| Each year hundreds of thousands of small business | | | | some other place to stuff your undoubtedly vague |
| owners go through the painstaking process of writing | | | | mission statement. |
| a business plan. Maybe the plan is for a small business | | | | Be Factual - Some of you are excited because you |
| loan, an angel investor, or venture capital firm. | | | | stuffed your business plan full of facts and figures that |
| Regardless of the business plan's purpose, you spent | | | | are neither relevant nor are they interesting. If you do |
| significant time and resources to craft your | | | | enough research you will surely find a research report |
| masterpiece, and will probably regard it as if it were | | | | somewhere that projects your industry to reach X |
| your first child. So when you proudly hand over your | | | | billion dollars in 3 to 5 years. First of all, is it really your |
| business plan to your banker or potential investor, and | | | | industry? If you sell dog food and the dog food market |
| you come back for a follow up meeting the next day, | | | | will reach $2 billion in three to five years you need to |
| you may be heart broken to see that your plan has | | | | break that down. It turns out you only sell dog food for |
| not even been touched, or worse yet it is in the trash | | | | small dogs, which is only 35% of the market. See why |
| can. Why did your masterpiece leave so small an | | | | someone might get frustrated by your meaningless |
| impression on the reader that it ended up in the trash? | | | | facts and figures? By saying you are in a $2 billion |
| There are a few specific ways to keep your business | | | | dollar industry when you are actually only in an industry |
| plan out of the trash. | | | | 35% of that size, the reader either thinks you are |
| Be Compelling - If your business plan ended up in the | | | | ignorant or purposely lying about the size of your |
| trash, you almost certainly had a poor Executive | | | | market potential. |
| Summary. The Executive Summary is the first two | | | | Be Artistic - Your business plan should not look like |
| pages of your business plan and it sets the tone for | | | | your term paper. You want lots of pictures, graphs, |
| the entire plan. If you start your plan with a dry, | | | | tables, diagrams, and bullet lists. Can you really blame a |
| cookie-cutter mission statement, and some boring | | | | business banker or investor for throwing out your |
| facts about your company such as date of | | | | business plan when they flipped through it and saw 30 |
| incorporation, number of employees, and your industry, | | | | pages of block paragraph in 12 point font? First of all |
| you have already missed your best opportunity to | | | | who has time for that, and secondly can it really be |
| compel the reader to read the next line. What is | | | | that good? Even if you don't really know what you are |
| compelling about your business? Maybe it's your | | | | talking about a number of solid diagrams, graphs or |
| largest client that can raise eyebrows with their name | | | | tables can go a long way toward getting your reader |
| alone, maybe it is a signed partnership agreement with | | | | to at least take a look at the plan. |
| a leader in your field, or maybe your service or product | | | | So when you are writing your business plan, put |
| saves time which in turn saves money. You should | | | | yourself in the place of the reader and then be |
| work to be intriguing, not giving everything away in the | | | | compelling, factual, and artistic. Doing these three things |
| first two pages, but rather compelling the reader to | | | | should keep your masterpiece from ending up at the |
| learn more. So start with something exciting, and find | | | | local dump. |