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Our 35-page comprehensive innovation guide covers the key areas why innovation fails. While it cannot cover all the solutions (that would take books to fill), it provides you with a convenient starting point for your analysis and provides further resources and links to the corresponding UNITE models, ultimately allowing you to work towards a doubling and tripling your chances of success.
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Most of our models and canvases are designed to be applied!
To help you personalize them to your exact business requirements, you can download fully editable versions of the UNITE models available (PowerPoint format)!
They are straightforward to work with, and you can directly incorporate them into your presentations as you need…thus saving countless hours of replication!
PS: did you know that you are also getting hi-res print-ready versions for your workshops?
Each month we host our exclusive, invitation-only webinar series where one of our industry-leading experts updates our members on the latest news, progress and concepts around business strategy, innovation and digital transformation, as well as other related topics.
You will receive the book in PDF and EPUB formats, ideal for your computer, Kindle, Tablet or other eReading device.
These sessions are your opportunity to bring any questions or challenges you’re facing and receive expert guidance on the spot.
Come and be a part of engaging discussions where your unique concerns are heard and addressed.
If you are occasionally looking for a sparring partner or you need limited support, then this option will be ideal for you. Coaching sessions are 1-2 hours where we can discuss any challenge or opportunity you are currently facing.
If you need a few more hours outside of this provision, then these could be billed transparently.
We believe support shouldn’t be limited. Because we typically find that the occasional hour just doesn’t cut it – particularly if you and your team are in the midst of a large and complex project.
Your time with Stefan is therefore unlimited (fair usage applies) – in his function as coach and sparring partner. That does mean that you will still have to do the work – we cannot take that off you, unless you hire us as consultants. But you will get valuable strategic insight and direction to make sure you are always focusing your efforts where they will lead to the best results.
We believe support shouldn’t be limited. If you generally know what you are doing but want a sparring partner to frequently raise questions to, this is the perfect choice!
In addition to your monthly 1-1 live coaching sessions with Stefan, you will also get unlimited support from him via email and WhatsApp messaging (fair usage applies). This not only allows you to get valuable strategic direction in your calls, but also gives you instant access to expert help as you work through your plans each month.
The fact that support is text-based means that we can speed up our responses to you while keeping the overall cost of support down.
As a welcome gift, you will receive the both the digital and physical version of our book “How to Create Innovation”, which covers numerous relevant resources and provides additional deep dives into our UNITE models and concepts.
The print version will be shipped out to you on sign-up. The digital version will be emailed to you, and comes in PDF and EPUB formats, ideal for your computer, Kindle, Tablet or other eReading device.
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24 April 2024
If you're planning to launch a start-up or small business, this guide on how to write a business plan will help you create an effective road map to success. A thoughtfully researched, well-structured business plan can give you greater clarity on your business’s vision, help you avoid potential pitfalls and can help ensure you stay on track for your business goals. Read on to discover the essential elements of business planning, common mistakes to avoid, and business plan tips on how to make your plan compelling and ready for investors.
What is a business plan? Why is a business plan important? What to consider when writing a business plan? What to include in a business plan? Business plan formats How to write a business plan How to start a business plan What does a business plan look like? How long should a business plan be? Common business plan mistakes FAQ on creating a business plan
A business plan is a strategic document that details your business's objectives and the steps you’ll take to achieve them.
It is a tool that covers everything from your business strategy and key goals to financial projections and management structure. A business plan is also your opportunity to describe your company or proposed project in detail, showcasing both your short-term and long-term goals, budget details, and unique selling propositions (USPs).
Let's dive into understanding what a business plan looks like, why it's so important, and how you can create one for your business.
A business plan is important because it helps you create an effective plan for your new enterprise that allows you to make informed decisions, set clear goals, and manage your enterprise effectively.
The importance of a business plan becomes clear when you want to set your business apart from the competition.
Here’s how a business plan can help:
When you write a business plan, there are important questions you need to consider.
The first step is understanding your target market. Who are they? What do they need? How will your product or service cater to these needs?
Your business plan should be designed to serve this audience. You’ll need to conduct thorough market research and include this data in your plan.
The second step is to clearly define your business goals. What do you want to achieve in the next year, five years, or ten years?
Having clear, measurable objectives will guide your business plan and help you stay focused on your end goal.
Next, consider your unique selling proposition (USP). This is what sets you apart from the competition. Highlighting your USP in your business plan will not only help you stand out but also attract potential investors.
The financial aspect is another key factor. You need to have a clear understanding of your financial needs, cash flow projections, and profitability forecasts. This information is particularly important if you're seeking funding from investors or lenders.
Lastly, remember that your business plan is a living document. It should evolve as your business grows and changes.
Be prepared to review and update it regularly to reflect new goals, strategies, or market conditions. This flexibility will ensure that your business plan remains relevant and effective.
When developing a business plan, it can be helpful to first look at business plan examples in your relevant industry. There is no fixed business plan template, but many plans will include the following elements:
Your business plan should start with a succinct overview of your plan that highlights the key points and creates a strong initial impression. It should be compelling enough to encourage readers to read further.
This section should provide an overview of what your business does, the problems it solves, and the market it serves.
The market analysis section requires a thorough understanding of your industry, target market, and competition. You should demonstrate knowledge of market trends, customer needs, and the competitive landscape.
Define both your short-term and long-term objectives to provide a clear vision of where you want your business to be in the future. You can also describe how you plan to achieve these goals.
You should describe what you're selling or what services you offer, highlighting how your offerings stand out from the competition.
You should include a detailed overview of your finances, including cash flow statements and profit projections. This section shows potential investors that you have a solid understanding of the financial aspects of running a business.
Your business plan is a marketing document. It should be concise, engaging, and persuasive, convincing potential investors, partners, and employees of the viability and potential of your business.
Business plan format can vary depending on industry. For instance, a restaurant's business plan might feature a sample menu and location demographics, while a tech start-up may focus on development timelines and patent protections.
A small business plan is likely to look very different to a large business plan. Tailor your business plan to your specific industry and business type.
The complexity of your business plan might also depend on its purpose. If you're seeking significant investment, you'll need detailed financial projections. However, if the plan is mainly for internal use, you might focus more on strategy and team organisation.
In short, while there are common components in every business plan, the specifics can vary widely. Ensure your business plan is relevant to your industry, audience, and business needs.
Writing a business plan requires research and attention to detail for each section. Below, you’ll find a 9-step guide for researching and defining each element in the plan.
This is a brief overview of your business plan. It should include your business’s name, location, and the products or services you offer. Also mention your mission statement and your business’s USP (unique selling proposition). Remember, the executive summary should be concise yet compelling, persuading the reader to learn more about your business.
Your executive summary should include:
Describe your business in detail. Include the business structure (sole trader, partnership, limited company), the nature of your business, and the marketplace needs that your business aims to fulfil.
This is where you demonstrate that you understand your industry and market. Include information about your target customers, including their demographics and buying habits. Also analyse your competition, outlining their strengths and weaknesses.
What else to include:
Outline your business's organisational structure. Identify the owners, management team, and any key employees. Include an organisational chart if possible.
Describe what your business offers. If you sell products, explain how they are produced, their cost, and how you will sell them. If you provide services, describe them in detail, and list any associated costs.
Detail how you plan to attract and retain customers. Include your sales strategy and the marketing channels you plan to use. Here's what it should include:
Your marketing and sales strategy should be flexible. As you learn more about your market and customers, adjust your strategies accordingly.
If you are seeking investors or applying for business loans, you should include a funding request section within your business plan. It should include:
When considering where to secure funding, it's essential to explore your options. You may want to consider our app-based HSBC Kinetic Current Account for sole traders and single director shareholder businesses, or our Small Business Bank Account for small enterprises. Eligibility criteria apply.
Both accounts are designed to support the growth and financial management of your business. These platforms provide a range of services that cater to your business's needs, from daily transactions to long-term financial planning.
Provide a forecast of your business's financial future. This can include balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements for the next three to five years. Consider incorporating HSBC Kinetic into your financial planning for a comprehensive and digital-first approach to managing your business finances. Eligibility criteria apply.
