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Making a Risk Management Plan for Your Business

It’s impossible to eliminate all business risk. Therefore, it’s essential for having a plan for its management. You’ll be developing one covering compliance, environmental, financial, operational and reputation risk management. These guidelines are for making a risk management plan for your business.

Developing Your Executive Summary

When you start the risk management plan with an executive summary, you’re breaking apart what it will be compromised of into easy to understand chunks. Even though this summary is the project’s high-level overview, the goal is describing the risk management plan’s approach and scope. In doing so, you’re informing all stakeholders regarding what to expect when they’re reviewing these plans so that they can set their expectations appropriately.

Who Are the Stakeholders and What Potential Problems Need Identifying?

During this phase of making the risk management plan, you’re going to need to have a team meeting. Every member of the team must be vocal regarding what they believe could be potential problems or risks. Stakeholders should also be involved in this meeting as well to help you collect ideas regarding what could become a potential risk. All who are participating should look at past projects, what went wrong, what is going wrong in current projects and what everyone hopes to achieve from what they learned from these experiences. During this session, you’ll be creating a sample risk management plan that begins to outline risk management standards and risk management strategies.

Evaluate the Potential Risks Identified

A myriad of internal and external sources can pose as risks including commercial, management and technical, for example. When you’re identifying what these potential risks are and have your list complete, the next step is organizing it according to importance and likelihood. Categorize each risk according to how it could impact your project. For example, does the risk threaten to throw off timelines or budgets? Using a risk breakdown structure is an effective way to help ensure all potential risks are effectively categorized and considered. Use of this risk management plan template keeps everything organized and paints a clear picture of everything you’re identifying.

Assign Ownership and Create Responses

It’s essential to ensure a team member is overseeing each potential risk. That way, they can jump into action should an issue occur. Those who are assigned a risk, as well as the project manager, should work as a team to develop responses before problems arise. That way, if there are issues, the person overseeing the risk can refer to the response that was predetermined.

Have a System for Monitoring

Having effective risk management companies plans includes having a system for monitoring. It’s not wise to develop a security risk management or compliance risk management plan, for example, without having a system for monitoring. What this means is there’s a system for monitoring in place to ensure risk doesn’t occur until the project is finished. In doing so, you’re ensuring no new risks will potentially surface. If one does, like during the IT risk management process, for example, your team will know how to react.

Writing a Business Plan

business plan for students entrepreneurship

While it may be tempting to put off, creating a business plan is an essential part of starting your own business. Plans and proposals should be put in a clear format making it easy for potential investors to understand. Because every company has a different goal and product or service to offer, there are business plan templates readily available to help you get on the right track. Many of these templates can be adapted for any company. In general, a business plan writing guide will recommend that the following sections be incorporated into your plan.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is the first section that business plans open with, but is often the last section to actually be written as it’s the most difficult to write. The executive summary is a summary of the overall plan that highlights the key points and gives the reader an idea of what lies ahead in the document. It should include areas such as the business opportunity, target market, marketing and sales strategy, competition, the summary of the financial plan, staff members and a summary of how the plan will be implemented. This section needs to be extremely clear, concise and engaging as you don’t want the reader to push your hard work aside.

Company Description

The company description follows the executive summary and should cover all the details about the company itself. For example, if you are writing a business plan for an internet café, you would want to include the name of the company, where the café would be located, who the main team members involved are and why, how large the company is, who the target market for the internet cafe is, what type of business structure the café is, such as LLC, sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation, what the internet café business mission and vision statements are, and what the business’s short-term objectives are.

Services and Products

This is the exciting part of the plan where you get to explain what new and improved services or products you are offering. On top of describing the product or service itself, include in the plan what is currently in the market in this area, what problems there are in this area and how your product is the solution. For example, in a business plan for a food truck, perhaps there are numerous other food trucks in the area, but they are all fast –food style and unhealthy so, you want to introduce fast food that serves only organic and fresh ingredients every day. This is where you can also list your price points and future products or services you anticipate.

Market Analysis

The market analysis section will take time to write and research as a lot of effort and research need to go into it. Here is where you have the opportunity to describe what trends are showing up, what the growth rate in this sector looks like, what the current size of this industry is and who your target audience is. A cleaning business plan, for example, may include how this sector has been growing by 10% every year due to an increase in large businesses being built in the city.

Organization and Management

Marketing and sales are the part of the business plan where you explain how you will attract and retain clients. How are you reaching your target customers and what incentives do you offer that will keep them coming back? For a dry cleaner business plan, perhaps if they refer customers, they will get 10% off their next visit. In addition, you may want to explain what needs to be done in order for the business to be profitable. This is a great way of showing that you are conscious about what clear steps need to be taken to make a business successful.

Financial Projections & Appendix

The financial business plan section can be a tricky one to write as it is based on projections. Usually what is included is the short-term projection, which is a year broken down by month and should include start-up permits, equipment, and licenses that are required. This is followed by a three-year projection broken down by year and many often write a five-year projection, but this does not need to be included in the business plan.

The appendix is the last section and contains all the supporting documents and/or required material. This often includes resumes of those involved in the company, letters of reference, product pictures and credit histories. Keep in mind that your business plan is always in development and should be adjusted regularly as your business grows and changes.

500+ Free business plan examples

Need help writing your business plan? Explore over 500 free real-world business plan examples from a wide variety of industries to guide you through writing your own plan. If you're looking for an intuitive tool that walks you through the plan writing process, we recommend LivePlan . It includes many of these same SBA-approved business plan examples and is especially useful when applying for a bank loan or outside investment.

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Example business plan format

Before you start exploring our library of business plan examples, it's worth taking the time to understand the traditional business plan format . You'll find that the plans in this library and most investor-approved business plans will include the following sections:

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally only one to two pages. You should also plan to write this section last after you've written your full business plan.

Your executive summary should include a summary of the problem you are solving, a description of your product or service, an overview of your target market, a brief description of your team, a summary of your financials, and your funding requirements (if you are raising money).

Products & services

The products & services chapter of your business plan is where the real meat of your plan lives. It includes information about the problem that you're solving, your solution, and how your product or service fits into the existing competitive landscape.

Describe the problem you're solving, how your offering solves the problem, and who your potential competitors are. You'll want to outline your competitive advantages and the milestones you have in mind to successfully start and grow your business.

Market analysis

Conducting a market analysis ensures that you fully understand the market that you're entering and who you'll be selling to. This section is where you will showcase all of the information about your potential customers. You'll cover your target market as well as information about the growth of your market and your industry. Focus on outlining why the market you're entering is viable and creating a realistic persona for your ideal customer base.

Marketing & sales

The marketing and sales plan section of your business plan details how you plan to reach your target market segments. You'll address how you plan on selling to those target markets, what your pricing plan is, and what types of activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success.

Organization & management

Use this section to describe your current team and who you need to hire. If you intend to pursue funding, you'll need to highlight the relevant experience of your team members. Basically, this is where you prove that this is the right team to successfully start and grow the business. You will also need to provide a quick overview of your legal structure, location, and history if you're already up and running.

Financial projections

Your financial plan should include a sales and revenue forecast, profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, and a balance sheet. You may not have established financials of any kind at this stage. Not to worry, rather than getting all of the details ironed out, focus on making projections and strategic forecasts for your business. You can always update your financial statements as you begin operations and start bringing in actual accounting data.

Now, if you intend to pitch to investors or submit a loan application, you'll also need a "use of funds" report in this section. This outlines how you intend to leverage any funding for your business and how much you're looking to acquire. Like the rest of your financials, this can always be updated later on.

The appendix isn't a required element of your business plan. However, it is a useful place to add any charts, tables, definitions, legal notes, or other critical information that supports your plan. These are often lengthier or our-of-place information that simply didn't work naturally into the structure of your plan. You'll notice that in these business plan examples, the appendix mainly includes extended financial statements.

Types of business plans explained

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. To get the most out of your plan, it's best to find a format that suits your needs. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan

The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used for external purposes. Typically this is the type of plan you'll need when applying for funding or pitching to investors. It can also be used when training or hiring employees, working with vendors, or any other situation where the full details of your business must be understood by another individual.

Business model canvas

The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

The structure ditches a linear format in favor of a cell-based template. It encourages you to build connections between every element of your business. It's faster to write out and update, and much easier for you, your team, and anyone else to visualize your business operations.

One-page business plan

The true middle ground between the business model canvas and a traditional business plan is the one-page business plan . This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business.

By starting with a one-page plan, you give yourself a minimal document to build from. You'll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer-form business plan.

The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance.

It holds all of the benefits of the single-page plan, including the potential to complete it in as little as 27-minutes . However, it's even easier to convert into a full plan thanks to how heavily it's tied to your financials. The overall goal of Lean Planning isn't to just produce documents that you use once and shelve. Instead, the Lean Planning process helps you build a healthier company that thrives in times of growth and remain stable through times of crisis.

It's faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

Download a free sample business plan template

Ready to start writing your own plan but aren't sure where to start? Download our free business plan template that's been updated for 2022.

This simple, modern, investor-approved business plan template is designed to make planning easy. It's a proven format that has helped over 1 million businesses write business plans for bank loans, funding pitches, business expansion, and even business sales. It includes additional instructions for how to write each section and is formatted to be SBA-lender approved. All you need to do is fill in the blanks.

