Business Tip #10: How To Write A Business Plan – Executive Summary

Posted March 4th, 2008 by William & filed under Archived.

A business plan to most people is probably as easy as:

“Quit job, start business, make money”

That is not how you write a business plan.

You can find out extremely indepth information about writing a business plan from sites such as entrepreneur.com: Creating a Winning Startup Business Plan or at about.com where they provide you with business plan templates that you can download and modify for your own use.

But possibly the best place of all to get a business plan is with this new and upcoming blogger that I’ve heard so much about.

Some say he eats concrete in the morning and that he uses his powers of handsomeness to concur the blogging world… all I know is, his name is William…! (sorry Top Gear)

Trust me… you’ll be fine.

Although I may not look it, I’ve actually done some research of my own on how to write a business plan. In fact, the template that I’m using right now is a business template for startups from a web company called SCORE. If you click the link, you’ll notice that the template itself, even empty is 32 pages long. I’ve tried filling in as much as I could on the template but it’s just TOO DETAILED and TOO COMPLICATED.

So I’ve decided to come up with a simpler business plan of my own (which I stole from a book I read anyway).

The book in question is ‘Anyone Can Do It’ by Sahar and Bobby Hashemi, the creators of Coffee Republic in the UK. OK… with Starbucks around their little empire has pretty much crumbled, but the business plan in their book was really good and simple.

I bet you that even they drink Starbucks every once and a while too.

DRAFT VERSION

CONFIDENTIAL

My Business

- A Business Which Does Blah Blah Blah

BUSINESS PLAN

March 2008

Write this section LAST. Why? Because it’s meant to be a conclusion of your whole business plan, summarizing everything that you wish to present in brief. You’ll need to finish the other sections of the business plan first to have conclusions right?

Unless you think backwards, in which case… go ahead, start with the executive summary.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

My Business is (describe what company does here). My Business is a new (insert niche market here and describe main key benefits of My Business). The main difference between My Business and others is (blah blah blah).

My Business offers its customers not just the normal (insert product/service here) but a host of other exiting options such as (describe all benefits of your product here in a bit more detail).

The concept of My Business started (now unless you have designed something new like youtube or Facebook, I’m assuming your idea has been done before somewhere out there. List where you heard of the concept for My Business and describe the main key statistics that you feel could back up why you are even considering doing this business and why you feel it may be successful) and is constantly growing at a rate of (insert an exaggeratedly high rate here).

Currently, no one is doing this type of business in (insert country/ state here) and I feel the opportunity is ripe to start here before the established overseas brands enter into the fray. (If the business type is already in the country then describe why it does not matter that they are here as what you will be offering them is so much better than anything currently in the market – In other words you don’t care about the competition)

Times are changing and the emergence of (this and that and this) will slowly but surely increase the demand for My Business and this is demonstrated by press/ internet coverage (insert any research done on this product/ service here).

We at My Business would like to emphasize that our potential competitors are not as capable as us because of (main reason here).

The following (insert desired number here) are our main unique selling points which differentiate us from our competitors and which we feel will eventually gain customer loyalty.

(insert a list of your main unique selling points here)

Our short term goals are (blah blah) but we intend to aggressively expand our business into (more blah blah) and to create a strong brand identity here and perhaps in other markets.

OK… I realize it’s kinda pointless to tell you to write this last but tell you how to write it first but the post is getting kinda long…

So by unanimous vote (my vote) I’ve decided to describe how to write the business plan in a couple of parts. I’m not sure how many parts it’ll take either… just that it’s more than one.

Hope it helps at least a few people out there.

Comments on my business plan would be appreciated. Thx!

Mish March 5, 2008

hey Willy, congrats on taking the plunge and starting up your own business. What about a challenge – a one page business plan?

Writing 30 pages is easy, it’s simply a matter of bullshitting your way through! But trying to put everything in one page is where it gets tough. Most investors and bankers won’t even get pass the first page of a 30 page business plan. Presenting them with only a one-pager to read will definitely make you stand out from the crowd.

Xanydude March 5, 2008

Hi Mish… yeap, I’ve been thinking of taking the plunge for quite a while now, just had to go find where I stored my balls and just do it! haha.

As for the one pager, I totally agree with you. Even at work, if you drag on and on, even your OWN BOSS won’t listen to you. So why would investors? thanks for the advice!