20 page business plan
Having a business plan is a must , whether your goal is to start a one-person freelancing business or a multi-million dollar enterprise. A quick and easy one-page business plan templates can get you started. Lenders and investors will require you to provide more in-depth information in the plan such as:. Keep in mind that a business plan is a living document and you can always start with a one-page plan and enlarge it with additional detail as required.
500+ Free Sample Business Plans
Having a road map helps you reach your journey's end successfully. Business plans do the same for small businesses. They lay out the milestones you need to reach on your way to building a profitable small business. From finance to marketing, operations to sales, each part of a business plan helps you reach your goals. What deters most entrepreneurs from creating a business plan, however, is taking the time to write it all out. Many are afraid to do so; they'll find their idea isn't so brilliant after all.
For those who take the time to research and write a plan, though, they often find that it helps them identify risks and possible roadblocks. Business plans are essential to identifying and overcoming obstacles on your path so you can build a successful company.
While writing a business plan can be frustrating especially when you're writing one from scratch, there are plenty of online templates available to take some of the pain out of the process. Small business owners can benefit from simple, easy-to-follow business plan tools so they spend less time writing and more time launching. Here is our simple business plan template, plus eight resources to help you craft a professional business plan quickly and easily. The executive summary is arguably the most important section of a business plan, because it needs to draw your readers into your plan and entice them to continue reading.
If your executive summary doesn't capture the reader's attention, they won't read further. Even though it is the first section, you should write it last. This section is an overview of your entire business. Make sure you include basic information, such as when your company was founded, what kind of business entity it is, what state it is registered in, etc. Provide a summary of your company's history to give the readers a solid understanding of who you are and what your business is.
Focus on your customers' perspective and needs by demonstrating the problem you are trying to solve. The goal with this section is to prove your business fills a market need and will remain viable for the foreseeable future. In this section, clearly define who your target audience is, where you will find them, how you will reach them and, most importantly, how you will deliver your product or service to them. Provide a deep analysis of your ideal customer and how your business provides a solution for them.
You'll also want to include your competitors in this section and illustrate how your business is different. What are their strengths and weaknesses, and how will you differentiate yourself from the pack? Before anyone will invest in your business, they want a complete understanding of whom they are investing in. This section should illustrate how your business is organized. As you list each individual, provide a summary of their experience and their role within your company.
Treat this section as a series of mini resumes and consider appending full-length resumes to your business plan. Last, the financial plan should include a detailed overview of your finances. At the very least, you should include cash flow statements as well as your profit and loss projections over the next three to five years.
You can also include historical financial data from the past few years, your sales forecast, balance sheet, etc. Make sure this section is precise and accurate. It's often best practice to create this section with a professional accountant. Finally, if you're seeking outside funding for your business, highlight why you're seeking financing options, where that money will go and when investors can expect a return on their investment.
LivePlan has become a recognized online business tools resource to help budding entrepreneurs every step of the way, from the planning stages to launch. Like other services, LivePlan allows business owners to craft perfectly formatted plans.
They have more than plans encompassing nearly every industry you can think of. After selecting the template you like, you can tweak, customize and create the presentation to pitch your idea to would-be investors. Post-launch, businesses can track revenue and expenses against forecasts. Perhaps you've heard about entrepreneurs who jotted down their business idea on a napkin at a bar.
Designed for entrepreneurs who are itching to get started, this simple business plan template asks a handful of questions that you can answer in one or two sentences. The plan covers everything from what you plan to sell and who will buy it to how you will get paid, "hustle" to find customers, foresee challenges, and overcome obstacles in a single page. Bizplan lets you create a business plan for free using your smartphone or tablet, and it offers more than just business plans.
You also have access to free pitch script templates, marketing tools, coaching and collaboration features. You can upgrade to paid plans that give you access to more tools, tutorials and other features.
Not all small businesses are concerned with credit lines, partnerships and office space — at least not in the beginning. So why should their initial business plans include these things? Copyblogger's Remarkably Simple Business Plan doesn't. Instead, it offers a business plan template fit for the real would-be entrepreneur.
