Writing a business plan, step one

Writing a business plan is like flossing or forcing yourself to exercise daily. It’s good for you. You know it’s good for you. It’s just not very much fun and has no immediate pay off.

The banks like business plans. Investors demand business plans. Supportive families feel better when you have a business plan. But, writing them is painful, long, tedious and just plain good ol’ fashioned hard work.

In my experience, the first step to writing a business plan is summarize the business. What will you sell? How will you sell it? Who will you sell to? In essence, this is an elevator pitch so if someone doesn’t make it into the details, your first page will tell them most of what they need to know about your company. This is like a cover letter introducing your company so include details like start-up costs, why customers will buy from you, why they will pay what you are asking and what you expect your profit to be.

If the bank or the potential investor is interested in your company, they can turn the page for the micro details of your operation.

The page should look like this:

Name of company
Principals involved in company (names/titles)
2 to 3 paragraph summary of company, including general financials, market size, and business model including products/services being sold and customer demographics

The first page is meant to be short and sweet, similar to the hypothesis page for research studies.

Stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for details on the rest of the business plan road-map.