How to Start a Business: A Startup Guide for Entrepreneurs Template, business plan guide.

On the sales side, you'll need to cover answers to questions like: what's your sales strategy? What will your sales team look like, and how do you plan to grow it over time? How does you plan to scale for growth?

Outline the strengths and weaknesses of your potential competitors, as well as strategies that will give you a competitive advantage.

Before you can receive any significant funding for your business (which we'll talk about in the next section), you need to:

Know these details and keep them elsewhere, but exclude everything but the meat and potatoes from the business plan itself. Your business plan shouldn't just be a quick(ish) read -- it should be easy to skim, too.

Business Plan Template

The first steps are to create a cover page, and write a description of your business that outlines your product or service and how it solves a need for your customers. The next step is to work on the company description which provides detail on how your company will be organized and includes the mission statement.

One of the first questions to ask yourself when you're testing your business idea is whether it has a place in the market. The market will ultimately dictate how successful your business will be. What's your target market, and why would they be interested in buying from you?

There are many different kinds of seed financing, but the one you've probably heard of most is called Seed-round financing. In this case, someone will invest in your company in exchange for preferred stock. If your company gets sold or liquidated, then investors who hold preferred stock often have the right to get their investment back -- and, in most cases, an additional return, called "preferred dividends" or "liquidation preferences" -- before holders of common stock are paid.

To start writing your own plan, download our free business plan template to access an outline of the content we covered in this article. If you need to reference specific industry examples, I encourage you to take a look at our sample business plan library. And for a modern business planning solution that grows with your business, you might want to check out LivePlan.

Without a business plan as a baseline, it will be far more difficult to track your progress, make adjustments, and have historical information readily available to reference when making difficult decisions. Creating a business plan ensures that you have a roadmap that doesn’t just outline where you plan to go, but where you’ve already been.

Depending on the type of business you are starting and the type of plan you are writing, you may not need to go into too much detail here. No matter what, you need to know who your customer is and have a rough estimate of how many of them there are. If there aren’t enough customers for your product or service, that could be a warning sign.

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. This is often what entrepreneurs find most daunting, but it doesn’t have to be as intimidating as it seems. Business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. That said, if you need additional help, there are plenty of tools and resources out there to help you build a solid financial plan.

Appendix

Before you start working on your positioning statement, you should take a little time to evaluate the current market and answer the following questions:

A business plan is more than a document. It’s a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. It’s also a management tool that allows you to analyze results, make strategic decisions, and showcase how your business will operate, and grow. In short, if you’re thinking of starting a business or plan to pitch your business to investors, writing a business plan can improve your chances of success.

Whether you’re building a business plan to raise money and grow your business or just need to figure out if your idea will work, every business plan needs to cover 6 essential sections. Here’s a quick overview of each section and to skip to a more detailed overview, click the links below.

Finally, the company overview section of your business plan should describe your current location and any facilities that the company owns.

• Executive summary. A one-page summary of your whole plan, typically written after the rest of the plan is completed.
• Company description. An overview can include many potential sub-sections, from the basics (your type of business model) to the meaningful (your business’ vision and mission statement).
• Market analysis. Everything from estimated market size to your target markets. It’ll also include a competitive analysis of your industry to address competitors strengths and weaknesses.
• Products and services. What you sell and the most important features of your products or services. It’ll also include any plans for intellectual property, like patent filings or copyright. If you do market research for your products, it’ll show up in this section of your business plan.
• Marketing plan. How you intend to get the word out about your business, and what strategic decisions you’ve made about things like your pricing strategy.
• Logistics and operations plan. Everything that needs to happen to turn your raw materials into products and get them into the hands of your customers.
• Financial plan. It’s important to include a look at your financial projections. This section includes templates for three key financial statements: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement.

A business plan can be as informal or formal as your situation calls for, but even if you’re a fan of the back-of-the-napkin approach to planning, there are some key benefits to starting your plan from an existing outline or template.

Business planning is often used to secure funding, but plenty of business owners find writing a plan valuable, even if they never work with an investor. That’s why we put together a free business plan template to help you get started.

Business planning is often used to secure funding, but plenty of business owners find writing a plan valuable, even if they never work with an investor. That’s why we put together a free business plan template to help you get started.

Get the business plan template delivered right to your inbox.

It’s tempting to dive right into execution when you’re excited about a new business or side project, but taking the time to write a business plan and get your thoughts on paper allows you to do a number of beneficial things:

The easiest way to simplify the work of writing a business plan is to start with a business plan template.

Although even the best-crafted plan may not survive its first contact with reality, the act of planning is still invaluable for any business owner.

We’ve filled out a sample business plan as a companion to our template, featuring a fictional ecommerce business. We’ve noted where—and how—an entrepreneur could add more details to expand on their plans, depending on their goals.

Clarifying these details is still a useful exercise, even if you’re the only person who’s going to see them. It’s an opportunity to put to paper some of the more intangible facets of your business, like your principles, ideals, and cultural philosophies.

Excited about starting a business, but not sure where to start? This free, comprehensive guide will teach you how to find great, newly trending products with high sales potential.

There are a few key things to keep in mind to help you write an effective business plan.

Whatever your reason for writing a business plan, the task will probably still feel like a homework assignment. When you’re starting a new business, your to-do list is a mile long and filled with more immediately rewarding tasks, like taking product photos, creating ad campaigns, and opening social media accounts.

Company description

A good business plan can help you clarify your strategy, identify potential roadblocks, decide what you’ll need in the way of resources, and evaluate the viability of your idea before you learn how to start a business.

A business plan is a roadmap describing a business, its products or services, how it earns (or will earn) money, its leadership and staffing, its financing, its operations model, and many other details essential to its success.

Logistics and operations are the workflows you’ll implement to make your ideas a reality. If you’re writing a business plan for your own planning purposes, this is still an important section to consider, even though you might not need to include the same level of detail as if you were seeking investment.

That said, it may not include the specific details or structure preferred by a potential investor or lender. If your goal with a business plan is to secure funding, check with your target organizations—typically banks or investors—to see if they have a template you can follow to maximize your chances of success.

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Our fictional business creates custom greeting cards with your pet’s paw prints on them, and the founder of the business is writing a plan to help understand the market, as well as the logistics and costs involved, to give themselves the best chance of success before they launch.

Who should use this simple business plan template

It’s tempting to dive right into execution when you’re excited about a new business or side project, but taking the time to write a business plan and get your thoughts on paper allows you to do a number of beneficial things:

Before you write your own, read through the following business plan example. You can download a copy in Microsoft Word or Google Docs and use it to inspire your own planning.

You’re already investing time and energy in planning your small business—there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to formatting your plan. Instead, to help build a complete and effective plan, lean on time-tested structures created by entrepreneurs and startups who have come before you.