How to use an example business plan to help you write your own

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How do you know what elements need to be included in your business plan, especially if you've never written one before? Looking at examples can help you visualize what a full, traditional plan looks like, so you know what you're aiming for before you get started. Here's how to get the most out of a sample business plan.

Choose a business plan example from a similar type of company

You don't need to find an example business plan that's an exact fit for your business. Your business location, target market, and even your particular product or service may not match up exactly with the plans in our gallery. But, you don't need an exact match for it to be helpful. Instead, look for a plan that's related to the type of business you're starting.

For example, if you want to start a vegetarian restaurant, a plan for a steakhouse can be a great match. While the specifics of your actual startup will differ, the elements you'd want to include in your restaurant's business plan are likely to be very similar.

Use a business plan example as a guide

Every startup and small business is unique, so you'll want to avoid copying an example business plan word for word. It just won't be as helpful, since each business is unique. You want your plan to be a useful tool for starting a business —and getting funding if you need it.

One of the key benefits of writing a business plan is simply going through the process. When you sit down to write, you'll naturally think through important pieces, like your startup costs, your target market , and any market analysis or research you'll need to do to be successful.

You'll also look at where you stand among your competition (and everyone has competition ), and lay out your goals and the milestones you'll need to meet. Looking at an example business plan's financials section can be helpful because you can see what should be included, but take them with a grain of salt. Don't assume that financial projections for a sample company will fit your own small business.

If you're looking for more resources to help you get started, this guide on how to write a business plan is a good place to start. You can also download our free business plan template , or get started right away with LivePlan .

Think of business planning as a process, instead of a document

Think about business planning as something you do often , rather than a document you create once and never look at again. If you take the time to write a plan that really fits your own company, it will be a better, more useful tool to grow your business. It should also make it easier to share your vision and strategy so everyone on your team is on the same page.

Adjust your plan regularly to use it as a business management tool

Keep in mind that businesses that use their plan as a management tool to help run their business grow 30 percent faster than those businesses that don't. For that to be true for your company, you'll think of a part of your business planning process as tracking your actual results against your financial forecast on a regular basis.

If things are going well, your plan will help you think about how you can re-invest in your business. If you find that you're not meeting goals, you might need to adjust your budgets or your sales forecast. Either way, tracking your progress compared to your plan can help you adjust quickly when you identify challenges and opportunities—it's one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business.

Prepare to pitch your business

If you're planning to pitch your business to investors or seek out any funding, you'll need a pitch deck to accompany your business plan. A pitch deck is designed to inform people about your business. You want your pitch deck to be short and easy to follow, so it's best to keep your presentation under 20 slides.

Your pitch deck and pitch presentation are likely some of the first things that an investor will see to learn more about your company. So, you need to be informative and pique their interest. Luckily, just like you can leverage an example business plan template to write your plan, we also have a gallery of over 50 pitch decks for you to reference.

With this gallery, you have the option to view specific industry pitches or get inspired by real-world pitch deck examples. Or for a modern pitch solution that helps you create a business plan and pitch deck side-by-side, you may want to check out LivePlan . It will help you build everything needed for outside investment and to better manage your business.

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With LivePlan, it's not just a classroom project. It's your students planning for their futures. Click here to learn more about business planning for students .

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Unlike the brief or lean formats introduced so far, the business plan is a formal document used for the long-range planning of a company’s operation. It typically includes background information, financial information, and a summary of the business. Investors nearly always request a formal business plan because it is an integral part of their evaluation of whether to invest in a company. Although nothing in business is permanent, a business plan typically has components that are more “set in stone” than a business model canvas , which is more commonly used as a first step in the planning process and throughout the early stages of a nascent business. A business plan is likely to describe the business and industry, market strategies, sales potential, and competitive analysis, as well as the company’s long-term goals and objectives. An in-depth formal business plan would follow at later stages after various iterations to business model canvases. The business plan usually projects financial data over a three-year period and is typically required by banks or other investors to secure funding. The business plan is a roadmap for the company to follow over multiple years.

Some entrepreneurs prefer to use the canvas process instead of the business plan, whereas others use a shorter version of the business plan, submitting it to investors after several iterations. There are also entrepreneurs who use the business plan earlier in the entrepreneurial process, either preceding or concurrently with a canvas. For instance, Chris Guillebeau has a one-page business plan template in his book The $100 Startup . 48 His version is basically an extension of a napkin sketch without the detail of a full business plan. As you progress, you can also consider a brief business plan (about two pages)—if you want to support a rapid business launch—and/or a standard business plan.

As with many aspects of entrepreneurship, there are no clear hard and fast rules to achieving entrepreneurial success. You may encounter different people who want different things (canvas, summary, full business plan), and you also have flexibility in following whatever tool works best for you. Like the canvas, the various versions of the business plan are tools that will aid you in your entrepreneurial endeavor.

Business Plan Overview

Most business plans have several distinct sections ( Figure 11.16 ). The business plan can range from a few pages to twenty-five pages or more, depending on the purpose and the intended audience. For our discussion, we’ll describe a brief business plan and a standard business plan. If you are able to successfully design a business model canvas, then you will have the structure for developing a clear business plan that you can submit for financial consideration.

Business plan that includes an executive summary, business description, market strategies, marketing plan, competitive analysis, operations and management plan, financial analysis, and design and development plan.

Both types of business plans aim at providing a picture and roadmap to follow from conception to creation. If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept.

The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, dealing with the proverbial devil in the details. Developing a full business plan will assist those of you who need a more detailed and structured roadmap, or those of you with little to no background in business. The business planning process includes the business model, a feasibility analysis, and a full business plan, which we will discuss later in this section. Next, we explore how a business plan can meet several different needs.

Purposes of a Business Plan

A business plan can serve many different purposes—some internal, others external. As we discussed previously, you can use a business plan as an internal early planning device, an extension of a napkin sketch, and as a follow-up to one of the canvas tools. A business plan can be an organizational roadmap , that is, an internal planning tool and working plan that you can apply to your business in order to reach your desired goals over the course of several years. The business plan should be written by the owners of the venture, since it forces a firsthand examination of the business operations and allows them to focus on areas that need improvement.

Refer to the business venture throughout the document. Generally speaking, a business plan should not be written in the first person.

A major external purpose for the business plan is as an investment tool that outlines financial projections, becoming a document designed to attract investors. In many instances, a business plan can complement a formal investor’s pitch. In this context, the business plan is a presentation plan, intended for an outside audience that may or may not be familiar with your industry, your business, and your competitors.

You can also use your business plan as a contingency plan by outlining some “what-if” scenarios and exploring how you might respond if these scenarios unfold. Pretty Young Professional launched in November 2010 as an online resource to guide an emerging generation of female leaders. The site focused on recent female college graduates and current students searching for professional roles and those in their first professional roles. It was founded by four friends who were coworkers at the global consultancy firm McKinsey. But after positions and equity were decided among them, fundamental differences of opinion about the direction of the business emerged between two factions, according to the cofounder and former CEO Kathryn Minshew . “I think, naively, we assumed that if we kicked the can down the road on some of those things, we’d be able to sort them out,” Minshew said. Minshew went on to found a different professional site, The Muse , and took much of the editorial team of Pretty Young Professional with her. 49 Whereas greater planning potentially could have prevented the early demise of Pretty Young Professional, a change in planning led to overnight success for Joshua Esnard and The Cut Buddy team. Esnard invented and patented the plastic hair template that he was selling online out of his Fort Lauderdale garage while working a full-time job at Broward College and running a side business. Esnard had hundreds of boxes of Cut Buddies sitting in his home when he changed his marketing plan to enlist companies specializing in making videos go viral. It worked so well that a promotional video for the product garnered 8 million views in hours. The Cut Buddy sold over 4,000 products in a few hours when Esnard only had hundreds remaining. Demand greatly exceeded his supply, so Esnard had to scramble to increase manufacturing and offered customers two-for-one deals to make up for delays. This led to selling 55,000 units, generating $700,000 in sales in 2017. 50 After appearing on Shark Tank and landing a deal with Daymond John that gave the “shark” a 20-percent equity stake in return for $300,000, The Cut Buddy has added new distribution channels to include retail sales along with online commerce. Changing one aspect of a business plan—the marketing plan—yielded success for The Cut Buddy.

Link to Learning

Watch this video of Cut Buddy’s founder, Joshua Esnard, telling his company’s story to learn more.

If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept. This version is used to interest potential investors, employees, and other stakeholders, and will include a financial summary “box,” but it must have a disclaimer, and the founder/entrepreneur may need to have the people who receive it sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) . The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, providing supporting details, and would be required by financial institutions and others as they formally become stakeholders in the venture. Both are aimed at providing a picture and roadmap to go from conception to creation.

Types of Business Plans

The brief business plan is similar to an extended executive summary from the full business plan. This concise document provides a broad overview of your entrepreneurial concept, your team members, how and why you will execute on your plans, and why you are the ones to do so. You can think of a brief business plan as a scene setter or—since we began this chapter with a film reference—as a trailer to the full movie. The brief business plan is the commercial equivalent to a trailer for Field of Dreams , whereas the full plan is the full-length movie equivalent.

Brief Business Plan or Executive Summary

As the name implies, the brief business plan or executive summary summarizes key elements of the entire business plan, such as the business concept, financial features, and current business position. The executive summary version of the business plan is your opportunity to broadly articulate the overall concept and vision of the company for yourself, for prospective investors, and for current and future employees.

