manage the cash. Sure, some people say they don’t plan, but if they’re successful then they’re actually always planning in their heads. And you can keep that plan in your head if your business is very simple, cash flow is always adequate, you don’t work with other people, and you don’t need to communicate your business plan with other people either.

Don’t accept disadvantages in business. Don’t try to run without a plan. Doing a plan is probably much easier than you think, and much more valuable.

Do you have a business plan for my business?
Unfortunately, no sample business plan will work perfectly for your business. After all, your business plan is about your business and how you will use it to succeed. You don’t want your business plan to read like a template – a plan for someone else’s business.

Sample plans are useful as examples, and of course you can build an effective business plan for your business without a sample plan that exactly matches. Even if we had a business plan that was very similar to your company (and we sometimes do), you would still have a different summary, a different company description, a different list of products, different strategy, different management team, and different financials. A sample plan is useful as an example, not for the information it contains.

Finding a pre-written plan for your business just doesn’t happen, and furthermore, it shouldn’t happen; it wouldn’t be good for any real business situation. The process of developing a plan is far more valuable than just having some pre-written plan you can use instead. You will learn more about your business and have a significantly greater chance of success if you write your own plan.

So don’t sweat having an exact match. Find something similar. A computer store can be a valuable example for an auto dealer because it has products and services, and deals with a local market instead of a national market. A bed and breakfast can be a good example for a motel, because both sell rooms for the night, and both have travelers as a market. A retail jewelry store can be a good example for a shoe store, because both depend on location, local markets, and buying things that they sell to their customers. And any sample business plan can give you a good idea of what’s in a plan, what’s covered, and how it looks.

Sample plan or not, our software, Business Plan Pro®, starts a new plan by asking you simple questions about your business and customizes your plan to match. It customizes outline topics, tables, and charts, depending on whether you are retail, service, manufacturer, etc., whether you are a home office, an ongoing or a start-up company, etc. We haven’t yet heard of a business that couldn’t build a business plan with Business Plan Pro.

We do have more than 500 sample business plans included with Business Plan Pro, and many plans posted at www.bplans.com as free sample business plans, so you can read them for free online.

The 500+ sample plans included with Business Plan Pro are all available for use within Business Plan Pro, as starting points for your own plan, with text and financials available to you within the program. The list includes all of the free plans on bplans.com. However, we don’t sell those separately; they are available as part of the purchase of Business Plan Pro. If we don’t have the exact one you want, don’t sweat it, just develop your own plan. That’s what you’d end up doing anyhow, even if we did have an exact match. Every business is unique, so every business plan is unique.

There is a reason we don’t sell sample business plans. We provide the sample plans not for the business-specific information in them, but to give you an idea of what a finished business plan looks like. Most of them are real plans for real companies, with names disguised. Some were developed as sample plans.

Frankly, one of the things we intended when we decided to include sample business plans in Business Plan Pro was to prove that you can do a business plan; it isn’t that hard a task. We didn’t think when we decided to post the plans that people should take them as recipes for starting a business. They are just examples.

If you are approaching a banker for a loan for a startup business, your loan officer may suggest a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan, which will require a business plan. If you have an existing business and are approaching a bank for capital to expand the business, they often will not require a business plan, but they may look more favorably on your application if you have one.

Reasons for writing a business plan include:

• Define a new business
• Support a loan application
• Raise equity funding
• Define objectives and describe programs to achieve those objectives
• Evaluate a new product line, promotion, or expansion
• Create a regular business review and course correction process
• Define agreements between partners
• Set a value on a business for sale or legal purposes

What’s in a business plan?
A business plan should prove that your business will generate enough revenue to cover your expenses, but a business plan may vary depending on your audience. If you are writing a plan for your colleagues and partners to expand an existing business, then the focus of that plan may be more operational than financial. If you are writing a plan for a bank, the most important aspect to the bank manager will be your financials. Are your assumptions realistic? Will the cash flow be enough that you can make the monthly payments for the loan you have requested? If your business is making $1,000 a month and your payments are $1,200 a month, the bank is likely to turn you away.

