If you’re thinking about starting your own business or growing an existing business venture, you’ll need to create a business plan. In this video, learn how to write a business plan step by step that can get you funded and improve your strategy. Get the business plan help you need by watching this video, and I’ll also give you a free business plan template that you can use to help you get started.
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Partial Video Transcript:
Hi, I’m Chelsea!
In this video, I’m going to show you how to quickly and simply create a great business plan that’s going to improve your strategy and allow you to raise funding for your new or existing business.
Let me quickly tell you a little bit about myself. I’m a serial entrepreneur and over the past 15 years, I’ve started and run several businesses, and I’ve done marketing for businesses in a variety of industries ranging from education, finance, mortgage, medical and nonprofit. For my latest company, I wanted to create the best possible business plan. To do that, I thought I’d interview the expert in business planning. That expert is Dave Lavinsky.
Over the past 20 years, Dave has helped hundreds of thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs to create their very own business plan. And, the folks that he’s helped have raised billions of dollars in funding and have gone on to create some pretty amazing companies.
Let me bring Dave on this video, and I will ask him a bunch of questions so he can teach us exactly how to create a business plan. And, more importantly, he will show us how to do it faster and simpler. Oh, and before I forget, near the end of this video, I’m going to ask Dave to share a link to his free business plan template, so definitely stay tuned! And, have a pen and paper ready to take some notes while he speaks, and write down that free link at the end of this video.
Dave, thank you so much for joining me on this video today! It’s great to have you! Awesome! My pleasure, Chelsea! Awesome.
So, let me get started with my first question for you: What is the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a business plan? Great question, Chelsea. The most important thing to keep in mind is your business plan is a marketing document. Most people don’t understand that. They just think it’s ‘hey let’s get all my ideas down on paper.’ That’s not what it is. You really need to think about — that you are presenting your business plan to other people in general, and you want them to take your desired action. So, if you’re presenting your business plan to a bank or investor, you want them to write you a check. If you are presenting it to employees, you want them to join your company and do a great job. So, you need to think about your business plan as a marketing document. You’re marketing your company to people that read your plan and as we go through this interview, I’ll keep coming back to that theme of marketing, because if your business plan is not a great document, it’s not a marketing document, then people will be turned off and they’re not going to take that desired action that you want. Right, I love that. That’s a great perspective.
So, what are the 10 sections of your business plan? So, Chelsea, there are 10 sections that go in your business plan. We start with the Executive Summary, then we have the Company Analysis, then we have the Industry Analysis, the Customer Analysis, and the Competitor Analysis. Then, we move over to the Marketing Plan, the Operations Plan, the Management Team section, the Financial Plan, and finally the Appendix section. Perfect, that is a great overview, Dave. Thank you so much.
Let’s dive in and talk about each section of the business plan.