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How to Write a Business Plan

Looking for insight and practical advice on how to write a business plan? We can help you get started with dozens of articles on business plan writing as well as hundreds of free sample business plans and business plan templates to see real-life examples.

Doing the numbers

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Getting Started

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Parts of a Business Plan

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Pitching your Business Plan

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Planning your Plan

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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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Elevator Pitch Part 5: Delivery

In the real world, you know your so-called elevator speech and you use it when appropriate. Every time you do it, you and it get better. I’d recommend taking time out and working on it, but you probably won’t; you’re too busy. Think about it in the shower. Think about it when you’re stuck in [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 4: Finish Strong

(Note: this is taken with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
This fourth of five parts in this series depends on who you are, where you are, and what you want. If you’ve personalized in the first part, sold yourself and/or your organization in the second, and established the attractiveness or suitability of the business offering in [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 3: What You Offer

(Note: this is taken with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
Now explain what that person or organization you’re selling to gets. You’ve personalized the need or want, identified your unique qualities to solve the problem, and now you have to put the need or want in concrete terms that anybody can see. For example:
For a Trunk [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 2: Why You?

(Note: this is taken with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
In the next part of your elevator pitch address ‘why you’? Why your business? What’s special about you that makes your offering or solution interesting to the target person or organization you just identified (Part 1 of this series).
This is where you bring in your background, [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 1: Personalize

(Reposted with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
If you can’t say it in 60 seconds, you have a problem. Your strategy isn’t clear enough. Nowadays we call it “the elevator pitch,” meaning a quick description of the business that you could do in the time you share with a stranger in an elevator. It’s becoming popular [...]

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Are You Pitching Your Business Naked?

You are if you don’t have a business plan first.
Seriously: how can you boil it down to the core if you don’t know your basic strategy such as your identity, market, and focus? How can you set a scale to it without some idea of reasonable expectations in sales? How can you possibly talk about [...]

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Spelling and Editing are Fundamental Business Planning Activities

When I first entered the job market, all my advisors all stressed, over and over again, to be sure my résumé had no misspellings or grammatical errors. They said that employers have to screen hundreds of job applications, and would use any good reason or bad excuse to toss out an applicant. Misspellings and language [...]

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Planning Tips from Palo Alto Software Customers

Palo Alto Software recently conducted a survey of customers about their business planning efforts and needs. While some of the findings were predictable, others offer lessons for entrepreneurs trying to get started, as well as those trying to get back to fundamentals. The following article highlights three areas of planning our respondents found challenging, and [...]

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It has to be Your Plan for Your Business

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 [...]

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