How To Write A Business Plan

Where do you even begin? 

And who do you look to for advice?

When you Google “how to start a business” the search page says there are over 7 billion results. How do you navigate the results?

Well, let’s narrow it down. And I can tell you this: you don’t need a 20-page plan filled with b.s. designed to impress bankers or investors.

LegalZoom has a lot of legal information like how to form an LLC, LLC vs Corporation, filing a DBA, etc., but these shouldn’t be the first things to concern yourself with.

The Small Business Administration has a 10-step guide for starting a business that is pretty overwhelming, but its first two steps are important: market research and writing a business plan. More on that in a minute.

SCORE is supported by the SBA, and has free mentoring throughout the country in its many chapters. They have dozens of online courses related to starting a business.

SCORE also suggests starting with a business plan, and they even have a downloadable business plan template to help guide you.

The template is 34 pages long! It includes ten detailed sections.

You’re never going to get started at this pace, so we’ll help cut through the information overload and home in on what is really necessary to start your business.

OK, so we’ve established that you need to start with a business plan. Don’t spend a dime on legal entities, logos, or websites — yet.

Let’s start with a general discussion about business plans to give us some context.

 

Traditional Business Plans

Wikipedia says the typical business plan for a startup should have 14 sections.

QuickBooks, the popular bookkeeping app for small business, has a very lengthy and detailed web page on how to write a business plan. 

This “how to” is very similar to almost every resource that shows up on Google for creating a business plan. 

They are all geared toward existing businesses looking for investors, funding, or bank loans. 

The problem with all of these plans is that they barely discuss the most important item – customers. 

QuickBooks outlines the 10 sections required for a business plan. 

But how many of these sections matter to potential customers? 

One –  Section 5, the description of your product or service, is the only section that a potential customer would care about.

The complexity of these business plans requires a great deal of time and effort to define your unique value proposition, and all of the revenue streams, cost structures, marketing channels, resources, activities, and more. 

And all of this time and effort will be invested before even knowing if your business concept is going to be viable.

What Is A Minimum Viable Product?

A minimum viable product is a version of a product or service with just enough features to be used by customers. 

The concept aims to avoid lengthy and costly effort up front. 

It will usually involve carrying out market research, and will give feedback to know whether a business idea is going to be viable and profitable.

One of the most common mistakes from startup entrepreneurs is that they spend a huge amount of time and money developing a product or service, only to find out that there is not enough demand for that product.

The Jumpstart Business Plan

Our 4-step Business Plan was developed specifically for startup businesses, and each of the four steps is focused on your potential customers. 

The answers to these four questions will be the framework for your business plan:

Step 1 – WHAT problem are you solving?

Step 2 – WHO are you solving the problem for?

Step 3 – WHY are you the best person or company to solve the problem?

Step 4 – HOW are you going to make money?

That’s it. 

Straightforward, but very powerful. 

It will become ingrained in you. 

Believe it. 

Be confident in it, especially the “why”.