A typical executive summary is generally no longer than a page, but because the brief business plan is essentially an extended executive summary, the executive summary section is vital. This is the “ask” to an investor. You should begin by clearly stating what you are asking for in the summary.

In the business concept phase, you’ll describe the business, its product, and its markets. Describe the customer segment it serves and why your company will hold a competitive advantage. This section may align roughly with the customer segments and value-proposition segments of a canvas.

Next, highlight the important financial features, including sales, profits, cash flows, and return on investment. Like the financial portion of a feasibility analysis, the financial analysis component of a business plan may typically include items like a twelve-month profit and loss projection, a three- or four-year profit and loss projection, a cash-flow projection, a projected balance sheet, and a breakeven calculation. You can explore a feasibility study and financial projections in more depth in the formal business plan. Here, you want to focus on the big picture of your numbers and what they mean.

The current business position section can furnish relevant information about you and your team members and the company at large. This is your opportunity to tell the story of how you formed the company, to describe its legal status (form of operation), and to list the principal players. In one part of the extended executive summary, you can cover your reasons for starting the business: Here is an opportunity to clearly define the needs you think you can meet and perhaps get into the pains and gains of customers. You also can provide a summary of the overall strategic direction in which you intend to take the company. Describe the company’s mission, vision, goals and objectives, overall business model, and value proposition.

Rice University’s Student Business Plan Competition, one of the largest and overall best-regarded graduate school business-plan competitions (see Telling Your Entrepreneurial Story and Pitching the Idea ), requires an executive summary of up to five pages to apply. 51 , 52 Its suggested sections are shown in Table 11.2 .

Are You Ready?

Create a brief business plan.

Fill out a canvas of your choosing for a well-known startup: Uber, Netflix, Dropbox, Etsy, Airbnb, Bird/Lime, Warby Parker, or any of the companies featured throughout this chapter or one of your choice. Then create a brief business plan for that business. See if you can find a version of the company’s actual executive summary, business plan, or canvas. Compare and contrast your vision with what the company has articulated.

Full Business Plan

Even full business plans can vary in length, scale, and scope. Rice University sets a ten-page cap on business plans submitted for the full competition. The IndUS Entrepreneurs , one of the largest global networks of entrepreneurs, also holds business plan competitions for students through its Tie Young Entrepreneurs program. In contrast, business plans submitted for that competition can usually be up to twenty-five pages. These are just two examples. Some components may differ slightly; common elements are typically found in a formal business plan outline. The next section will provide sample components of a full business plan for a fictional business.

Executive Summary

The executive summary should provide an overview of your business with key points and issues. Because the summary is intended to summarize the entire document, it is most helpful to write this section last, even though it comes first in sequence. The writing in this section should be especially concise. Readers should be able to understand your needs and capabilities at first glance. The section should tell the reader what you want and your “ask” should be explicitly stated in the summary.

Describe your business, its product or service, and the intended customers. Explain what will be sold, who it will be sold to, and what competitive advantages the business has. Table 11.3 shows a sample executive summary for the fictional company La Vida Lola.

Business Description

This section describes the industry, your product, and the business and success factors. It should provide a current outlook as well as future trends and developments. You also should address your company’s mission, vision, goals, and objectives. Summarize your overall strategic direction, your reasons for starting the business, a description of your products and services, your business model, and your company’s value proposition. Consider including the Standard Industrial Classification/North American Industry Classification System (SIC/NAICS) code to specify the industry and insure correct identification. The industry extends beyond where the business is located and operates, and should include national and global dynamics. Table 11.4 shows a sample business description for La Vida Lola.

Industry Analysis and Market Strategies

Here you should define your market in terms of size, structure, growth prospects, trends, and sales potential. You’ll want to include your TAM and forecast the SAM . (Both these terms are discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis .) This is a place to address market segmentation strategies by geography, customer attributes, or product orientation. Describe your positioning relative to your competitors’ in terms of pricing, distribution, promotion plan, and sales potential. Table 11.5 shows an example industry analysis and market strategy for La Vida Lola.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis is a statement of the business strategy as it relates to the competition. You want to be able to identify who are your major competitors and assess what are their market shares, markets served, strategies employed, and expected response to entry? You likely want to conduct a classic SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) and complete a competitive-strength grid or competitive matrix. Outline your company’s competitive strengths relative to those of the competition in regard to product, distribution, pricing, promotion, and advertising. What are your company’s competitive advantages and their likely impacts on its success? The key is to construct it properly for the relevant features/benefits (by weight, according to customers) and how the startup compares to incumbents. The competitive matrix should show clearly how and why the startup has a clear (if not currently measurable) competitive advantage. Some common features in the example include price, benefits, quality, type of features, locations, and distribution/sales. Sample templates are shown in Figure 11.17 and Figure 11.18 . A competitive analysis helps you create a marketing strategy that will identify assets or skills that your competitors are lacking so you can plan to fill those gaps, giving you a distinct competitive advantage. When creating a competitor analysis, it is important to focus on the key features and elements that matter to customers, rather than focusing too heavily on the entrepreneur’s idea and desires.

Competitor analysis comparing five different restaurants by price, location, quality, and food type. La Vida Lola sells Latin food of mid to high quality at a variety of locations for between six and 13 dollars. Mix’D Up Burgers sells American food/burgers of low quality at both rotating and Smyrna locations for around ten dollars. Mac the Cheese sells American comfort food of mid quality at rotating locations for between ten and thirteen dollars. The Fry Guy sells American food of high quality in Buckhead for at minimum thirteen dollars. The Blaxican sells soul/Mexican fusion food of high quality in Midtown at high prices.

Operations and Management Plan

In this section, outline how you will manage your company. Describe its organizational structure. Here you can address the form of ownership and, if warranted, include an organizational chart/structure. Highlight the backgrounds, experiences, qualifications, areas of expertise, and roles of members of the management team. This is also the place to mention any other stakeholders, such as a board of directors or advisory board(s), and their relevant relationship to the founder, experience and value to help make the venture successful, and professional service firms providing management support, such as accounting services and legal counsel.

Table 11.6 shows a sample operations and management plan for La Vida Lola.

Marketing Plan

Here you should outline and describe an effective overall marketing strategy for your venture, providing details regarding pricing, promotion, advertising, distribution, media usage, public relations, and a digital presence. Fully describe your sales management plan and the composition of your sales force, along with a comprehensive and detailed budget for the marketing plan. Table 11.7 shows a sample marketing plan for La Vida Lola.

Financial Plan

A financial plan seeks to forecast revenue and expenses; project a financial narrative; and estimate project costs, valuations, and cash flow projections. This section should present an accurate, realistic, and achievable financial plan for your venture (see Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting for detailed discussions about conducting these projections). Include sales forecasts and income projections, pro forma financial statements ( Building the Entrepreneurial Dream Team , a breakeven analysis, and a capital budget. Identify your possible sources of financing (discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis ). Figure 11.19 shows a template of cash-flow needs for La Vida Lola.

Cash flow template that tracks income for every day of the week and expenses. Fixed monthly expenses include facility rental, personal loans, insurance, credit cards, Farmer’s Market overheads, planned savings, and other. Variable monthly expenses include food/beverages, utilities (electricity, gas), uniforms, wages, fuel (vehicle), medical expenses, and other. Fixed infrequent expenses included insurance, annual subscriptions, property rates/taxes, union fees, education, and other. Variable infrequent expenses include gifts, holidays, vehicle repairs and registration, durable goods purchase, donations, and other. The difference between total income and total expenses is the income available.

Entrepreneur In Action

Laughing man coffee.

Hugh Jackman ( Figure 11.20 ) may best be known for portraying a comic-book superhero who used his mutant abilities to protect the world from villains. But the Wolverine actor is also working to make the planet a better place for real, not through adamantium claws but through social entrepreneurship.

A love of java jolted Jackman into action in 2009, when he traveled to Ethiopia with a Christian humanitarian group to shoot a documentary about the impact of fair-trade certification on coffee growers there. He decided to launch a business and follow in the footsteps of the late Paul Newman, another famous actor turned philanthropist via food ventures.

Jackman launched Laughing Man Coffee two years later; he sold the line to Keurig in 2015. One Laughing Man Coffee café in New York continues to operate independently, investing its proceeds into charitable programs that support better housing, health, and educational initiatives within fair-trade farming communities. 55 Although the New York location is the only café, the coffee brand is still distributed, with Keurig donating an undisclosed portion of Laughing Man proceeds to those causes (whereas Jackman donates all his profits). The company initially donated its profits to World Vision, the Christian humanitarian group Jackman accompanied in 2009. In 2017, it created the Laughing Man Foundation to be more active with its money management and distribution.

What Can You Do?

Textbooks for change.

Founded in 2014, Textbooks for Change uses a cross-compensation model, in which one customer segment pays for a product or service, and the profit from that revenue is used to provide the same product or service to another, underserved segment. Textbooks for Change partners with student organizations to collect used college textbooks, some of which are re-sold while others are donated to students in need at underserved universities across the globe. The organization has reused or recycled 250,000 textbooks, providing 220,000 students with access through seven campus partners in East Africa. This B-corp social enterprise tackles a problem and offers a solution that is directly relevant to college students like yourself. Have you observed a problem on your college campus or other campuses that is not being served properly? Could it result in a social enterprise?

