Business Plan Tutorial  

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Plan Overview
Step 1 Read through this guide
Step 2 Brainstorm your business idea
Step 3 Create a document for your research 
Step 4 Customers
   Demographics
   Psychographics
   Life Stage
Step 5 Industry Overview
   Industry Structure
   Industry Competition
   Industry Stage
   Industry Trends
   Government Regulations
   Industry Promotions
   Industry Pricing
Step 6 Marketing 4P's
   Marketing Product
   Marketing Price
   Marketing Place
   Marketing Promotion
Step 7 STP - Segment, Target & Position
Step 8 Organization
Step 9 Financials
Step 10 Funding
Step 11 Exit Strategy
Step 12 Appendix
Step 13 Business Description 
Step 14 Executive Summary
Additional Resources
Plan Templates 

Why do you need to formally write a Business Plan?      

• To enable everyone involved to have the same plan in mind and function as a team
• To keep track of all  possible strategy ideas, as you discount them  
• To measure the success of a plan, and continue to plan for the future
• To improve funding possibilities since business plans are a key component to receiving funding 
• To complete mergers and acquisitions; a business plan will help you stand out from other companies
  (Portable MBA, 1994).

Tips to writing the plan:

• Keep it original, do NOT make a cookie cutter plan.  The people that invest in businesses see thousands of plans a year and you need to catch their attention.
• Write your plan as a story so that it flows and keeps people's interest.  
• Research, research and research. 
• Address the negatives. The people you show the plan to can offer suggestions.  Also they will see the flaw in your plan and if you don't address it, they will think you missed it and wonder what else you missed.  
• Keep it concise.

Presenting the Business Plan: Also see books in the library and the page of helpful things and other resources available to you. 

Guy Kawasaki's blog is a must read.  "The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint" will give you great parameters to use as a guide for presentations to Venture Capitalists.

Understand who your audience is (investors; angels, venture capitalists, loan officers), and what they are looking for:
Return on Investment- How will they get their money back? (This is also part of the exit strategy.) 

• Sell the company or the idea
• Public Offering
• Match of initial funding with a percentage of revenue over a period of time or a lump sum?

High Return on Investment

• What is the initial value of the venture? 
• How much time will it take to get liquid?
• How much money will it take to get the company liquid?
• What will it be worth when the company is liquid?

• How to make the research easier:  whenever a new source is introduced, a brief overview of that source will be provided to help you understand and use it more effectively.  
• How to make the final Business Plan much easier to use:  organize the information you find in the structure of the template and cite as you go. 
• Here is a template based on the Business Plan Tutorial or you can use a copy of Microsoft's Business Plan Template.