Where most templates assume all businesses are uniform, Copyblogger's model is designed to get to the heart of what entrepreneurs need to know to start a business: the ins and outs of the product or service, how customers will find the business and how the business will make money. Simply copy and paste the template, created by Sonia Simone, co-founder and chief content officer of Copyblogger Media, and you're good to go. Financials are often the most confusing and difficult aspect of a business plan for new business owners.
Founded in , Enloop is regarded as an innovative player in the business-plan-creation industry. Like other services, Enloop uses an online interface to automate the creation of your business plan. To get started, users enter basic information about their businesses, including product details. From there, Enloop's software uses metrics to predict the financial performance of the company compared with similar companies in the same sector.
Enloop's goal is to help entrepreneurs make better-informed decisions. Here's how! Created by The One Page Business Plan Company , this simple template covers only the key areas entrepreneurs need to address to start a business: their vision for the company, why the business exists, objectives for setting goals, strategies to make the business successful and action plans indicating what work needs to be done.
Unlike complicated business plans, boring blocks of text are not required — bullet points will do. Greg Go, co-founder of online finance community Wise Bread , is a big believer that entrepreneurs who are just starting out don't need lengthy business plans. What they need, says Go, is an "internal working plan" to get started. The U. Small Business Administration SBA has a wealth of free planning, financing, and consulting tools and resources, both online and through available consultants.
The SBA offers some great recommendations on creating a business plan, including what type of plan you should choose depending on your business and your needs. Additional reporting by Katherine Arline and Marci Martin. Some source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article. Sean Peek is a writer, small business owner and SEO specialist. He began his career in digital marketing as a freelance writer in and has over five years of experience in the B2B space.
You can learn more at lightningmediapartners. Product and service reviews are conducted independently by our editorial team, but we sometimes make money when you click on links. Learn more. Start Your Business Business Plans. Free Business Plan Templates for Startups. What Is a Vision Statement?
Choose from + free, downloadable sample business plans from a variety of industries, Wedding and Event Planning (9); Wholesale and Distributor (20) to share your vision and strategy so everyone on your team is on the same page. A typical business plan runs 15 to 20 pages, but there's room for wide variation from that norm. Much will depend on the nature of your business. If you have a.
Having a road map helps you reach your journey's end successfully. Business plans do the same for small businesses. They lay out the milestones you need to reach on your way to building a profitable small business.
Go through our collection of free sample business plans — we have one for almost every industry.
Tasks, to-do lists, meetings, and more. Amidst that rush, the idea of writing a business plan—much less following a business plan template—often feels time-consuming and intimidating. In fact, a wealth of data now exists on the difference a written business plan makes.
21 Free Sample Business Plans
Bplans offers more than free sample business plans in a wide variety of industries. If you're looking for a tool to walk you through writing your own business plan step by step, we recommend LivePlan , especially if you're seeking a bank loan or outside investment and need to use an SBA-approved format. 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. You don't need to find a sample 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 exactly to the plans in our gallery.
Simple Business Plan Templates for Entrepreneurs
A business plan is a written description of your business's future. That's all there is to it--a document that desribes what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. If you jot down a paragraph on the back of an envelope describing your business strategy, you've written a plan, or at least the germ of a plan. Business plans can help perform a number of tasks for those who write and read them. They're used by investment-seeking entrepreneurs to convey their vision to potential investors. They may also be used by firms that are trying to attract key employees, prospect for new business, deal with suppliers or simply to understand how to manage their companies better. So what's included in a business plan, and how do you put one together? Simply stated, a business plan conveys your business goals, the strategies you'll use to meet them, potential problems that may confront your business and ways to solve them, the organizational structure of your business including titles and responsibilities , and finally, the amount of capital required to finance your venture and keep it going until it breaks even. Sound impressive? It can be, if put together properly.
Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya that helps you deconstruct your idea into its key assumptions. It replaces elaborate business plans with a single page business model.
There are many reasons why every company should have a business plan , but not every business needs a formal plan to show to outsiders. If your plan is just for yourself and your team, then you may be fine with just the lean business plan. However, if you do need to develop a plan to show to investors, banks, lawyers, and so forth, you can follow this simple business plan outline and decide on how in-depth or concise your business plan needs to be. No matter the type of business plan you create, these are the six basic sections you should include.
