Investor Ready Business Plan
Published January 10, 2012 | 
If you want to reach the highest successful achievements, then you must create your own framework of high expectations.
How do I know my Business Plan is ready to present to Investors?
Okay, so you normally get only ONE shot with investors and lenders. That means your business plan needs to be flawless the first time.
There are some indicators that your Business Plan will come up short of success with Investors.
What You’re Selling?
Has your business plan clearly and concisely described products and services you’re selling? Never assume incorrectly anyone reading the plan is as familiar with your business as you are. If you do, the assumption leads to a quick and final “no” from lenders and investors.
Always describe your product or service for someone who knows nothing about your business and industry including features and benefits of what you’re offering. Describe the problem it answers, why it’s better, faster, or cheaper or how it can improve their life.
Everyone is the Market!
Are they? It’s more than likely your market is a very specific group which can be identified, with both the need and desire to purchase your product or service. The difference between success and failure can be as simple as understanding your target market or niche. The market understanding enables you to delineate the benefits important to your clients, focus your marketing efforts to target the correct audience, and helps you to identify the channel with the greatest cost effectiveness to deliver your product in the hands of paying customers.
Include demographic traits as well as more subjective items such as lifestyle and personality types in your target market niche descriptions.
Your Competitors do Know You Exist
A business plan with no comprehensive competitive analysis is trash to most investors. Avoid this fate by including a thorough analysis of your competition in your Business Plan. It’s not just that competition exists, but competitive forces can have a highly-positive effect on a company’s attitude and performance. So be sure your business plan identifies not only who your competitors are, but what they sell, what market share they hold, and their strengths and weaknesses.
Sherlock Holmes had Dr. Watson
A well rounded and experienced TEAM of people is often the most critical ingredient to the success of a business enterprise. Most capital investment sources look at one-person operations as very limiting in terms of time, experience and core business skills that are required to successfully launch and grow a business. They expect a team of professionals that are highly competent in each business function. Be sure to provide your business plan reader a thorough description of the background and job responsibility for each management team member, along with a discussion key advisors.
Where’s the Exit, or Strategy?
A business plan is the best tool to plan a business including raising capital. However, when seeking capital don’t overlook an investor’s commitment centers upon their ability to recover not only their initial investment, but a healthy profit as well. You need a realistic exit strategy to illustrate how investors will accomplish their goal, or your plan will fail to raise capital.
When developing an exit strategy, be sure to include your particular industry, business life-cycle, competitive environment, and management needs. Don’t forget to take your personal and financial goals into consideration, and how they relate to your business future, and never lose sight that an exit strategy must meet the requirements of the person who will ultimately write you a check.
Two Types of Executive Summaries for Business Plans
Published December 29, 2011 | The markets have the tendency of making room for entrepreneurs whose actions demonstrate that they know exactly where they’re going.
How long should the Business Plan Executive Summary be?
Businesses that are seeking capital often enquire as to the optimum length the Executive Summary of their business plan should be. Well, the answer really depends specifically upon the use of the summary, which determines if 1) it precedes the full and complete business plan, or 2) it will be used as a stand-alone document, as may be requested by investors.
In the first type, when the Executive Summary precedes the body of the business plan, its length should be short. Typically, the summary should only be one to two pages and most certainly no longer than three pages. This is because the Executive Summary is a summary, and not meant to tell the whole detailed account of the business opportunity. Instead, the summary is a tool for simply stimulation and motivation of the investor(s) to want to discover more about the company in the body of the plan.
Now, the second type of Executive Summary is meant to be a completely stand-alone document. And, the summary document is provided by itself, to investors for their original review. If still interested, investor(s) will then request the full business plan for further in-depth review. A stand-alone Executive Summary often has the purpose of limiting the amount and flow of information. 
In other words, if a particular investor’s interest in the general opportunity that your summary presents no longer exists, you definitely don’t want to reveal to them any intimate and confidential details of your plan.
No matter which type of Executive Summary you are developing, both types of summary must be comprised of certain critical elements including:
- A succinct and to the point explanation of the business
- A clear description of both the market’s size and need for the business
- A concise discussion of how the business is uniquely positioned and qualified to satisfy the market’s need
In addition, a stand-alone Executive Summary should always include summaries of each essential elements of the business plan including:
Customer Analysis – Indentify specific market niches the company is targeting and customer demographic profiles
Competition – Identification of the direct competitors and the company’s major competitive advantages
Marketing Plan – Describe the company’s effective market niche penetration efforts
Financial Plan – Summarized financial projections of the company
Management Team – Brief Biographies of key management team and Board members
Understand that the Executive Summary is without a doubt, the most critical element of the business plan. If it fails to capture the attention of investors, they will choose not to read or ask for the full business plan. In consideration of its vital nature, you should spend the time needed to develop the best possible summary, create two versions (e.g., stand-alone and full plan predecessor) if needed, and work to insure it’s delivered in the hands of the right investors.
