Writing a Business Plan

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 […]

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 […]

Important reality: Your business plan is about running your business. It’s not just a document. You may not ever print it, but, whether or not you need to produce a document for a bank or an investor, you still want a plan to help you manage your business. You want planning to help you grow. […]

(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 […]

(Note: this is an excerpt from The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, by Tim Berry.)
People seem to like getting into the mission statement, but I’m not sure it’s always such a good idea. There’s also the possibility of doing your mantra instead, and then some people talk about a vision statement, and of course there are […]

As I write here about business plan outlines, please remember that your plan should be only as big as what you need to run your business. While everybody should have planning to help run a business, not everyone needs to develop a complete formal business plan suitable for submitting to a potential investor, or bank, […]

Your mission statement is an opportunity to define your business at the most basic level. It should tell your company story and ideals in less than 30 seconds: who your company is, what you do, what you stand for, and why you do it.
Do you want to make a profit, or is it enough to […]

The executive summary section of a business plan is a summary of the highlights of your business plan. Even though the topic appears first in the printed document, most business plan developers leave the writing of the executive summary until the end. This summary is the doorway to the rest of the plan. Get it […]

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 […]

Note: The following is an excerpt from CPA’s Guide to Developing Effective Business Plans by Tim Berry, originally published by Harcourt Brace Professional Publishers, and reprinted and revised several times. It was subsequently published by Aspen Law and Business. Copyright © Timothy J. Berry. All rights reserved.
A rainy day in Rio
I looked out the window […]