Work It Out

Franchisee set out.

A franchisee of East Coast Wings, a chain with dozens of restaurants in the United States, has decided to part ways with the chain. The new store will feature the same basic sports-bar-and-restaurant concept and serve the same basic foods: chicken wings, burgers, sandwiches, and the like. The new restaurant can’t rely on the same distributors and suppliers. A new business plan is needed.

This New York Times video, “An Unlikely Business Plan,” describes entrepreneurial resurgence in Detroit, Michigan.

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Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction

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Business Plan Samples

You are searching for helpful and inspiring business plan samples? You want to take a look at the business models of real entrepreneurs?

Down below you will find an overview of all the current business plan samples supplied to you in our business plan software SmartBusinessPlan. You can look up what other entrepreneur wrote in the same chapter, how they described their business idea and how they structured their business plan.

Get inspired – take a look at the business ideas of entrepreneurs and their successfully funded businesses!

Café | Katharina Glücklich

Behind every great Café, there is an entrepreneur with a big passion for the business. Our business plan sample “Café” shows you how to balance self-realisation with economical demands and the need to differentiate yourself from your competition.

Online Shop | Kai Grimme

We show you how to get your online shop up and running in our business plan sample “Online Shop”. In addition to digital technology and marketing, the focus lies on an extensive market analysis in the targeted sector of delicacies and wine.

Hairdresser | Nico Müller

Master the financial section of your business plan. Our business plan sample “Hairdresser” goes in-depth into the art of financial planning. Revenue, costs and capital requirements are extensively explained.

Production | Stefan Schulze-Dieckhoff

Stefan Schulze-Dieckhoff and Stefan Clauss

With your business plan to your own series production: “Tent Production” is highly suited as a sample for in the lifestyle segment. Production cycles, milestones and the connected marketing of series production are presented clearly in this business plan sample.

PR Agency | Anonymous

people in an agency talking about business

This business plan sample shows how a team of entrepreneurs asserts themselves on the highly competitive market of Public Relations. What do you need to know about specialisation and how does that influence your investment plan?

3D-Printing | Ulrich Schneidt

The business plan example 3D-Printing is a sample for business plans in the sector of innovative technology, engineering and B2B services. Learn how to display your complex business idea in a clear and comprehensible fashion.

Catering | Jule Bauer

They started small and now they get their first growth financing: Learn how a catering business masters this challenge in our business plan sample “Catering”. A detailed revenue plan and successful PR are the focus in this business plan example.

Communications Agency | Anonymous

People looking at whiteboard with mindmap

The business plan sample „Communications Agency” how a sole proprietor achieves a defined market position as a consultant for internal communication, using snappy arguments.

Mobile App | Max Steinmetz

Make your mobile app a success with our business plan sample “Mobile App”. The entrepreneurs plan an application for the insurance sector and devised a comprehensive monetary strategy.

Bar | Mathias Knees

The factor for the success of a bar are the same as any other business in the gastronomic sector: Location and competition. How to come out on top in a major city scene with high competition shows our business plan sample “Bar”.

7 Business Plan Templates for Kids (Free Printables!)

Download one of these (mostly) free business plan templates for kids to help your child focus on a business idea..

What do super soakers, Apple computers, and Nike shoes all have in common?

They all started as a business plan.

A business plan template for kids is great for two reasons:

No matter which category your own child falls into – just playing with business plans, or they have an actual business idea – I’ve got just the free business plan template for you.

Honestly? I wish my own parents would’ve given me one of these when, as a kid, my childhood friend and I had come up with our first kid business idea: selling bean bags. So, good on you for getting your kids involved with business plans so early in life!

Best Business Plan Templates for Kids

Use one of the business plan templates for kids below with one of these 16 kid business ideas .

OR, help them to use one of their original ideas sending sparks in their brain. You can use these 3 kid business plan examples for help with filling it out.

1. Solid Gold Biz Plan

I’ve been in business for 7 years and I’ve made about every mistake in the book.

Probably one of the biggest? Was that I didn't sit down to write a proper business plan (or, ANY business plan) until I was several years into blogging.

Because of this, I created a free business plan template for kids and teens (on Page 6 of this free printable), so that they practice how to do it right, from the beginning!

What makes my free Solid Gold Biz Plan different is that it starts your child thinking about the problem that they want to solve – because ultimately, that is the purpose of creating a product or a service. To solve a specific problem for people.

It then goes on to ask them simple questions that will focus them in on what it takes to plan out a business idea.

For example, I raise the question of how much it will cost to not only create the product/service, but to also deliver it and maintain it. These are sometimes costs forgotten costs when creating a business plan.

2. BizKids’ Guide to Writing a Business Plan

This free business plan guide for kids includes sections for your idea, your marketing (and what makes your product unique), your startup costs, and an area for pricing so that you can make sure you’ll make a profit.

screenshot of bizKids business plan for kids

At the end is a one-page summary where your child can write up their answers from the previous pages all in the same place. Great for tacking up on the wall!

3. Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox

Anthony ONeal partnered up with Dave Ramsey to create the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox , a kid’s entrepreneur kit and small business guide for teens.

In other words, it’s so much more than just a business template for kids!

The entrepreneur kit includes the following:

Here's my full review of the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox .

4. Home Sweet Road’s My Business Plan

Check out this business plan for kids, which asks kids questions like what makes their idea unique, whether or not their idea is a product or service, and who their customers will be.

5. Proverbial Home Maker’s Family Business Plan Guide

This is such a fun guide that you can fill out with your child, teen, tween, or even the whole family. It includes family business ideas, a sales ledger, inventory worksheet, and much more.

screenshot of family business guide - free printable

Business Plan Examples

You may be wondering where you can find business plan examples to show your kids or teens.

For starters, you should look right at home. Are you a small business owner?

Then you’ll definitely want my free Take Your Child to Work Day printables – it’s got a section for you to fill in about your own business, which is a perfect business plan example to discuss with your child.

You can also find two business plan examples on the Small Business Administration’s site (scroll down until you see red buttons to Rebecca’s example business plan, and Andrew’s plan).

They’re not entirely kid-friendly, but can give lots of ideas for the kind of information and research to put into a business plan.

Business Plan Activity Worksheets

Check out these free PDF Shark Tank worksheets for students . Students or kids can work through coming up with their own business idea, create an advertisement for it, and a scoring card to judge the business ideas.

You’ll find a free 30-minute Small Business Administration course for young entrepreneurs meant for teens that you can use with your students (or have your child go through).

Hint: In Objective 3, it goes over how to create a business plan.

Are you an educator? Great – you can get free entrepreneur curriculum for Grades 1 – 12, with lots of worksheets, from the Venture Lab .

Further resources include:

Grab 23 more entrepreneur lesson plans here.

I hope you've found some business template for kid resources that interest you? Below, you'll find other related kid entrepreneurship articles that will help your kids, teens, and students learn about the entrepreneur career path.

Related Kid Entrepreneurship Resources

Amanda L. Grossman

Latest posts by amanda l. grossman ( see all ).

How to Write a Winning Business Plan

The business plan admits the entrepreneur to the investment process. Without a plan furnished in advance, many investor groups won’t even grant an interview. And the plan must be outstanding if it is to win investment funds. Too many entrepreneurs, though, continue to believe that if they build a better mousetrap, the world will beat […]

The Idea in Brief

You’ve got a great idea for a new product or service—how can you persuade investors to support it? Flashy PowerPoint slides aren’t enough; you need a winning business plan. A compelling plan accurately reflects the viewpoints of your three key constituencies: the market , potential investors , and the producer (the entrepreneur or inventor of the new offering).

But too many plans are written solely from the perspective of the producer. The problem is that, unless you’ve got your own capital to finance your venture, the only way you’ll get the funding you need is to satisfy the market’s and investors’ needs.

Here’s how to grab their attention.

The Idea in Practice

Emphasize Market Needs

To make a convincing case that a substantial market exists, establish market interest and document your claims.

Establish market interest. Provide evidence that customers are intrigued by your claims about the benefits of the new product or service:

Document your claims. You’ve established market interest. Now use data to support your assertions about potential growth rates of sales and profits.

Address Investor Needs

Cashing out. Show when and how investors may liquidate their holdings. Venture capital firms usually want to cash out in three to seven years; professional investors look for a large capital appreciation.

Making sound projections. Give realistic, five-year forecasts of profitability. Don’t skimp on the numbers, get overly optimistic about them, or blanket your plan with a smog of figures covering every possible variation.

The price. To figure out how much to invest in your offering, investors calculate your company’s value on the basis of results expected five years after they invest. They’ll want a 35 to 40% return for mature companies—up to 60% for less mature ventures. To make a convincing case for a rich return, get a product in the hands of representative customers—and demonstrate substantial market interest.

Too many entrepreneurs, though, continue to believe that if they build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to their door. A good mousetrap is important, but it’s only part of meeting the challenge. Also important is satisfying the needs of marketers and investors. Marketers want to see evidence of customer interest and a viable market. Investors want to know when they can cash out and how good the financial projections are. Drawing on their own experiences and those of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum, the authors show entrepreneurs how to write convincing and winning business plans.

A comprehensive, carefully thought-out business plan is essential to the success of entrepreneurs and corporate managers. Whether you are starting up a new business, seeking additional capital for existing product lines, or proposing a new activity in a corporate division, you will never face a more challenging writing assignment than the preparation of a business plan.

