Business Plan

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe very briefly why your business needs to exist. What problem do you solve for your customers?

Market

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe your target customer or market segments. Again, keep things very brief in the executive summary and add more detail later in the plan.

Competition

INSTRUCTIONS: Summarize your key competition. Who will your customers also consider?

INSTRUCTIONS: Write a brief overview of you and your team. Why are you the right people to build this business?

Forecast

INSTRUCTIONS: Write a brief overview of your financial targets. How much do you plan to sell in the next year? What are your long-term sales goals?

Your Business Name Here

10

CONFIDENTIAL - DO NOT DISSEMINATE. This business plan contains confidential, trade-secret information and is shared only with the understanding that you will not share its contents or ideas with third parties without the express written consent of the plan author.

INSTRUCTIONS: If you are writing a business plan to raise money for your business, include a brief summary of what you are looking for. If you aren’t raising money or getting a loan, you can delete this section.

INSTRUCTIONS: Write a little more detail than you provided in the Executive Summary about the problem you are solving. What do your customers need? Do they need a better product, a cheaper product, or just a store in a better location? Describe why customers will want to buy from you.

INSTRUCTIONS: Provide additional detail, beyond what you wrote in the Executive Summary, about your product or service. What is unique and special about your company that’s going to set it apart from the competition?

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe your key customers – who they are and what their key attributes are. If your company is targeting multiple customer groups (also called ‘segments’), describe each group here. If you can, include details about how many people are in each segment and how large the total market is.

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe your current competition. What products and services are people using instead of yours?

INSTRUCTIONS: Explain why your product or service is better than the others. Also, be sure to describe any competitive advantages you may have, such as a patent or other unique component to your business.

INSTRUCTIONS: Explain how you plan on getting the word out about your product to your target market(s). Will you use advertising? Perhaps you are developing a content marketing strategy. Whatever your marketing plans may be, describe them here.

INSTRUCTIONS: If your company relies on sales people to close sales deals, you need a sales plan. Your sales plan should explain how you convert people who express interest in your product or service into paying customers. If you are opening a food truck, this section is less important and you can consider removing it. However, if you are starting a sales-heavy business like enterprise software or a car dealership, then you need to document how you will nurture leads and close deals.

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe your company’s physical locations. This might be your office, store locations, manufacturing plants, storage facilities — whatever is relevant to your business. How much space do you have available, and how well will it meet your current and future needs?

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe any important software, hardware, or other information technology that you use now or plan to use later to operate your business. That might include a point-of-sale system to take payments, an e-commerce engine for your website, a CRM solution for managing your pipeline, marketing tools for generating leads, and so on.

INSTRUCTIONS: List any specialty equipment that you have or plan to acquire to do your work. This is an important component of the business plan for many industrial companies.

INSTRUCTIONS: List your key milestones and the dates that you hope to accomplish them by. If you’ve already accomplished key goals for your business, list them here as evidence that your business is getting traction – in other words, it’s getting positive attention from potential customers.

INSTRUCTIONS: Explain which performance metrics are most important for understanding how your business is doing. What does success mean for you, and how will you know it when you see it?

INSTRUCTIONS: Use this area to specify who owns your company. If there are multiple owners, describe each of them and how much of an ownership stake they have. Also, identify your company’s legal structure. Is it a sole proprietorship — that is, just you working for yourself? Or a partnership, such as a limited-liability corporation (LLC) or partnership (LLP), where the profits pass through to the partners involved? Or a nonprofit organization? Or a proper S- or C-type corporation with its own tax obligations and the rest?

INSTRUCTIONS: List the members of the management team, including yourself. Describe each person’s skills and experience and what they will be doing for the company. It’s OK if you don’t have everyone for a complete management team yet. In that case, make sure to identify gaps in your team that you intend to fill over time.

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe any mentors, investors, former professors, industry or subject-matter experts, knowledgeable friends or family members, small-business counselors, or others who can help you as a business owner.

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe how you came up with the values in your financial forecast. Did you project your revenue based on past results, market research, your best guess at how many people who visit your store and what percentage of them might buy, or some other method? What kind of growth are you assuming? What are your key hires and notable expenses? What level of profit do you expect to generate?

INSTRUCTIONS: If your forecast includes loans, investments, or other financing, use this space to explain what you plan do with that money.

INSTRUCTIONS: Describe your financing plans. Are you investing your own money in the business? Do you have a credit card or line of credit? What other types of funds — personal or business loans, equity investments from others, etc. — do you expect to receive and when? If you do not have the full detail of future financing worked out yet, that is understandable. Just explain what you do know and when you expect to sort out the details.

INSTRUCTIONS: Include your balance sheet here.

INSTRUCTIONS: Include your cash flow statement here.

Your Business Name Here

13

CONFIDENTIAL - DO NOT DISSEMINATE. This business plan contains confidential, trade-secret information and is shared only with the understanding that you will not share its contents or ideas with third parties without the express written consent of the plan author.

FY2018 Mar

'17

Apr '17 May '17 Jun '17 Jul '17 Aug '17 Sep '17 Oct '17 Nov '17 Dec '17 Jan '18 Feb '18

Cash

Accounts Receivable Inventory

Other Current Assets

Total Current Assets

Long-Term Assets Accumulated Depreciation Total Long-Term Assets

Total Assets

Accounts Payable Income Taxes Payable Sales Taxes Payable Short-Term Debt Prepaid Revenue

Total Current Liabilities

Long-Term Debt

Total Liabilities

Paid-in Capital Retained Earnings Earnings

Total Owner's Equity

Total Liabilities & Equity

FY2018 Mar

'17

Apr '17 May '17 Jun '17 Jul '17 Aug '17 Sep '17 Oct '17 Nov '17 Dec '17 Jan '18 Feb '18

Net Cash Flow from Operations

Net Profit

Depreciation and Amortization

Change in Accounts Receivable

Change in Inventory

Change in Accounts Payable

Change in Income Tax Payable

Change in Sales Tax Payable Change in Prepaid Revenue

Net Cash Flow from Operations

Investing & Financing

Assets Purchased or Sold Investments Received Change in Long-Term Debt Change in Short-Term Debt Dividends & Distributions

Net Cash Flow from Investing & Financing

Cash at Beginning of Period

Net Change in Cash

Cash at End of Period