Starting Your Own Business
by Tim Berry
Looking for help on how to start a business? Bplans.com offers a variety of free startup resources, all intended to guide you through the process of creating a business plan and getting financing for your new venture. Beyond these tools, we also offer Business Plan Pro software, which we recommend for new businesses, although it isn’t free.
Free business planning book
Hurdle: The Book on Business Planning — my full-length book on how to develop a business plan — is available in its entirety on the Web at www.hurdlebook.com. You can read the entire book for free. If you would prefer a hard copy, you can buy one for $19.95 on Amazon. The book is also included for no extra charge with our Business Plan Pro software.
Articles about starting a business
Here on Bplans.com, we offer dozens of introductory and intermediate articles on how to start and grow your business. The business planning section provides a step-by-step, start-to-finish guide to developing your own business plan. Other articles cover financing, marketing, growth strategies, and more.
Sample business plans
To help you get started on your startup strategy, we also offer over 100 free business plan examples for all sorts of companies — restaurants, retail stores, consultants, and more. This is an easy way to see samples of what a finished business plan looks like. The entire content of these plans is available here for free, and they all were approved for money in one way or another, so they’re worth looking at.
Don’t look for a sample plan you can just pick up and call your own, because every business is unique and every business plan is unique. Look instead for a good example of what’s included, and what’s involved in doing the plan.
Business calculators
Also free on Bplans.com is our series of business planning calculators, which make it easy to estimate your starting costs, return on investment, and more.
Business plan software
To make the next step beyond our free tools, take a look at Business Plan Pro. It is a software tool for developing a business plan, available for under $100. It includes over 500 sample business plans, including the 100+ available here. With its step-by-step process and SBA-approved document format, you can easily create a winning business plan on your own.
Articles on “How to create small businesses for churches and church members”.
What a great set of resources. I guess others include your bank’s local advisor as you’ll also be writing for their eyes as well and there are some great free software packs from them. Otherwise, using your software is a good idea. Great site. Keep it up. http://www.smallbusinesspro.co.uk