Here are examples of what to include:
Your projections should be realistic, with all assumptions clearly stated. If you're a start-up with no financial history, base your projections on research and industry averages. If you're an existing business, use your past financial performance as a guide.
It can be beneficial to seek professional advice when preparing this section of your business plan, as it will be scrutinised by investors and lenders.
An optional section that includes any additional supporting documents such as legal documents, permits, and contracts.
Writing a business plan is not a one-time event. It should be updated regularly as your business grows and changes.
Starting a business plan generally involves seven practical steps and may require consultation with other professionals. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to start:
Research your industry:, outline your plan:, write the plan:, review and edit:, get feedback:, finalise your plan:.
Here are some people you might want to talk to when you write a business plan:
A business plan isn't a static document - it should evolve with your business. Regularly updating your plan can help you adapt to changes and stay on track towards your goals.
The recommended length of a business plan can vary depending on the complexity of your business model and the purpose of the plan. However, a typical business plan ranges from 15 to 35 pages.
Your business plan can and should be branded to reflect your business identity. Here's how:
Headers and sub-headers:, colour scheme:, images and graphics:, tone of voice:, consistency:.
Your plan is a reflection of your business. By incorporating your brand into the design, you're not just creating a strategy document - you're showcasing your business's identity.
You may have many questions when creating your new business plan. Below we look at some of the common ones.
Your business plan should be concise yet comprehensive, providing all the necessary information. The length might also depend on whether you're writing the plan for internal use, for potential investors, or for a loan application, as each audience might have different expectations.
It can be helpful to mark out which sections are for which audience, so that you can edit into a new document as required, rather than starting a new business plan from scratch.
Printed versions of your business plan should be on standard A4 paper, bound neatly, and presented in a professional manner. All electronic versions should be in a PDF format and have a clear file name for ease of sharing.
The layout should be clear and easy to navigate, with headers, sub-headers, bullet points, and plenty of white space to make the document easy to read.
There are common mistakes that businesses can make when writing a plan. These include:
Wrong audience:, it’s too long:, insufficient market research:, unrealistic financial projections:, not addressing potential risks:, poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation:, unclear business model:.
Writing a business plan may seem like a daunting task at first, but with careful planning, thorough research, and thoughtful consideration of each section - from the executive summary to financial projections - you can create a powerful document that serves as a roadmap for your business's success.
Remember, a business plan is not a static document. As your business grows and evolves, so too should your business plan. Regular reviews and updates will ensure your plan remains relevant and continues to guide your strategic decision-making.
Whether you're seeking investment, planning for growth, or simply setting the course for your day-to-day operations, a well-crafted business plan is an invaluable tool for every business owner. With the advice and guidance provided in this guide, you're now well-equipped to create a robust and compelling business plan.
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Posted february 21, 2022 by kody wirth.
What is a business plan? It’s the roadmap for your business. The outline of your goals, objectives, and the steps you’ll take to get there. It describes the structure of your organization, how it operates, as well as the financial expectations and actual performance.
A business plan can help you explore ideas, successfully start a business, manage operations, and pursue growth. In short, a business plan is a lot of different things. It’s more than just a stack of paper and can be one of your most effective tools as a business owner.
Let’s explore the basics of business planning, the structure of a traditional plan, your planning options, and how you can use your plan to succeed.
A business plan is a document that explains how your business operates. It summarizes your business structure, objectives, milestones, and financial performance. Again, it’s a guide that helps you, and anyone else, better understand how your business will succeed.
The primary purpose of a business plan is to help you understand the direction of your business and the steps it will take to get there. Having a solid business plan can help you grow up to 30% faster and according to our own 2021 Small Business research working on a business plan increases confidence regarding business health—even in the midst of a crisis.
These benefits are directly connected to how writing a business plan makes you more informed and better prepares you for entrepreneurship. It helps you reduce risk and avoid pursuing potentially poor ideas. You’ll also be able to more easily uncover your business’s potential. By regularly returning to your plan you can understand what parts of your strategy are working and those that are not.
That just scratches the surface for why having a plan is valuable. Check out our full write-up for fifteen more reasons why you need a business plan .
So what can you do with a business plan once you’ve created it? It can be all too easy to write a plan and just let it be. Here are just a few ways you can leverage your plan to benefit your business.
Writing a plan isn’t just for those that are ready to start a business. It’s just as valuable for those that have an idea and want to determine if it’s actually possible or not. By writing a plan to explore the validity of an idea, you are working through the process of understanding what it would take to be successful.
The market and competitive research alone can tell you a lot about your idea. Is the marketplace too crowded? Is the solution you have in mind not really needed? Add in the exploration of milestones, potential expenses, and the sales needed to attain profitability and you can paint a pretty clear picture of the potential of your business.
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For those starting or managing a business understanding where you’re going and how you’re going to get there are vital. Writing your plan helps you do that. It ensures that you are considering all aspects of your business, know what milestones you need to hit, and can effectively make adjustments if that doesn’t happen.
With a plan in place, you’ll have an idea of where you want your business to go as well as how you’ve performed in the past. This alone better prepares you to take on challenges, review what you’ve done before, and make the right adjustments.
Even if you do not intend to pursue funding right away, having a business plan will prepare you for it. It will ensure that you have all of the information necessary to submit a loan application and pitch to investors. So, rather than scrambling to gather documentation and write a cohesive plan once it’s relevant, you can instead keep your plan up-to-date and attempt to attain funding. Just add a use of funds report to your financial plan and you’ll be ready to go.
The benefits of having a plan don’t stop there. You can then use your business plan to help you manage the funding you receive. You’ll not only be able to easily track and forecast how you’ll use your funds but easily report on how it’s been used.
A solid business plan isn’t meant to be something you do once and forget about. Instead, it should be a useful tool that you can regularly use to analyze performance, make strategic decisions, and anticipate future scenarios. It’s a document that you should regularly update and adjust as you go to better fit the actual state of your business.
Doing so makes it easier to understand what’s working and what’s not. It helps you understand if you’re truly reaching your goals or if you need to make further adjustments. Having your plan in place makes that process quicker, more informative, and leaves you with far more time to actually spend running your business.
The content and structure of your business plan should include anything that will help you use it effectively. That being said, there are some key elements that you should cover and that investors will expect to see.
The executive summary is a simple overview of your business and your overall plan. It should serve as a standalone document that provides enough detail for anyone—including yourself, team members, or investors—to fully understand your business strategy. Make sure to cover the problem you’re solving, a description of your product or service, your target market, organizational structure, a financial summary, and any necessary funding requirements.
This will be the first part of your plan but it’s easiest to write it after you’ve created your full plan.
When describing your products or services, you need to start by outlining the problem you’re solving and why what you offer is valuable. This is where you’ll also address current competition in the market and any competitive advantages your products or services bring to the table. Lastly, be sure to outline the steps or milestones that you’ll need to hit to successfully launch your business. If you’ve already hit some initial milestones, like taking pre-orders or early funding, be sure to include it here to further prove the validity of your business.
A market analysis is a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the current market you’re entering or competing in. It helps you understand the overall state and potential of the industry, who your ideal customers are, the positioning of your competition, and how you intend to position your own business. This helps you better explore the long-term trends of the market, what challenges to expect, and how you will need to initially introduce and even price your products or services.
Check out our full guide for how to conduct a market analysis in just four easy steps .
Here you detail how you intend to reach your target market. This includes your sales activities, general pricing plan, and the beginnings of your marketing strategy. If you have any branding elements, sample marketing campaigns, or messaging available—this is the place to add it.
Additionally, it may be wise to include a SWOT analysis that demonstrates your business or specific product/service position. This will showcase how you intend to leverage sales and marketing channels to deal with competitive threats and take advantage of any opportunities.
Check out our full write-up to learn how to create a cohesive marketing strategy for your business.
