Sunday, August 10, 2014

Business Plans And What The Experts Have To Say


Running a business as a business owner is not for the faint at heart. It requires a little bit of resilience and tenacity. Along with a passion and a strong desire, a well thought out and professionally prepared business plan should also be established. Clemson University entrepreneurship professor William B. Gartner believes business plans are essential. A good business plan can almost be considered one of the major requirements for running a successful business.

Barry Moltz is considered an expert when it comes to running small businesses and also when it comes to writing and reviewing business plans. He has personally had a great deal of success and failure with small businesses for more than fifteen years. He has given hundreds of presentations to audiences ranging from 20 to 20,000 and is recognized as an expert on entrepreneurship. He also has a host of national recognitions and has been honored for his many accomplishments in business. He says that as an Angel Investor, he reviews more than 500 business plans a year. In an article he wrote, he talked about some of things that should not go into a business plan and how those things make the plan less effective. He stated that a plan should never read that there is no competition in your market for the product or service you provide. He believes that every business has competitors. If there are no competitors then there is probably no necessary solution to a customer’s needs and ultimately no need for your type of business. He also discussed some things that are important to include in your plan.  One good point he brought up, as something that should be included in a business plan if being submitted for an investor to review is the investor’s exit strategy. In other words an investor should be able to see clearly in a plan their return on their investment, how long it will take for that return, and what concludes their involvement and commitment to the deal.

Another business expert is Guy Kawasaki. Guy Kawasaki is the former chief evangelist of Apple and special advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google. He is a best-selling author, speaker, and investor. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. He states that he believes the executive summary is the most important part of a business plan. He also states that this one page document should be fantastic, eyeball sucking, and pulse-altering, people won’t read beyond it. He believes you should spend eighty percent of your efforts on writing a great executive summary and twenty percent on the rest of the plan. In this interview he also gives a lot of great information about business and current business practices in the current as well as future market.

These experts give some very good information about running a business and creating a good business plan. As I endeavor to create my own business plan I will infuse some of their advice in preparation. I will make sure I provide clear terms for any potential investors and I will also spend time creating an inviting executive summary. Hopefully this information from these business plan experts will assist you in the completion of your business plan.

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 -Mike Sears

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