3. Topics for discussion
What is a business plan?
Why create a business plan?
What to avoid in your business plan?
A vision statement
The people
Your business profile
Economic assessment
Cash flow assessment
Marketing and expansion plans
Damage control plan
8 steps to a great business plan
Does your plan include these necessary factors?
Formulate (and reformulate) your business plan
Top ten do’s and don’ts
Q and A
4. What is a business plan?
A written outline that evaluates all aspects of the economic
viability of your business venture including a description and
analysis of your business prospects.
5. Why create a business plan?
The business plan is your roadmap to chart the course of your
business.
Note: You cannot ultimately predict the changing conditions
that will surface, you may make adjustments to the plan
through the course of time.
6. Why create a business plan?
• A business plan defines your objective using appropriate information
and analysis.
• You can use it as a selling tool in dealing with important relationships
including your lenders, investors and banks.
• Your business plan can uncover omissions and/or weaknesses in your
planning process.
• You can use the plan to solicit opinions and advice from people.
Source: http://www.myownbusiness.org/s2/
7. What to avoid in your
business plan?
• Long-range planning – stick to short-term
• Optimism – be conservative with timelines, sales, budgets, etc.
• Language that is difficult to understand – be understandable
• Dependency on inventions and uniqueness – stick to good
economics
9. The people
You are the most important ingredient for your success.
• Highlight your experiences and how it applies to your new business.
• Prepare employee resumes for investor and client reviews.
10. Your business profile
Define and describe your intended business and exactly how
you plan to go about it. Try to stay focused on the specialized
market you intend to serve.
As a rule, specialists do better than non-specialists.
Source: http://www.myownbusiness.org/s2/
11. Economic assessment
Provide and economic assessment, including your business’
appropriateness to the regulatory agencies and the
demographics you wish to interact with.
12. Cash flow assessment
Create a one-year cash flow that contains your capital
requirements, including what could go wrong and how you
plan to tackle problems.
14. Damage control plan
All businesses will experience distress periods. Survival
depends on how well prepared you are to cope with
challenges.
Plan for at least a 12-month liquidity.
15. 8 steps to a great business
plan
1. Review the two sample plans furnished in this session.
2. Focus and refine your concept based on the data you have compiled.
3. Gather all the data you can on the feasibility and the specifics of your
business concept.
4. Outline the specifics of your business. Using a “what, where, why, how”
approach might be useful.
5. Include your experience, education, and personal information.
6. Fill in the templates at the end of each session with clear language and
realistic projections.
7. Print off the business plan templates from each session into an MS Word
document.
8. You may wish to enhance your presentation with bar charts, pie charts and
graphics.
16. Does your plan include these
necessary factors?
A sound business concept – The biggest mistake an entrepreneur can
make is not selecting the right business initially.
Understanding your market – Do an initial test of your product in your
chosen market
A healthy, growing and stable industry – Success comes to those who find
businesses with great economics and not necessarily great inventions or
advances to mankind.
Capable management – Hire the people who have skills you admire and
lack.
17. Does your plan include these
necessary factors?
Able financial control – Entrepreneurs need to have a good understanding
an practice of accounting.
Financial management skills – build a qualified team to evaluate best
options for utilizing retained earnings.
A consistent business focus – As a rule, people who specialize in a product
or service will do better than people who do not specialize.
A mind set to anticipate change – Keep a fluid mind set and be aggressive
in making revisions as needed.
Include plans to take your business online – E-commerce is set to grow
exponentially in the next decade.
18. Formulate (and reformulate)
your business plan
Donald N. Sull, associate professor of management practice at the London Business School, in an
article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, offers some practical suggestions on managing
inevitable risks while pursuing opportunities.
• Expect your first plan to be provisional and subject to revision.
• Ask yourself if your expertise gives you the right to an opinion on
your specific opportunity.
• Identify the potential variables that are likely to prove fatal to the
venture.
• Clearly identify what you see as the key drivers of success.
• Raise money with a cushion for contingencies.
• Delay hiring key managers until initial rounds of experimentation
have produced a stable business model.
• At some point, take the plunge and test your product or service on a
small scale.
• Test and refine your business model before expanding your
operations.
Source: http://www.myownbusiness.org/s2/
19. Top ten do’s and don’ts
Do’s Don’ts
1. Prepare a complete business plan for any 1. Be optimistic in estimating
business you are considering. future sales
2. Use the business plan templates furnished in 2. Be optimistic in estimating future costs.
each session.
3. Complete sections of your business plan as you 3. Disregard or discount weaknesses in your plan.
proceed through the course. Spell them out.
4. Research (use search engines) to find business 4. Stress long-term projections. Better to focus on
plans that are available on the internet. projections for your first year.
5. Package your business plan in an attractive kit as 5. Depend entirely on the uniqueness of your
a selling tool. business or the success of an invention.
6. Submit your business plan to experts in your 6. Project yourself as someone you’re not. Be
intended business for their advice. brutally realistic.
7. Spell out your strategies on how you intend to 7. Be everything to everybody. Highly focused
handle adversities. specialists usually do best.
8. Spell out the strengths and weaknesses of your 8. Proceed without adequate financial accounting
management team. and accounting know-how.
9. Include a monthly one-year cash flow projection. 9. Base your business plan on a wonderful concept.
10. Freely and frequently modify your business plans 10. Pursue a business not substantiated by your
to account for changing conditions. business plan analysis.