This section addresses the legal structure of your business, your current team, and any gaps that need to be filled. Depending on your business type and longevity, you’ll also need to include your location, ownership information, and business history. Basically, add any information that helps explain your organizational structure and how you operate. This section is particularly important for pitching to investors but should be included even if attempted funding is not in your immediate future.
Possibly the most important piece of your plan, your financials section is vital for showcasing the viability of your business. It also helps you establish a baseline to measure against and makes it easier to make ongoing strategic decisions as your business grows. This may seem complex on the surface, but it can be far easier than you think.
Focus on building solid forecasts, keep your categories simple, and lean on assumptions. You can always return to this section to add more details and refine your financial statements as you operate.
Here are the statements you should include in your financial plan:
The appendix is where you add additional detail, documentation, or extended notes that support the other sections of your plan. Don’t worry about adding this section at first and only add documentation that you think will be beneficial for anyone reading your plan.
While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. So, to get the most out of your plan, it’s best to find a format that suits your needs. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.
The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used for external purposes. Typically this is the type of plan you’ll need when applying for funding or pitching to investors. It can also be used when training or hiring employees, working with vendors, or any other situation where the full details of your business must be understood by another individual.
This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix. We recommend only starting with this business plan format if you plan to immediately pursue funding and already have a solid handle on your business information.
The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.
The structure ditches a linear structure in favor of a cell-based template. It encourages you to build connections between every element of your business. It’s faster to write out and update, and much easier for you, your team, and anyone else to visualize your business operations. This is really best for those exploring their business idea for the first time, but keep in mind that it can be difficult to actually validate your idea this way as well as adapt it into a full plan.
The true middle ground between the business model canvas and a traditional business plan is the one-page business plan. This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. It basically serves as a beefed-up pitch document and can be finished as quickly as the business model canvas.
By starting with a one-page plan, you give yourself a minimal document to build from. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer-form business plan. This plan type is useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.
Now, the option that we here at LivePlan recommend is the Lean Plan . This is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance.
It holds all of the benefits of the single-page plan, including the potential to complete it in as little as 27-minutes . However, it’s even easier to convert into a full plan thanks to how heavily it’s tied to your financials. The overall goal of Lean Planning isn’t to just produce documents that you use once and shelve. Instead, the Lean Planning process helps you build a healthier company that thrives in times of growth and stable through times of crisis.
It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.
Now that you know the basics of business planning, it’s time to get started. Again we recommend leveraging a Lean Plan for a faster, easier, and far more useful planning process.
To get familiar with the Lean Plan format, you can download our free Lean Plan template . However, if you want to elevate your ability to create and use your lean plan even further, you may want to explore LivePlan.
It features step-by-step guidance that ensures you cover everything necessary while reducing the time spent on formatting and presenting. You’ll also gain access to financial forecasting tools that propel you through the process. Finally, it will transform your plan into a management tool that will help you easily compare your forecasts to your actual results.
Check out how LivePlan streamlines Lean Planning by downloading our Kickstart Your Business ebook .
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Explore the role of a strategic business plan in fostering innovation and driving growth at your company.
From handling customer concerns to managing supplier relations, companies often find themselves lost in the weeds of everyday business operations. These daily tasks can distract from the bigger picture and slow a business’s growth. This is why a strategic business plan is important.
A strategic business plan steers the company amid the bustle of regular operations and guides the leadership team to realize their strategic objectives and overarching vision. This article will discuss how a strategic business plan is a powerful tool for directing your company toward success and growth
A strategic business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines a company’s vision, mission statement , and goals, coupled with a detailed roadmap to achieve those objectives. The plan takes account of the current business environment, provides insights into a company’s competitive advantages, and helps identify key performance indicators (KPIs). It guides the entire company’s decision-making processes by bridging the gap between the present and desired future.
Both strategic and traditional business plans help you map out your company’s goals, understand the competitive environment, and engage key stakeholders in achieving those goals. However, their purpose, time horizon, focus, and execution set them apart. A strategic business plan focuses on:
A strategic business plan focuses on the growth and direction of an established business. A traditional business plan is typically used to start a business or secure initial funding.
A strategic business plan focuses on the next 12 months. A traditional business plan often covers a longer time frame, typically three to five years.
A strategic business plan concentrates on specific initiatives to develop the business. It emphasizes tactical, immediate actions to navigate the competitive landscape, increase market share, and work toward sustainable competitive advantages and business growth.
A traditional business plan is a high-level document that provides a long-term view of the business’s direction. This includes detailed financial projections, a marketing plan , and an overview of day-to-day operations, including project management and direct operations.
A strategic business plan focuses on turning high-level goals and objectives into actionable strategies and execution plans. A traditional business plan focuses more on the overall business concept and financial viability.
Aligned company objectives, improved decision making, prudent risk management, clear communication among stakeholders, funding options.
A strategic plan is your guide to achieving business success, and the process of creating and implementing it has five key advantages:
The strategic planning process should involve the entire company—from the C-suite to operations staff. This ensures all departments align with the overarching business strategy on a day-to-day basis. This collaborative effort unifies the leadership team, key stakeholders, and employees around strategic objectives.
Strategic business planning allows staff to make more informed decisions. Decisions that align with the company’s strategic objectives have a clear purpose, whether that’s investing in new opportunities, responding to competitive threats, or adjusting operations.
A strategic business plan helps companies anticipate potential challenges in the business environment. By understanding your company’s exposure to risk, you can make informed decisions that mitigate potential harm and help the business adapt to shifts in the market.
A well-documented strategic plan communicates your company’s mission, vision, and objectives to all stakeholders. This ensures everyone—from the leadership team to the employees— understands your company’s goals and their role in achieving them.
A strategic business plan includes financial projections and a marketing plan , demonstrating the company’s viability and potential for return on investment. If you pursue additional rounds of funding, you can use it to showcase the business opportunity to potential investors.
A well-crafted strategic business plan includes 12 key elements, each contributing to a comprehensive, actionable blueprint. Here are the essential components :
The executive summary opens your strategic business plan, documenting your mission statement, vision statement, company values, and strategic objectives. It provides key stakeholders with a preview of what’s to come.
The mission statement articulates your company’s purpose. It’s the guiding principle that steers your company in a strategic direction.
The vision statement paints a picture of your company’s future. It inspires stakeholders to contribute to your business growth plans.
This section lists the principles and ethical outlook that shape your company’s identity and influence its operations. They form the bedrock of your business strategy.
This section outlines what your company offers, showing how your products or services are poised to capture market share by addressing customer needs.
The market research section demonstrates your understanding of the business environment. That includes an in-depth study of customer profiles, competitors, and market trends.
A SWOT analysis is the part of your strategic planning process that analyzes your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It offers insights to inform your strategic business planning and enhance your strengths while acknowledging your weaknesses.
Business objectives, which are broader than specific goals, provide clear aims for your company. They support your company’s mission and vision by translating them into achievable initiatives.
The goals segment provides specific and measurable targets your company will use to achieve its business objectives. This component encourages accountability throughout the organization.
Your KPIs are the metrics that benchmark your company’s performance, determining whether you are reaching or falling short of goals. They provide measurable insights to track progress and influence decisions, ensuring your strategic plans are on course.
This section outlines how you plan to attract and retain customers. It details your marketing plan, the sales process, and your engagement strategies.
The financial plan outlines your financial projections , including revenue, expenses, and profitability. It includes a comprehensive view of the company’s financial statements , highlighting the viability of your strategic business plan. It can also be an essential part of seeking funding.
Creating an effective strategic business plan involves key members of your team. Here’s how to streamline the process:
Crafting a strategic business starts with examining all aspects of your company—from financial statements to your Net Promoter Score , an important measure of customer satisfaction. Consider your business strengths and any potential growth opportunities. Understanding where your company stands is fundamental to formulating an effective business strategy.
Conduct a comprehensive SWOT analysis. This process helps you identify your business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, providing a detailed overview of the competitive environment and where your business fits.
Define your strategic objectives and, based on your company’s mission and vision statement, establish measurable goals that align. These goals should encompass the entire company and help you achieve specific initiatives promoting business growth.