Only a well-conceived and well-packaged plan can win the necessary investment and support for your idea. It must describe the company or proposed project accurately and attractively. Even though its subject is a moving target, the plan must detail the company’s or the project’s present status, current needs, and expected future. You must present and justify ongoing and changing resource requirements, marketing decisions, financial projections, production demands, and personnel needs in logical and convincing fashion.

Because they struggle so hard to assemble, organize, describe, and document so much, it is not surprising that managers sometimes overlook the fundamentals. We have found that the most important one is the accurate reflection of the viewpoints of three constituencies.

1. The market, including both existing and prospective clients, customers, and users of the planned product or service.

2. The investors, whether of financial or other resources.

3. The producer, whether the entrepreneur or the inventor.

Too many business plans are written solely from the viewpoint of the third constituency—the producer. They describe the underlying technology or creativity of the proposed product or service in glowing terms and at great length. They neglect the constituencies that give the venture its financial viability—the market and the investor.

Take the case of five executives seeking financing to establish their own engineering consulting firm. In their business plan, they listed a dozen types of specialized engineering services and estimated their annual sales and profit growth at 20%. But the executives did not determine which of the proposed dozen services their potential clients really needed and which would be most profitable. By neglecting to examine these issues closely, they ignored the possibility that the marketplace might want some services not among the dozen listed.

Moreover, they failed to indicate the price of new shares or the percentage available to investors. Dealing with the investor’s perspective was important because—for a new venture, at least—backers seek a return of 40% to 60% on their capital, compounded annually. The expected sales and profit growth rates of 20% could not provide the necessary return unless the founders gave up a substantial share of the company.

In fact, the executives had only considered their own perspective—including the new company’s services, organization, and projected results. Because they had not convincingly demonstrated why potential customers would buy the services or how investors would make an adequate return (or when and how they could cash out), their business plan lacked the credibility necessary for raising the investment funds needed.

We have had experience in both evaluating business plans and organizing and observing presentations and investor responses at sessions of the MIT Enterprise Forum. We believe that business plans must deal convincingly with marketing and investor considerations. This reading identifies and evaluates those considerations and explains how business plans can be written to satisfy them.

The MIT Enterprise Forum

Organized under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alumni Association in 1978, the MIT Enterprise Forum offers businesses at a critical stage of development an opportunity to obtain counsel from a panel of experts on steps to take to achieve their goals.

In monthly evening sessions the forum evaluates the business plans of companies accepted for presentation during 60- to 90-minute segments in which no holds are barred. The format allows each presenter 20 minutes to summarize a business plan orally. Each panelist reviews the written business plan in advance of the sessions. Then each of four panelists—who are venture capitalists, bankers, marketing specialists, successful entrepreneurs, MIT professors, or other experts—spends five to ten minutes assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and the enterprise and suggesting improvements.

In some cases, the panelists suggest a completely new direction. In others, they advise more effective implementation of existing policies. Their comments range over the spectrum of business issues.

Sessions are open to the public and usually draw about 300 people, most of them financiers, business executives, accountants, lawyers, consultants, and others with special interest in emerging companies. Following the panelists’ evaluations, audience members can ask questions and offer comments.

Presenters have the opportunity to respond to the evaluations and suggestions offered. They also receive written evaluations of the oral presentation from audience members. (The entrepreneur doesn’t make the written plan available to the audience.) These monthly sessions are held primarily for companies that have advanced beyond the start-up stage. They tend to be from one to ten years old and in need of expansion capital.

The MIT Enterprise Forum’s success at its home base in Cambridge, Massachusetts has led MIT alumni to establish forums in New York, Washington, Houston, Chicago, and Amsterdam, among other cities.

Emphasize the Market

Investors want to put their money into market-driven rather than technology-driven or service-driven companies. The potential of the product’s markets, sales, and profit is far more important than its attractiveness or technical features.

You can make a convincing case for the existence of a good market by demonstrating user benefit, identifying marketplace interest, and documenting market claims.

Show the User’s Benefit

It’s easy even for experts to overlook this basic notion. At an MIT Enterprise Forum session an entrepreneur spent the bulk of his 20-minute presentation period extolling the virtues of his company’s product—an instrument to control certain aspects of the production process in the textile industry. He concluded with some financial projections looking five years down the road.

The first panelist to react to the business plan—a partner in a venture capital firm—was completely negative about the company’s prospects for obtaining investment funds because, he stated, its market was in a depressed industry.

Another panelist asked, “How long does it take your product to pay for itself in decreased production costs?” The presenter immediately responded, “Six months.” The second panelist replied, “That’s the most important thing you’ve said tonight.”

The venture capitalist quickly reversed his original opinion. He said he would back a company in almost any industry if it could prove such an important user benefit—and emphasize it in its sales approach. After all, if it paid back the customer’s cost in six months, the product would after that time essentially “print money.”

The venture capitalist knew that instruments, machinery, and services that pay for themselves in less than one year are mandatory purchases for many potential customers. If this payback period is less than two years, it is a probable purchase; beyond three years, they do not back the product.

The MIT panel advised the entrepreneur to recast his business plan so that it emphasized the short payback period and played down the self-serving discussion about product innovation. The executive took the advice and rewrote the plan in easily understandable terms. His company is doing very well and has made the transition from a technology-driven to a market-driven company.

Find out the Market’s Interest

Calculating the user’s benefit is only the first step. An entrepreneur must also give evidence that customers are intrigued with the user’s benefit claims and that they like the product or service. The business plan must reflect clear positive responses of customer prospects to the question “Having heard our pitch, will you buy?” Without them, an investment usually won’t be made.

How can start-up businesses—some of which may have only a prototype product or an idea for a service—appropriately gauge market reaction? One executive of a smaller company had put together a prototype of a device that enables personal computers to handle telephone messages. He needed to demonstrate that customers would buy the product, but the company had exhausted its cash resources and was thus unable to build and sell the item in quantity.

The executives wondered how to get around the problem. The MIT panel offered two possible responses. First, the founders might allow a few customers to use the prototype and obtain written evaluations of the product and the extent of their interest when it became available.

Second, the founders might offer the product to a few potential customers at a substantial price discount if they paid part of the cost—say one-third—up front so that the company could build it. The company could not only find out whether potential buyers existed but also demonstrate the product to potential investors in real-life installations.

In the same way, an entrepreneur might offer a proposed new service at a discount to initial customers as a prototype if the customers agreed to serve as references in marketing the service to others.

For a new product, nothing succeeds as well as letters of support and appreciation from some significant potential customers, along with “reference installations.” You can use such third-party statements—from would-be customers to whom you have demonstrated the product, initial users, sales representatives, or distributors—to show that you have indeed discovered a sound market that needs your product or service.

You can obtain letters from users even if the product is only in prototype form. You can install it experimentally with a potential user to whom you will sell it at or below cost in return for information on its benefits and an agreement to talk to sales prospects or investors. In an appendix to the business plan or in a separate volume, you can include letters attesting to the value of the product from experimental customers.

Document Your Claims

Having established a market interest, you must use carefully analyzed data to support your assertions about the market and the growth rate of sales and profits. Too often, executives think “If we’re smart, we’ll be able to get about 10% of the market” and “Even if we only get 1% of such a huge market, we’ll be in good shape.”

Investors know that there’s no guarantee a new company will get any business, regardless of market size. Even if the company makes such claims based on fact—as borne out, for example, by evidence of customer interest—they can quickly crumble if the company does not carefully gather and analyze supporting data.

One example of this danger surfaced in a business plan that came before the MIT Enterprise Forum. An entrepreneur wanted to sell a service to small businesses. He reasoned that he could have 170,000 customers if he penetrated even 1% of the market of 17 million small enterprises in the United States. The panel pointed out that anywhere from 11 million to 14 million of such so-called small businesses were really sole proprietorships or part-time businesses. The total number of full-time small businesses with employees was actually between 3 million and 6 million and represented a real potential market far beneath the company’s original projections—and prospects.

A realistic business plan needs to specify the number of potential customers, the size of their businesses, and which size is most appropriate to the offered products or services. Sometimes bigger is not better. For example, a saving of $10,000 per year in chemical use may be significant to a modest company but unimportant to a Du Pont or a Monsanto.

Such marketing research should also show the nature of the industry. Few industries are more conservative than banking and public utilities. The number of potential customers is relatively small, and industry acceptance of new products or services is painfully slow, no matter how good the products and services have proven to be. Even so, most of the customers are well known and while they may act slowly, they have the buying power that makes the wait worthwhile.

At the other end of the industrial spectrum are extremely fast-growing and fast-changing operations such as franchised weight-loss clinics and computer software companies. Here the problem is reversed. While some companies have achieved multi-million-dollar sales in just a few years, they are vulnerable to declines of similar proportions from competitors. These companies must innovate constantly so that potential competitors will be discouraged from entering the marketplace.

You must convincingly project the rate of acceptance for the product or service—and the rate at which it is likely to be sold. From this marketing research data, you can begin assembling a credible sales plan and projecting your plant and staff needs.

Address Investors’ Needs

The marketing issues are tied to the satisfaction of investors. Once executives make a convincing case for their market penetration, they can make the financial projections that help determine whether investors will be interested in evaluating the venture and how much they will commit and at what price.