The Next Great Entrepreneurs – Think Entrepreneur
Published March 30, 2011 | 
Is it me or does the world seems to be moving faster and constantly changing. We seem to have entered an era of many very significant (r)evolutionary changes, with both technology and major financial decisions changing and reshaping the everyday world we live in. Some change has directly affected our jobs that many of us felt strongly were secure, but no longer exist. The global economic upheaval caused an opposite and rapid increase in entrepreneurship, a natural phenomenon of the global economic marketplace.
Many of us have been forced to come to the realization that employers don’t take care of us anymore, and we have made the crucial personal decision to become more self-sufficient in taking care of ourselves as a direct result. 
Along with this vital realization, some of us have been blessed with the clear understanding that our governments are having more trouble taking care of us.
It is no great secret that many social safety nets do not offer any significant retirement benefit, and none of us should still count on that as a major component of any retirement plans we might have had up to this point.
Which in the natural course of events brings us to the big question of what are we going to do? If the answer isn’t pretty obvious by now, the fact is that we need to become financially competent and start taking care of business ourselves, since it’s pretty apparent and clear nobody else is going to do it for us no matter how much they took care of us in the past. Believe it or not, for many other similar reasons we will be a great deal better off in the long run.
We have to entrust ourselves to the fact that financial competency and understanding is a mandatory aptitude that each of us must do our best to achieve, now more than ever in today’s global economy. You really need to know a lot about how to manage your cash flow if you haven’t already figured it out. You also need to be on the alert and especially watchful of both your assets and liabilities (balance sheet). In addition, you should become familiar with how to invest as well, since the days are over for arbitrarily throwing our money into nonproductive investments.
The upshot is that all of us need to understand and be on familiar terms with more about what we are doing, and by doing so, become better “entrepreneurs” and “investors” then we are today. We have arrived at the point in time where we really have no choice, and since the sooner we start taking charge of our financial lives, the better off we are all most certainly going to be, and in turn the world will be.
Business Analysis
Published October 22, 2010 | 
The goal of the Business Plan’s Executive Summary is to persuade the investor to learn more about the business. The Business Analysis in turn informs the reader on the subject of the business history.
Business Profile
This section should begin with a complete detailed profile of the business including its (1) date of formation, (2) legal business structure (Sole Proprietor vs. General Partnership vs. LLC vs. C-Corp., etc.), (3) office location(s), (4) business stage (start-up vs. undergoing R&D vs. serving customers, etc.).
Important Past Accomplishments
The next section of the Business Analysis should include the company’s important past accomplishments, including detailed descriptions and dates when, (1) Prior funding series were received, (2) Products and services were introduced, (3) Revenue objectives and milestones were reached (i.e., date when sales surpassed the million dollar mark etc.), (4) Strategic partnerships were implemented, (5) Significant customer contracts were finalized, (6) Key employees were hired.
Understand this information is critically important to investors since it tends to indicate the business’s capacity to effectively carry out a prior game plan. In addition, the attainment of milestones and objectives is a tremendous gauge for any prospective investors that their capital investment will be used to produce value and ultimately lead to a liquidity outcome.
Distinctive Qualifications
Finally, the Business Analysis should feature reasons why the business is distinctively qualified to be successful. This is most often referred to as the business’ “unfair competitive advantage.” This specific advantage could consist of a world-class management team, important proprietary technology, demonstrated operational systems, strategic partnerships and collaborations, long-term contracts with most important customers, as well as other successful achievements-to-date.
Executive Summary – A few Words About Length
Published October 21, 2010 | There is an old saying truer today than ever, that “you only get one first impression.” This old adage is even more significant when addressing your business plan’s executive summary. Investors have wide-ranging views regarding the best length of an Executive Summary. 
Some strongly favor a one-page summary, while others are of the opinion that a three to four page summary is more suitable. Including these crucial fundamentals in the first page of the business plan fulfills the needs of practically all investors. After examining the opening page, investors have the option to either finish reading the Executive Summary or skip directly to the other sections.
The executive summary of your plan will be the most important study and extensively distributed section. The Executive Summary is the only plan component that works to persuade others to discover more about your business. The prospective distribution of your summary may include potential and existing investors, tactical associates, vendors, distributors, legal, financial and other assistance and service suppliers.
Understand that typically the Executive Summary is created most often only after the business plan is complete. With the sequential development of your plan in mind, it becomes very vital to build the executive summary as a 
convincing rundown and NOT a simple reflection.
As an authoritative synopsis including strategic points to your business plan, the Executive Summary should be well formulated and written in a manner that is easy to comprehend. It must be attention grabbing, convincing and to the point. You want your summary to reveal an exhilarating, and highly feasible opportunity.
Many entrepreneurs consider this section of the business plan, and rightly so, the most difficult to write. You must scale down a somewhat extensive document that carefully contains a detailed description of your business, to simply three to five pages, and it is imperative that it is easy to read and understand!