With strategic objectives in place, develop your marketing and financial strategies. The marketing plan should be geared toward reaching your target market and increasing your market share. Your financial strategy should include detailed financial projections.
Create a plan for implementing your strategic business plan. This execution plan should include specific projects to be executed over the next year and key performance indicators to monitor their progress. Involve key stakeholders and the leadership team in the execution process to ensure the plan is implemented effectively across the entire company.
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What is the main purpose of strategic planning.
The main purpose of strategic planning is to establish a company’s objectives and lay out the steps necessary to achieve those goals.
Update your strategic business plan at least once a year—or whenever you make major changes at your company or market conditions shift significantly.
Market analysis is pivotal in a strategic business plan. It helps businesses understand their competitive environment, identify growth opportunities, and inform strategic decision making.
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Starting and running a successful business requires proper planning and execution of effective business tactics and strategies .
You need to prepare many essential business documents when starting a business for maximum success; the business plan is one such document.
When creating a business, you want to achieve business objectives and financial goals like productivity, profitability, and business growth. You need an effective business plan to help you get to your desired business destination.
Even if you are already running a business, the proper understanding and review of the key elements of a business plan help you navigate potential crises and obstacles.
This article will teach you why the business document is at the core of any successful business and its key elements you can not avoid.
Let’s get started.
Business plans are practical steps or guidelines that usually outline what companies need to do to reach their goals. They are essential documents for any business wanting to grow and thrive in a highly-competitive business environment .
A business plan gives companies an idea of how viable they are and what actions they need to take to grow and reach their financial targets. With a well-written and clearly defined business plan, your business is better positioned to meet its goals.
A business plan is not just important at the start of a business. As a business owner, you must draw up a business plan to remain relevant throughout the business cycle .
During the starting phase of your business, a business plan helps bring your ideas into reality. A solid business plan can secure funding from lenders and investors.
After successfully setting up your business, the next phase is management. Your business plan still has a role to play in this phase, as it assists in communicating your business vision to employees and external partners.
Essentially, your business plan needs to be flexible enough to adapt to changes in the needs of your business.
As a business owner, you are involved in an endless decision-making cycle. Your business plan helps you find answers to your most crucial business decisions.
A robust business plan helps you settle your major business components before you launch your product, such as your marketing and sales strategy and competitive advantage.
Many small businesses fail within their first five years for several reasons: lack of financing, stiff competition, low market need, inadequate teams, and inefficient pricing strategy.
Creating an effective plan helps you eliminate these big mistakes that lead to businesses' decline. Every business plan element is crucial for helping you avoid potential mistakes before they happen.
Having an effective plan increases your chances of securing business loans. One of the essential requirements many lenders ask for to grant your loan request is your business plan.
A business plan helps investors feel confident that your business can attract a significant return on investments ( ROI ).
You can attract and retain top-quality talents with a clear business plan. It inspires your employees and keeps them aligned to achieve your strategic business goals.
Starting and running a successful business requires well-laid actions and supporting documents that better position a company to achieve its business goals and maximize success.
A business plan is a written document with relevant information detailing business objectives and how it intends to achieve its goals.
With an effective business plan, investors, lenders, and potential partners understand your organizational structure and goals, usually around profitability, productivity, and growth.
Every successful business plan is made up of key components that help solidify the efficacy of the business plan in delivering on what it was created to do.
Here are some of the components of an effective business plan.
One of the key elements of a business plan is the executive summary. Write the executive summary as part of the concluding topics in the business plan. Creating an executive summary with all the facts and information available is easier.
In the overall business plan document, the executive summary should be at the forefront of the business plan. It helps set the tone for readers on what to expect from the business plan.
A well-written executive summary includes all vital information about the organization's operations, making it easy for a reader to understand.
The key points that need to be acted upon are highlighted in the executive summary. They should be well spelled out to make decisions easy for the management team.
A good and compelling executive summary points out a company's mission statement and a brief description of its products and services.
An executive summary summarizes a business's expected value proposition to distinct customer segments. It highlights the other key elements to be discussed during the rest of the business plan.
Including your prior experiences as an entrepreneur is a good idea in drawing up an executive summary for your business. A brief but detailed explanation of why you decided to start the business in the first place is essential.
Adding your company's mission statement in your executive summary cannot be overemphasized. It creates a culture that defines how employees and all individuals associated with your company abide when carrying out its related processes and operations.
Your executive summary should be brief and detailed to catch readers' attention and encourage them to learn more about your company.
Here are some of the information that makes up an executive summary:
Your business description needs to be exciting and captivating as it is the formal introduction a reader gets about your company.
What your company aims to provide, its products and services, goals and objectives, target audience , and potential customers it plans to serve need to be highlighted in your business description.
A company description helps point out notable qualities that make your company stand out from other businesses in the industry. It details its unique strengths and the competitive advantages that give it an edge to succeed over its direct and indirect competitors.
Spell out how your business aims to deliver on the particular needs and wants of identified customers in your company description, as well as the particular industry and target market of the particular focus of the company.
Include trends and significant competitors within your particular industry in your company description. Your business description should contain what sets your company apart from other businesses and provides it with the needed competitive advantage.
In essence, if there is any area in your business plan where you need to brag about your business, your company description provides that unique opportunity as readers look to get a high-level overview.
Your business description needs to contain these categories of information.
The market analysis section should be solely based on analytical research as it details trends particular to the market you want to penetrate.
Graphs, spreadsheets, and histograms are handy data and statistical tools you need to utilize in your market analysis. They make it easy to understand the relationship between your current ideas and the future goals you have for the business.
All details about the target customers you plan to sell products or services should be in the market analysis section. It helps readers with a helpful overview of the market.
In your market analysis, you provide the needed data and statistics about industry and market share, the identified strengths in your company description, and compare them against other businesses in the same industry.
The market analysis section aims to define your target audience and estimate how your product or service would fare with these identified audiences.
Market analysis helps visualize a target market by researching and identifying the primary target audience of your company and detailing steps and plans based on your audience location.
Obtaining this information through market research is essential as it helps shape how your business achieves its short-term and long-term goals.
Here are some of the factors to be included in your market analysis.
Here is some of the information to be included in your market analysis.
A marketing plan defines how your business aims to reach its target customers, generate sales leads, and, ultimately, make sales.
Promotion is at the center of any successful marketing plan. It is a series of steps to pitch a product or service to a larger audience to generate engagement. Note that the marketing strategy for a business should not be stagnant and must evolve depending on its outcome.
Include the budgetary requirement for successfully implementing your marketing plan in this section to make it easy for readers to measure your marketing plan's impact in terms of numbers.
The information to include in your marketing plan includes marketing and promotion strategies, pricing plans and strategies , and sales proposals. You need to include how you intend to get customers to return and make repeat purchases in your business plan.
Sales strategy defines how you intend to get your product or service to your target customers and works hand in hand with your business marketing strategy.
Your sales strategy approach should not be complex. Break it down into simple and understandable steps to promote your product or service to target customers.
Apart from the steps to promote your product or service, define the budget you need to implement your sales strategies and the number of sales reps needed to help the business assist in direct sales.
Your sales strategy should be specific on what you need and how you intend to deliver on your sales targets, where numbers are reflected to make it easier for readers to understand and relate better.
Providing transparent and honest information, even with direct and indirect competitors, defines a good business plan. Provide the reader with a clear picture of your rank against major competitors.
Identifying your competitors' weaknesses and strengths is useful in drawing up a market analysis. It is one information investors look out for when assessing business plans.
The competitive analysis section clearly defines the notable differences between your company and your competitors as measured against their strengths and weaknesses.
This section should define the following:
In your business plan, you need to prove your industry knowledge to anyone who reads your business plan. The competitive analysis section is designed for that purpose.
Management and organization are key components of a business plan. They define its structure and how it is positioned to run.
Whether you intend to run a sole proprietorship, general or limited partnership, or corporation, the legal structure of your business needs to be clearly defined in your business plan.
Use an organizational chart that illustrates the hierarchy of operations of your company and spells out separate departments and their roles and functions in this business plan section.