Before considering investors’ concerns in evaluating business plans, you will find it worth your while to gauge who your potential investors might be. Most of us know that for new and growing private companies, investors may be professional venture capitalists and wealthy individuals. For corporate ventures, they are the corporation itself. When a company offers shares to the public, individuals of all means become investors along with various institutions.

But one part of the investor constituency is often overlooked in the planning process—the founders of new and growing enterprises. By deciding to start and manage a business, they are committed to years of hard work and personal sacrifice. They must try to stand back and evaluate their own businesses in order to decide whether the opportunity for reward some years down the road truly justifies the risk early on.

When an entrepreneur looks at an idea objectively rather than through rose-colored glasses, the decision whether to invest may change. One entrepreneur who believed in the promise of his scientific-instruments company faced difficult marketing problems because the product was highly specialized and had, at best, few customers. Because of the entrepreneur’s heavy debt, the venture’s chance of eventual success and financial return was quite slim.

The panelists concluded that the entrepreneur would earn only as much financial return as he would have had holding a job during the next three to seven years. On the downside, he might wind up with much less in exchange for larger headaches. When he viewed the project in such dispassionate terms, the entrepreneur finally agreed and gave it up.

Investors’ primary considerations are:

Cashing out

Entrepreneurs frequently do not understand why investors have a short attention span. Many who see their ventures in terms of a lifetime commitment expect that anyone else who gets involved will feel the same. When investors evaluate a business plan, they consider not only whether to get in but also how and when to get out.

Because small, fast-growing companies have little cash available for dividends, the main way investors can profit is from the sale of their holdings, either when the company goes public or is sold to another business. (Large corporations that invest in new enterprises may not sell their holdings if they’re committed to integrating the venture into their organizations and realizing long-term gains from income.)

Venture capital firms usually wish to liquidate their investments in small companies in three to seven years so as to pay gains while they generate funds for investment in new ventures. The professional investor wants to cash out with a large capital appreciation.

Investors want to know that entrepreneurs have thought about how to comply with this desire. Do they expect to go public, sell the company, or buy the investors out in three to seven years? Will the proceeds provide investors with a return on invested capital commensurate with the investment risk—in the range of 35% to 60%, compounded and adjusted for inflation?

Business plans often do not show when and how investors may liquidate their holdings. For example, one entrepreneur’s software company sought $1.5 million to expand. But a panelist calculated that, to satisfy their goals, the investors “would need to own the entire company and then some.”

Making Sound Projections

Five-year forecasts of profitability help lay the groundwork for negotiating the amount investors will receive in return for their money. Investors see such financial forecasts as yardsticks against which to judge future performance.

Too often, entrepreneurs go to extremes with their numbers. In some cases, they don’t do enough work on their financials and rely on figures that are so skimpy or overoptimistic that anyone who has read more than a dozen business plans quickly sees through them.

In one MIT Enterprise Forum presentation, a management team proposing to manufacture and market scientific instruments forecast a net income after taxes of 25% of sales during the fourth and fifth years following investment. While a few industries such as computer software average such high profits, the scientific instruments business is so competitive, panelists noted, that expecting such margins is unrealistic.

In fact, the managers had grossly—and carelessly—understated some important costs. The panelists advised them to take their financial estimates back to the drawing board and before approaching investors to consult financial professionals.

Some entrepreneurs think that the financials are the business plan. They may cover the plan with a smog of numbers. Such “spreadsheet merchants,” with their pages of computer printouts covering every business variation possible and analyzing product sensitivity, completely turn off many investors.

Investors are wary even when financial projections are solidly based on realistic marketing data because fledgling companies nearly always fail to achieve their rosy profit forecasts. Officials of five major venture capital firms we surveyed said they are satisfied when new ventures reach 50% of their financial goals. They agreed that the negotiations that determine the percentage of the company purchased by the investment dollars are affected by this “projection discount factor.”

The Development Stage

All investors wish to reduce their risk. In evaluating the risk of a new and growing venture, they assess the status of the product and the management team. The farther along an enterprise is in each area, the lower the risk.

At one extreme is a single entrepreneur with an unproven idea. Unless the founder has a magnificent track record, such a venture has little chance of obtaining investment funds.

At the more desirable extreme is a venture that has an accepted product in a proven market and a competent and fully staffed management team. This business is most likely to win investment funds at the lowest costs.

Entrepreneurs who become aware of their status with investors and think it inadequate can improve it. Take the case of a young MIT engineering graduate who appeared at an MIT Enterprise Forum session with written schematics for the improvement of semiconductor-equipment production. He had documented interest by several producers and was looking for money to complete development and begin production.

The panelists advised him to concentrate first on making a prototype and assembling a management team with marketing and financial know-how to complement his product-development expertise. They explained that because he had never before started a company, he needed to show a great deal of visible progress in building his venture to allay investors’ concern about his inexperience.

Once investors understand a company qualitatively, they can begin to do some quantitative analysis. One customary way is to calculate the company’s value on the basis of the results expected in the fifth year following investment. Because risk and reward are closely related, investors believe companies with fully developed products and proven management teams should yield between 35% and 40% on their investment, while those with incomplete products and management teams are expected to bring in 60% annual compounded returns.

Investors calculate the potential worth of a company after five years to determine what percentage they must own to realize their return. Take the hypothetical case of a well-developed company expected to yield 35% annually. Investors would want to earn 4.5 times their original investment, before inflation, over a five-year period.

After allowing for the projection discount factor, investors may postulate that a company will have $20 million annual revenues after five years and a net profit of $1.5 million. Based on a conventional multiple for acquisitions of ten times earnings, the company would be worth $15 million in five years.

If the company wants $1 million of financing, it should grow to $4.5 million after five years to satisfy investors. To realize that return from a company worth $15 million, the investors would need to own a bit less than one-third. If inflation is expected to average 7.5% a year during the five-year period, however, investors would look for a value of $6.46 million as a reasonable return over five years, or 43% of the company.

For a less mature venture—from which investors would be seeking 60% annually, net of inflation—a $1 million investment would have to bring in close to $15 million in five years, with inflation figured at 7.5% annually. But few businesses can make a convincing case for such a rich return if they do not already have a product in the hands of some representative customers.

The final percentage of the company acquired by the investors is, of course, subject to some negotiation, depending on projected earnings and expected inflation.

Make It Happen

The only way to tend to your needs is to satisfy those of the market and the investors—unless you are wealthy enough to furnish your own capital to finance the venture and test out the pet product or service.

Of course, you must confront other issues before you can convince investors that the enterprise will succeed. For example, what proprietary aspects are there to the product or service? How will you provide quality control? Have you focused the venture toward a particular market segment, or are you trying to do too much? If this is answered in the context of the market and investors, the result will be more effective than if you deal with them in terms of your own wishes.

An example helps illustrate the potential conflicts. An entrepreneur at an MIT Enterprise Forum session projected R&D spending of about half of gross sales revenues for his specialty chemical venture. A panelist who had analyzed comparable organic chemical suppliers asked why the company’s R&D spending was so much higher than the industry average of 5% of gross revenues.

The entrepreneur explained that he wanted to continually develop new products in his field. While admitting his purpose was admirable, the panel unanimously advised him to bring his spending into line with the industry’s. The presenter ignored the advice; he failed to obtain the needed financing and eventually went out of business.

Once you accept the idea that you should satisfy the market and the investors, you face the challenge of organizing your data into a convincing document so that you can sell your venture to investors and customers. We have provided some presentation guidelines in the insert called “Packaging Is Important.”

Packaging Is Important

A business plan gives financiers their first impressions of a company and its principals.

Potential investors expect the plan to look good, but not too good; to be the right length; to clearly and cisely explain early on all aspects of the company’s business; and not to contain bad grammar and typographical or spelling errors.

Investors are looking for evidence that the principals treat their own property with care—and will likewise treat the investment carefully. In other words, form as well as content is important, and investors know that good form reflects good content and vice versa.

Among the format issues we think most important are the following:

The binding and printing must not be sloppy; neither should the presentation be too lavish. A stapled compilation of photocopied pages usually looks amateurish, while bookbinding with typeset pages may arouse concern about excessive and inappropriate spending. A plastic spiral binding holding together a pair of cover sheets of a single color provides both a neat appearance and sufficient strength to withstand the handling of a number of people without damage.

A business plan should be no more than 40 pages long. The first draft will likely exceed that, but editing should produce a final version that fits within the 40-page ideal. Adherence to this length forces entrepreneurs to sharpen their ideas and results in a document likely to hold investors’ attention.

Background details can be included in an additional volume. Entrepreneurs can make this material available to investors during the investigative period after the initial expression of interest.

The Cover and Title Page

The cover should bear the name of the company, its address and phone number, and the month and year in which the plan is issued. Surprisingly, a large number of business plans are submitted to potential investors without return addresses or phone numbers. An interested investor wants to be able to contact a company easily and to request further information or express an interest, either in the company or in some aspect of the plan.

Inside the front cover should be a well-designed title page on which the cover information is repeated and, in an upper or a lower corner, the legend “Copy number______” provided. Besides helping entrepreneurs keep track of plans in circulation, holding down the number of copies outstanding—usually to no more than 20—has a psychological advantage. After all, no investor likes to think that the prospective investment is shopworn.

The Executive Summary

The two pages immediately following the title page should concisely explain the company’s current status, its products or services, the benefits to customers, the financial forecasts, the venture’s objectives in three to seven years, the amount of financing needed, and how investors will benefit.