If you are writing a plan for a venture capitalist, the most important factor in a decision to invest in a company is the quality of the people. In real estate, where the three biggest criteria are “location, location and location,” the venture capital axiom is “people, people and people.” VCs will ask, how experienced are the people that are going to run this business? Do they have knowledge of the industry? Have they started successful ventures in the past?

What makes a successful business plan?

• Presents a well thought out idea
• Contains clear and concise writing
• Has a logical structure
• Illustrates management’s ability to make the business a success
• Shows profitability

Bringing it all together…
Your business plan is like your calling card; it will get you in the door where you’ll have to convince investors and loan officers that you can put your plan into action. You want your calling card to look impressive, so make sure your business plan is printed out on good quality paper, you have checked the spelling and grammar, and that your numbers add up. Anyone who sees errors while reading your plan will wonder whether you are going to make similar errors in running your business.

A great business plan is the best way to show bankers, venture capitalists, and other investors that you are worthy of financial support. Make sure that your plan is clear, focused and realistic. Then show them that you have the tools, talent and team to make it happen.

Business planning is about results. You need to make the contents of your plan match your purpose. Don’t accept a standard outline just because it’s there.

What is a business plan?
A business plan is any plan that works for a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities.

Unfortunately, many people think of business plans only for starting a new business or applying for business loans. But they are also vital for running a business, whether or not the business needs new loans or new investments. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to priorities.

What’s a startup plan?
A simple startup plan includes a summary, mission statement, keys to success, market analysis, and break-even analysis. This kind of plan is good for deciding whether or not to proceed with a plan, to tell if there is a business worth pursuing, but it is not enough to run a business with.

Is there a standard business plan?
A normal business plan (one that follows the advice of business experts) includes a standard set of elements, as shown below. Plan formats and outlines vary, but generally a plan will include components such as descriptions of the company, product or service, market, forecasts, management team, and financial analysis.

Your plan will depend on your specific situation. For example, description of the management team is very important for investors while financial history is most important for banks. However, if you’re developing a plan for internal use only, you may not need to include all the background details that you already know. Make your plan match its purpose.

What is most important in a plan?
It depends on the case, but usually it’s the cash flow analysis and specific implementation details.

• Cash flow is both vital to a company and hard to follow. Cash is usually misunderstood as profits, and they are different. Profits don’t guarantee cash in the bank. Lots of profitable companies go under because of cash flow problems. It just isn’t intuitive.
• Implementation details are what make things happen. Your brilliant strategies and beautifully formatted planning documents are just theory unless you assign responsibilities, with dates and budgets, follow up with those responsible, and track results. Business plans are really about getting results and improving your company.

Can you suggest a standard outline?
If you have the main components, the order doesn’t matter that much, but here’s the outline order we suggest in Business Plan Pro software:

1. Executive Summary: Write this last. It’s just a page or two of highlights.
2. Company Description: Legal establishment, history, start-up plans, etc.
3. Product or Service: Describe what you’re selling. Focus on customer benefits.
4. Market Analysis: You need to know your market, customer needs, where they are, how to reach them, etc.
5. Strategy and Implementation: Be specific. Include management responsibilities with dates and budget.
6. Management Team: Include backgrounds of key members of the team, personnel strategy, and details.
7. Financial Plan: Include profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet, break-even analysis, assumptions, business ratios, etc.

View an expanded business plan outline

We don’t recommend developing the plan in the same order you present it as a finished document. For example, although the Executive Summary comes as the first section of a business plan, we recommend writing it after everything else is done.

What can help me write a business plan?
It can be helpful to view real sample business plans to get ideas for your own business plan.

This free fill-in-the-blanks business plan template follows the format that is preferred by the SBA and lenders and can be a useful guide when writing your plan.

As mentioned before, reviewing a standard business plan outline can also be a good starting point.