The management and organization section includes profiles of advisors, board of directors, and executive team members and their roles and responsibilities in guaranteeing the company's success.
Apparent factors that influence your company's corporate culture, such as human resources requirements and legal structure, should be well defined in the management and organization section.
Defining the business's chain of command if you are not a sole proprietor is necessary. It leaves room for little or no confusion about who is in charge or responsible during business operations.
This section provides relevant information on how the management team intends to help employees maximize their strengths and address their identified weaknesses to help all quarters improve for the business's success.
This business plan section describes what a company has to offer regarding products and services to the maximum benefit and satisfaction of its target market.
Boldly spell out pending patents or copyright products and intellectual property in this section alongside costs, expected sales revenue, research and development, and competitors' advantage as an overview.
At this stage of your business plan, the reader needs to know what your business plans to produce and sell and the benefits these products offer in meeting customers' needs.
The supply network of your business product, production costs, and how you intend to sell the products are crucial components of the products and services section.
Investors are always keen on this information to help them reach a balanced assessment of if investing in your business is risky or offer benefits to them.
You need to create a link in this section on how your products or services are designed to meet the market's needs and how you intend to keep those customers and carve out a market share for your company.
Repeat purchases are the backing that a successful business relies on and measure how much customers are into what your company is offering.
This section is more like an expansion of the executive summary section. You need to analyze each product or service under the business.
An operations plan describes how you plan to carry out your business operations and processes.
The operating plan for your business should include:
This section should highlight how your organization is set up to run. You can also introduce your company's management team in this section, alongside their skills, roles, and responsibilities in the company.
The best way to introduce the company team is by drawing up an organizational chart that effectively maps out an organization's rank and chain of command.
What should be spelled out to readers when they come across this business plan section is how the business plans to operate day-in and day-out successfully.
Bringing your great business ideas into reality is why business plans are important. They help create a sustainable and viable business.
The financial section of your business plan offers significant value. A business uses a financial plan to solve all its financial concerns, which usually involves startup costs, labor expenses, financial projections, and funding and investor pitches.
All key assumptions about the business finances need to be listed alongside the business financial projection, and changes to be made on the assumptions side until it balances with the projection for the business.
The financial plan should also include how the business plans to generate income and the capital expenditure budgets that tend to eat into the budget to arrive at an accurate cash flow projection for the business.
Base your financial goals and expectations on extensive market research backed with relevant financial statements for the relevant period.
Examples of financial statements you can include in the financial projections and assumptions section of your business plan include:
Revealing the financial goals and potentials of the business is what the financial projection and assumption section of your business plan is all about. It needs to be purely based on facts that can be measurable and attainable.
The request for funding section focuses on the amount of money needed to set up your business and underlying plans for raising the money required. This section includes plans for utilizing the funds for your business's operational and manufacturing processes.
When seeking funding, a reasonable timeline is required alongside it. If the need arises for additional funding to complete other business-related projects, you are not left scampering and desperate for funds.
If you do not have the funds to start up your business, then you should devote a whole section of your business plan to explaining the amount of money you need and how you plan to utilize every penny of the funds. You need to explain it in detail for a future funding request.
When an investor picks up your business plan to analyze it, with all your plans for the funds well spelled out, they are motivated to invest as they have gotten a backing guarantee from your funding request section.
Include timelines and plans for how you intend to repay the loans received in your funding request section. This addition keeps investors assured that they could recoup their investment in the business.
Exhibits and appendices comprise the final section of your business plan and contain all supporting documents for other sections of the business plan.
Some of the documents that comprise the exhibits and appendices section includes:
The choice of what additional document to include in your business plan to support your statements depends mainly on the intended audience of your business plan. Hence, it is better to play it safe and not leave anything out when drawing up the appendix and exhibit section.
Supporting documentation is particularly helpful when you need funding or support for your business. This section provides investors with a clearer understanding of the research that backs the claims made in your business plan.
There are key points to include in the appendix and exhibits section of your business plan.
Martin luenendonk.
Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.
This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.
Learning objectives.
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
Unlike the brief or lean formats introduced so far, the business plan is a formal document used for the long-range planning of a company’s operation. It typically includes background information, financial information, and a summary of the business. Investors nearly always request a formal business plan because it is an integral part of their evaluation of whether to invest in a company. Although nothing in business is permanent, a business plan typically has components that are more “set in stone” than a business model canvas , which is more commonly used as a first step in the planning process and throughout the early stages of a nascent business. A business plan is likely to describe the business and industry, market strategies, sales potential, and competitive analysis, as well as the company’s long-term goals and objectives. An in-depth formal business plan would follow at later stages after various iterations to business model canvases. The business plan usually projects financial data over a three-year period and is typically required by banks or other investors to secure funding. The business plan is a roadmap for the company to follow over multiple years.
Some entrepreneurs prefer to use the canvas process instead of the business plan, whereas others use a shorter version of the business plan, submitting it to investors after several iterations. There are also entrepreneurs who use the business plan earlier in the entrepreneurial process, either preceding or concurrently with a canvas. For instance, Chris Guillebeau has a one-page business plan template in his book The $100 Startup . 48 His version is basically an extension of a napkin sketch without the detail of a full business plan. As you progress, you can also consider a brief business plan (about two pages)—if you want to support a rapid business launch—and/or a standard business plan.
As with many aspects of entrepreneurship, there are no clear hard and fast rules to achieving entrepreneurial success. You may encounter different people who want different things (canvas, summary, full business plan), and you also have flexibility in following whatever tool works best for you. Like the canvas, the various versions of the business plan are tools that will aid you in your entrepreneurial endeavor.
Most business plans have several distinct sections ( Figure 11.16 ). The business plan can range from a few pages to twenty-five pages or more, depending on the purpose and the intended audience. For our discussion, we’ll describe a brief business plan and a standard business plan. If you are able to successfully design a business model canvas, then you will have the structure for developing a clear business plan that you can submit for financial consideration.
Both types of business plans aim at providing a picture and roadmap to follow from conception to creation. If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept.
The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, dealing with the proverbial devil in the details. Developing a full business plan will assist those of you who need a more detailed and structured roadmap, or those of you with little to no background in business. The business planning process includes the business model, a feasibility analysis, and a full business plan, which we will discuss later in this section. Next, we explore how a business plan can meet several different needs.
A business plan can serve many different purposes—some internal, others external. As we discussed previously, you can use a business plan as an internal early planning device, an extension of a napkin sketch, and as a follow-up to one of the canvas tools. A business plan can be an organizational roadmap , that is, an internal planning tool and working plan that you can apply to your business in order to reach your desired goals over the course of several years. The business plan should be written by the owners of the venture, since it forces a firsthand examination of the business operations and allows them to focus on areas that need improvement.
Refer to the business venture throughout the document. Generally speaking, a business plan should not be written in the first person.
A major external purpose for the business plan is as an investment tool that outlines financial projections, becoming a document designed to attract investors. In many instances, a business plan can complement a formal investor’s pitch. In this context, the business plan is a presentation plan, intended for an outside audience that may or may not be familiar with your industry, your business, and your competitors.
You can also use your business plan as a contingency plan by outlining some “what-if” scenarios and exploring how you might respond if these scenarios unfold. Pretty Young Professional launched in November 2010 as an online resource to guide an emerging generation of female leaders. The site focused on recent female college graduates and current students searching for professional roles and those in their first professional roles. It was founded by four friends who were coworkers at the global consultancy firm McKinsey. But after positions and equity were decided among them, fundamental differences of opinion about the direction of the business emerged between two factions, according to the cofounder and former CEO Kathryn Minshew . “I think, naively, we assumed that if we kicked the can down the road on some of those things, we’d be able to sort them out,” Minshew said. Minshew went on to found a different professional site, The Muse , and took much of the editorial team of Pretty Young Professional with her. 49 Whereas greater planning potentially could have prevented the early demise of Pretty Young Professional, a change in planning led to overnight success for Joshua Esnard and The Cut Buddy team. Esnard invented and patented the plastic hair template that he was selling online out of his Fort Lauderdale garage while working a full-time job at Broward College and running a side business. Esnard had hundreds of boxes of Cut Buddies sitting in his home when he changed his marketing plan to enlist companies specializing in making videos go viral. It worked so well that a promotional video for the product garnered 8 million views in hours. The Cut Buddy sold over 4,000 products in a few hours when Esnard only had hundreds remaining. Demand greatly exceeded his supply, so Esnard had to scramble to increase manufacturing and offered customers two-for-one deals to make up for delays. This led to selling 55,000 units, generating $700,000 in sales in 2017. 50 After appearing on Shark Tank and landing a deal with Daymond John that gave the “shark” a 20-percent equity stake in return for $300,000, The Cut Buddy has added new distribution channels to include retail sales along with online commerce. Changing one aspect of a business plan—the marketing plan—yielded success for The Cut Buddy.