This is a tall order for a two-page summary, but it will either sell investors on reading the rest of the plan or convince them to forget the whole thing.

The Table of Contents

After the executive summary include a well-designed table of contents. List each of the business plan’s sections and mark the pages for each section.

Even though we might wish it were not so, writing effective business plans is as much an art as it is a science. The idea of a master document whose blanks executives can merely fill in—much in the way lawyers use sample wills or real estate agreements—is appealing but unrealistic.

Businesses differ in key marketing, production, and financial issues. Their plans must reflect such differences and must emphasize appropriate areas and deemphasize minor issues. Remember that investors view a plan as a distillation of the objectives and character of the business and its executives. A cookie-cutter, fill-in-the-blanks plan or, worse yet, a computer-generated package, will turn them off.

Write your business plans by looking outward to your key constituencies rather than by looking inward at what suits you best. You will save valuable time and energy this way and improve your chances of winning investors and customers.

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ENTR 187 - Entrepreneurship

Sample business plans.

Business Plan Basics

Recommended book

Online Master of Business Administration

Entrepreneur Business Plan: What It Is and Why It’s Important

July 29, 2022

A close-up of multicolored notes on a desk with words and symbols written on them.

There is a tried-and-true saying: Failure to plan means planning to fail. This is one reason why your business plan is one of the most important documents to produce when starting a new business. Needing a business plan is a relatively common issue. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), only 67.6% of new businesses will survive at least two years. In other words, 1 in 3 new business ventures won’t last 24 months.

The online business and investment site Investopedia states that one of the main differences between success and failure for new businesses is ineffective planning prior to starting operations. It stands to reason then that entrepreneurs who make a business plan have a number of advantages.

Writing an entrepreneur business plan can help you think deeply about your business and the strategic steps you will take to achieve your goals. The plan can crystallize your idea and affirm the amount and type of funding needed to start and grow your venture. While there are many resources to help you define your business plan, a sound strategy is to pursue relevant college coursework.

Courses such as those offered in a Master of Business Administration (MBA) program can give you an in-depth understanding of business management. This understanding can serve to place you among the new businesses that succeed.

What Is a Business Plan?

Some primary components make up what a business plan is. These can increase your likelihood of success.

Smart, regular business planning shows that you know how to analyze and evaluate the progress of your business and reprioritize and reallocate resources, if necessary, to hit your targets.

Types of Business Plans

No two entrepreneur business plans are alike. However, there are several different types of business plans that entrepreneurs may use as templates. It’s important to form a basic understanding of these types prior to using them.

Internal Plan

An internal plan is intended for the people associated with your business. In a startup, these could be the people who will fill specific positions once it gets going. The tone of these plans can be more casual in nature.

External Plan

An external plan is intended for individuals outside your business. This plan, which is typically more formal in nature, provides detailed information on the business and its finances. It also typically includes a funding request.

Traditional Plan

Traditional plans are detailed documents that can be dozens of pages long. These plans typically provide a comprehensive company overview. They can be used in situations for securing funding, building out business strategies, and preparing for unforeseen circumstances.

Lean Startup Plan

A lean startup plan is a quick summary of your business. This type of plan can be as short as a single page and requires less time to create. It typically focuses on key business elements, such as the value you will deliver to customers, who your customers are, the infrastructure you will use, and how you will finance it.

The type of entrepreneur business plan you choose to develop will depend on your audience, whether you want to raise funds, or want a simple plan to remind you of your goals. Many businesses have different versions or easily adaptable plans that can be tailored to a specific purpose.

Why Is a Business Plan Important?

Business plans are important for sharing the vision of your business with stakeholders and other relevant bodies. It can demonstrate that you haven’t just considered the results of starting a business, but you’ve also created a detailed plan to get your business from idea to execution.

An effectively written business plan can be used as a persuasive tool to help others understand and meet your business goals. This could include convincing potential investors to finance your business. It can also help you form additional strategic partnerships after you’ve been established.

Elements of a Business Plan

Readers expect to see certain categories and elements of business plans. Not every section is required, but many have the information that banks, investors, and venture capitalists look for when deciding whether to risk their money on your new enterprise.

1. Executive Summary

An entrepreneur business plan’s executive summary highlights the key points about your business, including product or service, mission statement, leadership team, location, and other important information. Because it gives an overview of your entire plan, many people find it easiest to write this section last. If you plan to ask for funding from a bank or private investor, you should include financial information and your growth plans. Investors and other stakeholders should understand what your company is and how it plans to be successful.

2. Company Description

In this section, you should go into detail about the need your business fills and who will benefit from the solution. This is where your strengths should be listed, such as expertise in the field, a great location, or a revolutionary product. Remember to be specific and clearly define the market your business will target.

3. Market Analysis

This section requires a significant amount of research. It must show a detailed understanding of the trends and outlook of your industry. Additionally, you should include information about your target market and competitors. Think about what other businesses in the industry are doing well, and how you can find a profitable place in the market.

4. Organization and Team

Explain in detail the legal structure of your business, whether it’s an LLC (limited liability company), partnership, corporation, or sole proprietorship. You should also include an organizational chart, so readers can clearly see who oversees each area of the organization. You may wish to include a short biography of each team member to emphasize how their skills and experience will contribute to the success of the venture.

5. Services or Products

In this section, describe your product or service in more detail than in the “company description” section. You should also explain how it benefits or solves your customers’ needs. Go into detail about any ongoing research and development. If you’re filing for patents or copyrights, include that as well.

6. Sales and Marketing

There are many ways to market products, and this section will continue to evolve with them. Include all the marketing strategies you plan to use, such as social media or direct mail campaigns. You should also explain how sales will be transacted, such as through a sales network, online, in a brick-and-mortar store, or on the phone. It’s also a good idea to provide information about how you plan to track the performance of your marketing campaigns, so you can judge where your dollars are best spent.

7. Request for Funding

In the request for funding section, you should explain to prospective investors your financial needs, projecting out for the next five years. Explain exactly how that funding will be used. Remember to state the terms of the funding you’re looking for, and include a description of financial projections, such as selling the business or paying off debt.

8. Financial Projections

Following the request for funding, this section projects the finances of your business for the next five years. It should include forecasted income, balance sheets, cash flow, and capital expenditure budgets. You should be conservative and realistic when making projections, because you need to be able to support your numbers. Use graphs, charts, and spreadsheets so readers can easily understand the presented material.

9. Appendix

Your appendix contains all supporting documentation that you need for your business, like product descriptions, licenses, permits, and credit histories. Depending on who is reading your entrepreneur business plan, further information may be required. It may include the resumes of team members, photos or illustrations of your products, legal documentation, patents, and other documentation.

Plan for Success

Business plans are integral for success – they can help secure funding, project financial growth, and flesh out operational details. Creating an organized and effective business plan requires a deep understanding of business management and expertise in the relevant industries.

An advanced education can help you gain the skills and insight to be a successful entrepreneur. With nine concentrations, including Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship, Ohio University’s Online Master of Business Administration program can arm you with the knowledge to start your own business.

Learn more about defining your business plan and creating a blueprint for success with Ohio University.

About Ohio University

Founded in 1804, Ohio University is the ninth oldest public university in the United States. Located in Athens, Ohio, the school serves more than 35,000 students on the 1,850-acre campus, and online. This esteemed institution is ranked by numerous publications, such as The Princeton Review , U.S. News & World Report , Business Week , as one of the best education forces and academic values in the country. Ohio University offers a variety of programs across 10 different colleges, including 250 bachelor’s programs, 188 master’s programs and 58 doctoral programs. Ohio University is regionally accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Ohio University has a long-standing reputation for excellence based on the quality of its programs, faculty and alumni. If you are a professional who strives to align with one of the best, you need look no further than the esteemed on-campus and online programs offered at Ohio University.

Business Plan Examples For Students Entrepreneurship PDF

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Business Plan Examples For Students. Business Proposal Examples for Students. Also, Business Plan Samples For Students. Business Plan Examples For Students Entrepreneurship PDF.

Business Plan

The business plan refers to the company’s written statement explaining the business, including an executive summary, product and service, operation, marketing, and financial plan. The employee makes the business plan to represent the organization to stakeholders, customers, and affiliates. It proposes the business strategy entirely, so a business plan is also known as a business proposal. The business plan is crucial for a company to achieve competitive advantages. The significant elements of the business plan are executive summary, background, product and service, organizational structure, sales and marketing strategy, financial and operational plan, and more. For example, the new organizational structure of Netflix has influenced the improvement of its performance in 2023. In the meantime, Netflix added the new organizational structure to the business plan and declared it publicly.

Business Plan Example For Students

A business plan example refers to a business proposal sample that thoroughly explains the organization, including the executive summary to the financial statement. It also indicates the business report example or business proposal format. An example of a business plan includes the executive summary of the business, operational strategy, startup financial projections, financial projections, etc. The business plan example for students is also known as the business report format. Business plan writing is a mandatory assignment for students in the entrepreneurship, business administration, and business management course. It is also crucial to get a bank loan and make agreements with other organizations. The bank authority asks the organization to submit a business plan with the bank loan application. The other names of a business plan are business proposal, report, profile, and more. A business plan example is also known as a business proposal example, sample, and format.

Business Plan Examples For Student Entrepreneurship

Example of business report, if(typeof ez_ad_units='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'newsmoor_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_7',180,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newsmoor_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0'); business plan example and sample for students, 1.0 executive summary of business plan.