Watch this video of Cut Buddy’s founder, Joshua Esnard, telling his company’s story to learn more.
If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept. This version is used to interest potential investors, employees, and other stakeholders, and will include a financial summary “box,” but it must have a disclaimer, and the founder/entrepreneur may need to have the people who receive it sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) . The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, providing supporting details, and would be required by financial institutions and others as they formally become stakeholders in the venture. Both are aimed at providing a picture and roadmap to go from conception to creation.
The brief business plan is similar to an extended executive summary from the full business plan. This concise document provides a broad overview of your entrepreneurial concept, your team members, how and why you will execute on your plans, and why you are the ones to do so. You can think of a brief business plan as a scene setter or—since we began this chapter with a film reference—as a trailer to the full movie. The brief business plan is the commercial equivalent to a trailer for Field of Dreams , whereas the full plan is the full-length movie equivalent.
As the name implies, the brief business plan or executive summary summarizes key elements of the entire business plan, such as the business concept, financial features, and current business position. The executive summary version of the business plan is your opportunity to broadly articulate the overall concept and vision of the company for yourself, for prospective investors, and for current and future employees.
A typical executive summary is generally no longer than a page, but because the brief business plan is essentially an extended executive summary, the executive summary section is vital. This is the “ask” to an investor. You should begin by clearly stating what you are asking for in the summary.
In the business concept phase, you’ll describe the business, its product, and its markets. Describe the customer segment it serves and why your company will hold a competitive advantage. This section may align roughly with the customer segments and value-proposition segments of a canvas.
Next, highlight the important financial features, including sales, profits, cash flows, and return on investment. Like the financial portion of a feasibility analysis, the financial analysis component of a business plan may typically include items like a twelve-month profit and loss projection, a three- or four-year profit and loss projection, a cash-flow projection, a projected balance sheet, and a breakeven calculation. You can explore a feasibility study and financial projections in more depth in the formal business plan. Here, you want to focus on the big picture of your numbers and what they mean.
The current business position section can furnish relevant information about you and your team members and the company at large. This is your opportunity to tell the story of how you formed the company, to describe its legal status (form of operation), and to list the principal players. In one part of the extended executive summary, you can cover your reasons for starting the business: Here is an opportunity to clearly define the needs you think you can meet and perhaps get into the pains and gains of customers. You also can provide a summary of the overall strategic direction in which you intend to take the company. Describe the company’s mission, vision, goals and objectives, overall business model, and value proposition.
Rice University’s Student Business Plan Competition, one of the largest and overall best-regarded graduate school business-plan competitions (see Telling Your Entrepreneurial Story and Pitching the Idea ), requires an executive summary of up to five pages to apply. 51 , 52 Its suggested sections are shown in Table 11.2 .
Section | Description |
---|---|
Company summary | Brief overview (one to two paragraphs) of the problem, solution, and potential customers |
Customer analysis | Description of potential customers and evidence they would purchase product |
Market analysis | Size of market, target market, and share of market |
Product or service | Current state of product in development and evidence it is feasible |
Intellectual property | If applicable, information on patents, licenses, or other IP items |
Competitive differentiation | Describe the competition and your competitive advantage |
Company founders, management team, and/or advisor | Bios of key people showcasing their expertise and relevant experience |
Financials | Projections of revenue, profit, and cash flow for three to five years |
Amount of investment | Funding request and how funds will be used |
Create a brief business plan.
Fill out a canvas of your choosing for a well-known startup: Uber, Netflix, Dropbox, Etsy, Airbnb, Bird/Lime, Warby Parker, or any of the companies featured throughout this chapter or one of your choice. Then create a brief business plan for that business. See if you can find a version of the company’s actual executive summary, business plan, or canvas. Compare and contrast your vision with what the company has articulated.
Even full business plans can vary in length, scale, and scope. Rice University sets a ten-page cap on business plans submitted for the full competition. The IndUS Entrepreneurs , one of the largest global networks of entrepreneurs, also holds business plan competitions for students through its Tie Young Entrepreneurs program. In contrast, business plans submitted for that competition can usually be up to twenty-five pages. These are just two examples. Some components may differ slightly; common elements are typically found in a formal business plan outline. The next section will provide sample components of a full business plan for a fictional business.
The executive summary should provide an overview of your business with key points and issues. Because the summary is intended to summarize the entire document, it is most helpful to write this section last, even though it comes first in sequence. The writing in this section should be especially concise. Readers should be able to understand your needs and capabilities at first glance. The section should tell the reader what you want and your “ask” should be explicitly stated in the summary.
Describe your business, its product or service, and the intended customers. Explain what will be sold, who it will be sold to, and what competitive advantages the business has. Table 11.3 shows a sample executive summary for the fictional company La Vida Lola.
Executive Summary Component | Content |
---|---|
The Concept | La Vida Lola is a food truck serving the best Latin American and Caribbean cuisine in the Atlanta region, particularly Puerto Rican and Cuban dishes, with a festive flair. La Vida Lola offers freshly prepared dishes from the mobile kitchen of the founding chef and namesake Lola González, a Duluth, Georgia, native who has returned home to launch her first venture after working under some of the world’s top chefs. La Vida Lola will cater to festivals, parks, offices, community and sporting events, and breweries throughout the region. |
Market Advantage | Latin food packed with flavor and flair is the main attraction of La Vida Lola. Flavors steeped in Latin American and Caribbean culture can be enjoyed from a menu featuring street foods, sandwiches, and authentic dishes from the González family’s Puerto Rican and Cuban roots. craving ethnic food experiences and are the primary customers, but anyone with a taste for delicious homemade meals in Atlanta can order. Having a native Atlanta-area resident returning to her hometown after working in restaurants around the world to share food with area communities offers a competitive advantage for La Vida Lola in the form of founding chef Lola González. |
Marketing | The venture will adopt a concentrated marketing strategy. The company’s promotion mix will comprise a mix of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling. Much of the promotion mix will center around dual-language social media. |
Venture Team | The two founding members of the management team have almost four decades of combined experience in the restaurant and hospitality industries. Their background includes experience in food and beverage, hospitality and tourism, accounting, finance, and business creation. |
Capital Requirements | La Vida Lola is seeking startup capital of $50,000 to establish its food truck in the Atlanta area. An additional $20,000 will be raised through a donations-driven crowdfunding campaign. The venture can be up and running within six months to a year. |
This section describes the industry, your product, and the business and success factors. It should provide a current outlook as well as future trends and developments. You also should address your company’s mission, vision, goals, and objectives. Summarize your overall strategic direction, your reasons for starting the business, a description of your products and services, your business model, and your company’s value proposition. Consider including the Standard Industrial Classification/North American Industry Classification System (SIC/NAICS) code to specify the industry and insure correct identification. The industry extends beyond where the business is located and operates, and should include national and global dynamics. Table 11.4 shows a sample business description for La Vida Lola.
Business Description | La Vida Lola will operate in the mobile food services industry, which is identified by SIC code 5812 Eating Places and NAICS code 722330 Mobile Food Services, which consist of establishments primarily engaged in preparing and serving meals and snacks for immediate consumption from motorized vehicles or nonmotorized carts. Ethnically inspired to serve a consumer base that craves more spiced Latin foods, La Vida Lola is an Atlanta-area food truck specializing in Latin cuisine, particularly Puerto Rican and Cuban dishes native to the roots of the founding chef and namesake, Lola González. La Vida Lola aims to spread a passion for Latin cuisine within local communities through flavorful food freshly prepared in a region that has embraced international eats. Through its mobile food kitchen, La Vida Lola plans to roll into parks, festivals, office buildings, breweries, and sporting and community events throughout the greater Atlanta metropolitan region. Future growth possibilities lie in expanding the number of food trucks, integrating food delivery on demand, and adding a food stall at an area food market. After working in noted restaurants for a decade, most recently under the famed chef José Andrés, chef Lola González returned to her hometown of Duluth, Georgia, to start her own venture. Although classically trained by top world chefs, it was González’s grandparents’ cooking of authentic Puerto Rican and Cuban dishes in their kitchen that influenced her profoundly. The freshest ingredients from the local market, the island spices, and her attention to detail were the spark that ignited Lola’s passion for cooking. To that end, she brings flavors steeped in Latin American and Caribbean culture to a flavorful menu packed full of street foods, sandwiches, and authentic dishes. Through reasonably priced menu items, La Vida Lola offers food that appeals to a wide range of customers, from millennial foodies to Latin natives and other locals with Latin roots. |
Here you should define your market in terms of size, structure, growth prospects, trends, and sales potential. You’ll want to include your TAM and forecast the SAM . (Both these terms are discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis .) This is a place to address market segmentation strategies by geography, customer attributes, or product orientation. Describe your positioning relative to your competitors’ in terms of pricing, distribution, promotion plan, and sales potential. Table 11.5 shows an example industry analysis and market strategy for La Vida Lola.
Industry Analysis and Market Strategy | According to ’ first annual report from the San Francisco-based Off The Grid, a company that facilitates food markets nationwide, the US food truck industry alone is projected to grow by nearly 20 percent from $800 million in 2017 to $985 million in 2019. Meanwhile, an report shows the street vendors’ industry with a 4.2 percent annual growth rate to reach $3.2 billion in 2018. Food truck and street food vendors are increasingly investing in specialty, authentic ethnic, and fusion food, according to the report. Although the report projects demand to slow down over the next five years, it notes there are still opportunities for sustained growth in major metropolitan areas. The street vendors industry has been a particular bright spot within the larger food service sector. The industry is in a growth phase of its life cycle. The low overhead cost to set up a new establishment has enabled many individuals, especially specialty chefs looking to start their own businesses, to own a food truck in lieu of opening an entire restaurant. Off the Grid’s annual report indicates the average typical initial investment ranges from $55,000 to $75,000 to open a mobile food truck. The restaurant industry accounts for $800 billion in sales nationwide, according to data from the National Restaurant Association. Georgia restaurants brought in a total of $19.6 billion in 2017, according to figures from the Georgia Restaurant Association. There are approximately 12,000 restaurants in the metro Atlanta region. The Atlanta region accounts for almost 60 percent of the Georgia restaurant industry. The SAM is estimated to be approximately $360 million. The mobile food/street vendor industry can be segmented by types of customers, types of cuisine (American, desserts, Central and South American, Asian, mixed ethnicity, Greek Mediterranean, seafood), geographic location and types (mobile food stands, mobile refreshment stands, mobile snack stands, street vendors of food, mobile food concession stands). Secondary competing industries include chain restaurants, single location full-service restaurants, food service contractors, caterers, fast food restaurants, and coffee and snack shops. The top food truck competitors according to the , the daily newspaper in La Vida Lola’s market, are Bento Bus, Mix’d Up Burgers, Mac the Cheese, The Fry Guy, and The Blaxican. Bento Bus positions itself as a Japanese-inspired food truck using organic ingredients and dispensing in eco-friendly ware. The Blaxican positions itself as serving what it dubs “Mexican soul food,” a fusion mashup of Mexican food with Southern comfort food. After years of operating a food truck, The Blaxican also recently opened its first brick-and-mortar restaurant. The Fry Guy specializes in Belgian-style street fries with a variety of homemade dipping sauces. These three food trucks would be the primary competition to La Vida Lola, since they are in the “ethnic food” space, while the other two offer traditional American food. All five have established brand identities and loyal followers/customers since they are among the industry leaders as established by “best of” lists from area publications like the . Most dishes from competitors are in the $10–$13 price range for entrees. La Vida Lola dishes will range from $6 to $13. One key finding from Off the Grid’s report is that mobile food has “proven to be a powerful vehicle for catalyzing diverse entrepreneurship” as 30 percent of mobile food businesses are immigrant owned, 30 percent are women owned, and 8 percent are LGBTQ owned. In many instances, the owner-operator plays a vital role to the brand identity of the business as is the case with La Vida Lola. Atlanta has also tapped into the nationwide trend of food hall-style dining. These food halls are increasingly popular in urban centers like Atlanta. On one hand, these community-driven areas where food vendors and retailers sell products side by side are secondary competitors to food trucks. But they also offer growth opportunities for future expansion as brands solidify customer support in the region. The most popular food halls in Atlanta are Ponce City Market in Midtown, Krog Street Market along the BeltLine trail in the Inman Park area, and Sweet Auburn Municipal Market downtown Atlanta. In addition to these trends, Atlanta has long been supportive of international cuisine as Buford Highway (nicknamed “BuHi”) has a reputation for being an eclectic food corridor with an abundance of renowned Asian and Hispanic restaurants in particular. The Atlanta region is home to a thriving Hispanic and Latinx population, with nearly half of the region’s foreign-born population hailing from Latin America. There are over half a million Hispanic and Latin residents living in metro Atlanta, with a 150 percent population increase predicted through 2040. The median age of metro Atlanta Latinos is twenty-six. La Vida Lola will offer authentic cuisine that will appeal to this primary customer segment. La Vida Lola must contend with regulations from towns concerning operations of mobile food ventures and health regulations, but the Atlanta region is generally supportive of such operations. There are many parks and festivals that include food truck vendors on a weekly basis. |
The competitive analysis is a statement of the business strategy as it relates to the competition. You want to be able to identify who are your major competitors and assess what are their market shares, markets served, strategies employed, and expected response to entry? You likely want to conduct a classic SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) and complete a competitive-strength grid or competitive matrix. Outline your company’s competitive strengths relative to those of the competition in regard to product, distribution, pricing, promotion, and advertising. What are your company’s competitive advantages and their likely impacts on its success? The key is to construct it properly for the relevant features/benefits (by weight, according to customers) and how the startup compares to incumbents. The competitive matrix should show clearly how and why the startup has a clear (if not currently measurable) competitive advantage. Some common features in the example include price, benefits, quality, type of features, locations, and distribution/sales. Sample templates are shown in Figure 11.17 and Figure 11.18 . A competitive analysis helps you create a marketing strategy that will identify assets or skills that your competitors are lacking so you can plan to fill those gaps, giving you a distinct competitive advantage. When creating a competitor analysis, it is important to focus on the key features and elements that matter to customers, rather than focusing too heavily on the entrepreneur’s idea and desires.
In this section, outline how you will manage your company. Describe its organizational structure. Here you can address the form of ownership and, if warranted, include an organizational chart/structure. Highlight the backgrounds, experiences, qualifications, areas of expertise, and roles of members of the management team. This is also the place to mention any other stakeholders, such as a board of directors or advisory board(s), and their relevant relationship to the founder, experience and value to help make the venture successful, and professional service firms providing management support, such as accounting services and legal counsel.
Table 11.6 shows a sample operations and management plan for La Vida Lola.