Currently, we focus on producing bamboo straws as we want to serve the best quality yet affordable straws to our customers. Our product is also biodegradable as it is made from Bamboo. We also guarantee that customers can use our signature many times, and it is also easy to wash and carry. The straw size is customizable, so customers choose the size based on their preferences. In addition, our specialty is not only on our product but also in our packaging. We use eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable packaging. BambooS targeted customers are the University Putra Malaysia society.

Each member will contribute RM 100 each, so the total for ten members’ contributions for the capital is RM 1000. Our warehouse is in the Serdang area, where we produce, package, and store our products. We are making the straw as per the customer’s demand and request. For the marketing part, we are advertising and promoting our product through social media such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and e-commerce, such as Shopee. We adopt the lean canvas business model tool to assess the outcome of the business.

2.0 Background of the Company

2.2 company overview, 2.3 vision and mission statement, 2.3.1 vision statement, 2.3.2 mission statement.

We want to fulfill the objective of satisfying customers with our eco-friendly products. We are committed to providing a customizable, fair price, and safe bamboo straw to encourage people to reduce pollution by using reusable straws anywhere and anytime.

2.4 Keys To Success

2.5 organizational chart, 3.0 administration and human resource plan, 3.1 business strategies, a. administration and human resources department, b. marketing department, c. operational department, 3.2 position and qualification, 3.3 job descriptions, 4.0 market plan, 4.1 introduction.

BambooS Sdn. Bhd. Support the “Save The Earth” campaign in producing eco-friendly Bamboo straws. These straws are environmentally friendly products; therefore, they work as alternatives to plastic products. The government has imposed restrictions on the use of plastic straws. They also create social awareness among people to consume natural products. Hence, It is a substantial driving factor of our market strategy. In addition, the surging demand for drinking beverages, including juices and Boba drinks and the save the turtle campaign, is also propelling the demand for bamboo straws across the globe. Bamboo straws are reusable compared to plastic; they are better for health, durable & robust, and it is an environmentally friendly product.

4.2 Objective of Marketing

4.3 analysis of marketing, 4.3.1 market trend, 4.3.2 external environment analysis.

Our first target market is around University Putra Malaysia (UPM). Since we are students of UPM, it is easier to approach our target consumers, including students and staff. Students tend to bring their water bottles or flask to classes. It is one step toward being environmentally friendly; thus, we encourage their effort by selling bamboo straws. In addition, we will promote our product at cafes or food courts at faculty and library cafes and put up a booth at stationery stores and convenience stores.

4.3.3 Internal Environment Analysis

4.3.4 market opportunities, 4.4 target market, 4.4.1 segmentation, 4.4.2 consumer market and buyer behaviour, 4.4.3 positioning, 4.5 4 p’s marketing strategy, 4.5.1 product strategy.

Our product comes neatly packaged in unique eco-friendly packaging with punch made by the jute bag, natural storage bags designed to help people think responsibly and promote their reusable bamboo straws every day.

Labeling/Customised

4.5.2 price strategy, 4.5.3 place strategy.

Furthermore, we also decided to make it easy for our customers to find our product by using the shopping platform apps, Shopee apps. We chose these apps because Shopee is the go-to platform if you want to start selling online at a low cost and big money: commission-free selling and free shipping.

4.5.4 Promotion Strategy

Social media advantages.

5.0 operations planning

5.1 location and places, 5.2 objective of operations.

Our objective is to produce Bamboo Straw to ensure that all the equipment and material are run smoothly and to maintain that all products are effective and of good quality. We also must gain customers’ trust and satisfaction with our service, including preparation, packaging, and delivery. We also make sure our products are well sanitized and safe for use. In addition, our company has ultimate accountability for profit and loss and seeks to maximize return on investment for the shareholders.

if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'newsmoor_com-netboard-1','ezslot_26',186,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newsmoor_com-netboard-1-0'); 5.3 Operation Strategies

5.4 supplier, 5.5 process planning, 5.6 implementation schedule, 5.7 machinery and equipment including gst, 6.0 financial plan, 6.1 introduction, 6.2 objective of the financial department.

A few objectives are as below:

6.3 Project Implementation Cost

Source of fund.

Our own money is used as the start-up capital with a contribution of RM100.00 per shareholder, bringing the total start-up to RM 1000.00.

6.4 List of Expenses

The equipment is counted as fixed cost as they are bought in bulk. Refer to 6.4 (List of Expenses) for detailed information.

6.5 Record of List of Sales

6.6 income statement, 6.7 cash flow statement.

The case flow statement shows that the initial capital on hand is RM 1000.00, and at the end of the business, the total surplus (after deducting all expenses) is RM 1982.71.

6.8 Balance Sheet

At the start of the business (22 March 2021), the initial capital share is RM 300.00. There is no liability such as a loan.

6.9 Financial Analysis

7.0 conclusion.

Based on the business plan or business proposal example that we have made, BambooS Sdn. Bhd. will give us profitable returns. The assumptions we made for these three months are conservative as we know that our company is still in the beginning, and the marketing and promotion are still in the early phase. The company sets systematic planning to reach the target. Thus, BambooS Sdn. Bhd. are very confident that our company will be able to grow in the future and become the most popular brand in the world.

Problem Faced and Solutions in Business

Based on all the problems and solutions, we can see that we are managing to face every obstacle in our business journey if we cooperate well. Besides, the company’s goals and objectives make us stay motivated and committed to doing our jobs.

Business Proposal Examples For Students PDF

The importance of a business plan, author: m m kobiruzzaman.

Email: [email protected] View all posts by M M Kobiruzzaman

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Entrepreneurship

Sample Business Plans

Business Plan How-To from Business Pros

Use Library Quick Search to find books and articles about business plans and starting a business. Suggested keywords:

"business plan", start-up, startup, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing

Library Q uick Search

Book Cover: Entrepreneurship for Scientists and Engineers

CUL - Main Content

Entrepreneurship: business plans.

Where to Begin with a Business Plan?

Swot analysis, resources for business plans, alternative or specialty business plans.

If you want to understand the components of a Business Plans, the resources on this page will take you through the steps involved in writing a business plan, prepare your pitch, and presenting ideas.

Once you’ve learned more about what should be included in a good business plan, use Company Research Guide to help you with specific sections of your plan. Additionally, it's helpful to conduct a SWOT analysis and market research; they can improve your pitch and help you grow your business in the right direction.

If you are creating a plan for a startup, consider using the Business Model Canvas rather than a traditional business plan.

Business Source Complete , which has SWOT analysis from Datamonitor. Click on the SWOT Analysis link on the bottom right of the screen.

Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC Entrepreneur's Toolkit) - Free web tools for business assessments, bench-marking, webinars, eBooks, publications templates and guides from the Business Development Bank of Canada. Includes business plan template

Business Plan Archive - A research database of sample business plans from the dot.com era (late 1990s to 2007). All interested users conducting academic, non-commercial research, must submit a research proposal describing the intended scope and purpose of their research. On completing the registration process, users are required to print their proposal and mail it to the Archive office at the University of Maryland, along with a letter of support from your host institution. Register via the Access the Archive link.

Business Plans and Profiles Index - Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh - Find sample business plans by business type. Some are online while others are in books as cited in each entry.

Entrepreneur.com - This is an article to writing a business plan that outlines the most important parts and what should be included in an effective plan.

Example of a High-Tech Marketing Business Plan - Work through this sample high-tech business plan of a fictional company, "Acme Consulting," provided by the Canada Business Network.

Shopify's Ultimate Guide to Business Plans - Looking to write a business plan for your ecommerce store? This comprehensive guide walks you through the nuts and bolts of writing your very own business plan.

U.S. Small Business Administration: Starting & Managing a Business - Provides access to a wealth of resources, including articles on the essentials of writing a good business plan.

Lean Canvas - Provides content and coaching for entrepreneurs, including a guide to help you communicate your business idea in one page.

The $100 Start Up - Provides downloadable guides that can help you quickly promote your idea, the site's "Resources" section includes a One-Page Business Plan and a 39-Step Product Launch Checklist.

The Right-Brain Business Plan - Create a visual map for the success of your business.

10 Alternatives to the Formal Business Plan - Think outside the business plan with these ideas for alternatives to traditional plans.

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Awesome Entrepreneurship Worksheets For Highschool Students
Sample Entrepreneurship Business plan for students
Sample Entrepreneurship Business plan for students
Sample Entrepreneurship Business plan for students

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COMMENTS

How to Make a Financial Plan for Your Business
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Entrepreneur Business Plan: Why It's Important
Writing an entrepreneur business plan can help you think deeply about your business and the strategic steps you will take to achieve your goals.
Business Plan Examples For Students Entrepreneurship PDF
Business Proposal Examples For Students PDF ... A business proposal is a short business plan that persuades other organisations to buy products.
Business Plan
Actual business plans compiled by, and aimed at, entrepreneurs seeking funding for small businesses. Presents sample plans taken from
A SAMPLE BUSINESS PLAN FOR
The following plan for a completely fictional business is used for a monthly entrepreneur workshop at Oklahoma State University's Food & Agricultural Products
Entrepreneurship: Business Plans
Entrepreneurship: Business Plans · Where to Begin with a Business Plan? · SWOT Analysis · Resources for Business Plans · Alternative or Specialty