Operations and Management Plan Category | Content |
---|---|
Key Management Personnel | The key management personnel consist of Lola González and Cameron Hamilton, who are longtime acquaintances since college. The management team will be responsible for funding the venture as well as securing loans to start the venture. The following is a summary of the key personnel backgrounds. Chef Lola González has worked directly in the food service industry for fifteen years. While food has been a lifelong passion learned in her grandparents’ kitchen, chef González has trained under some of the top chefs in the world, most recently having worked under the James Beard Award-winning chef José Andrés. A native of Duluth, Georgia, chef González also has an undergraduate degree in food and beverage management. Her value to the firm is serving as “the face” and company namesake, preparing the meals, creating cuisine concepts, and running the day-to-day operations of La Vida Lola. Cameron Hamilton has worked in the hospitality industry for over twenty years and is experienced in accounting and finance. He has a master of business administration degree and an undergraduate degree in hospitality and tourism management. He has opened and managed several successful business ventures in the hospitality industry. His value to the firm is in business operations, accounting, and finance. |
Advisory Board | During the first year of operation, the company intends to keep a lean operation and does not plan to implement an advisory board. At the end of the first year of operation, the management team will conduct a thorough review and discuss the need for an advisory board. |
Supporting Professionals | Stephen Ngo, Certified Professional Accountant (CPA), of Valdosta, Georgia, will provide accounting consulting services. Joanna Johnson, an attorney and friend of chef González, will provide recommendations regarding legal services and business formation. |
Here you should outline and describe an effective overall marketing strategy for your venture, providing details regarding pricing, promotion, advertising, distribution, media usage, public relations, and a digital presence. Fully describe your sales management plan and the composition of your sales force, along with a comprehensive and detailed budget for the marketing plan. Table 11.7 shows a sample marketing plan for La Vida Lola.
Marketing Plan Category | Content |
---|---|
Overview | La Vida Lola will adopt a concentrated marketing strategy. The company’s promotion mix will include a mix of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling. Given the target millennial foodie audience, the majority of the promotion mix will be centered around social media platforms. Various social media content will be created in both Spanish and English. The company will also launch a crowdfunding campaign on two crowdfunding platforms for the dual purpose of promotion/publicity and fundraising. |
Advertising and Sales Promotion | As with any crowdfunding social media marketing plan, the first place to begin is with the owners’ friends and family. Utilizing primarily Facebook/Instagram and Twitter, La Vida Lola will announce the crowdfunding initiative to their personal networks and prevail upon these friends and family to share the information. Meanwhile, La Vida Lola needs to focus on building a community of backers and cultivating the emotional draw of becoming part of the La Vida Lola family. To build a crowdfunding community via social media, La Vida Lola will routinely share its location, daily if possible, on both Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Inviting and encouraging people to visit and sample their food can rouse interest in the cause. As the campaign is nearing its goal, it would be beneficial to offer a free food item to backers of a specific level, say $50, on one specific day. Sharing this via social media in the day or two preceding the giveaway and on the day of can encourage more backers to commit. Weekly updates of the campaign and the project as a whole are a must. Facebook and Twitter updates of the project coupled with educational information sharing helps backers feel part of the La Vida Lola community. Finally, at every location where La Vida Lola is serving its food, signage will notify the public of their social media presence and the current crowdfunding campaign. Each meal will be accompanied by an invitation from the server for the patron to visit the crowdfunding site and consider donating. Business cards listing the social media and crowdfunding information will be available in the most visible location, likely the counter. Before moving forward with launching a crowdfunding campaign, La Vida Lola will create its website. The website is a great place to establish and share the La Vida Lola brand, vision, videos, menus, staff, and events. It is also a great source of information for potential backers who are unsure about donating to the crowdfunding campaigns. The website will include these elements: . Address the following questions: Who are you? What are the guiding principles of La Vida Lola? How did the business get started? How long has La Vida Lola been in business? Include pictures of chef González. List of current offerings with prices. Will include promotional events and locations where customers can find the truck for different events. Steps will be taken to increase social media followers prior to launching the crowdfunding campaign. Unless a large social media following is already established, a business should aggressively push social media campaigns a minimum of three months prior to the crowdfunding campaign launch. Increasing social media following prior to the campaign kickoff will also allow potential donors to learn more about La Vida Lola and foster relationship building before attempting to raise funds. |
Facebook Content and Advertising | The key piece of content will be the campaign pitch video, reshared as a native Facebook upload. A link to the crowdfunding campaigns can be included in the caption. Sharing the same high-quality video published on the campaign page will entice fans to visit Kickstarter to learn more about the project and rewards available to backers. |
Crowdfunding Campaigns | Foodstart was created just for restaurants, breweries, cafés, food trucks, and other food businesses, and allows owners to raise money in small increments. It is similar to Indiegogo in that it offers both flexible and fixed funding models and charges a percentage for successful campaigns, which it claims to be the lowest of any crowdfunding platform. It uses a reward-based system rather than equity, where backers are offered rewards or perks resulting in “low-cost capital and a network of people who now have an incentive to see you succeed.” Foodstart will host La Vida Lola’s crowdfunding campaigns for the following reasons: (1) It caters to their niche market; (2) it has less competition from other projects which means that La Vida Lola will stand out more and not get lost in the shuffle; and (3) it has/is making a name/brand for itself which means that more potential backers are aware of it. La Vida Lola will run a simultaneous crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, which has broader mass appeal. |
Publicity | Social media can be a valuable marketing tool to draw people to the Foodstarter and Indiegogo crowdfunding pages. It provides a means to engage followers and keep funders/backers updated on current fundraising milestones. The first order of business is to increase La Vida Lola’s social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Establishing and using a common hashtag such as #FundLola across all platforms will promote familiarity and searchability, especially within Instagram and Twitter. Hashtags are slowly becoming a presence on Facebook. The hashtag will be used in all print collateral. La Vida Lola will need to identify social influencers—others on social media who can assist with recruiting followers and sharing information. Existing followers, family, friends, local food providers, and noncompetitive surrounding establishments should be called upon to assist with sharing La Vida Lola’s brand, mission, and so on. Cross-promotion will further extend La Vida Lola’s social reach and engagement. Influencers can be called upon to cross promote upcoming events and specials. The crowdfunding strategy will utilize a progressive reward-based model and establish a reward schedule such as the following: In addition to the publicity generated through social media channels and the crowdfunding campaign, La Vida Lola will reach out to area online and print publications (both English- and Spanish-language outlets) for feature articles. Articles are usually teased and/or shared via social media. Reaching out to local broadcast stations (radio and television) may provide opportunities as well. La Vida Lola will recruit a social media intern to assist with developing and implementing a social media content plan. Engaging with the audience and responding to all comments and feedback is important for the success of the campaign. Some user personas from segmentation to target in the campaign: |
A financial plan seeks to forecast revenue and expenses; project a financial narrative; and estimate project costs, valuations, and cash flow projections. This section should present an accurate, realistic, and achievable financial plan for your venture (see Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting for detailed discussions about conducting these projections). Include sales forecasts and income projections, pro forma financial statements ( Building the Entrepreneurial Dream Team , a breakeven analysis, and a capital budget. Identify your possible sources of financing (discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis ). Figure 11.19 shows a template of cash-flow needs for La Vida Lola.
Laughing man coffee.
Hugh Jackman ( Figure 11.20 ) may best be known for portraying a comic-book superhero who used his mutant abilities to protect the world from villains. But the Wolverine actor is also working to make the planet a better place for real, not through adamantium claws but through social entrepreneurship.
A love of java jolted Jackman into action in 2009, when he traveled to Ethiopia with a Christian humanitarian group to shoot a documentary about the impact of fair-trade certification on coffee growers there. He decided to launch a business and follow in the footsteps of the late Paul Newman, another famous actor turned philanthropist via food ventures.
Jackman launched Laughing Man Coffee two years later; he sold the line to Keurig in 2015. One Laughing Man Coffee café in New York continues to operate independently, investing its proceeds into charitable programs that support better housing, health, and educational initiatives within fair-trade farming communities. 55 Although the New York location is the only café, the coffee brand is still distributed, with Keurig donating an undisclosed portion of Laughing Man proceeds to those causes (whereas Jackman donates all his profits). The company initially donated its profits to World Vision, the Christian humanitarian group Jackman accompanied in 2009. In 2017, it created the Laughing Man Foundation to be more active with its money management and distribution.
Textbooks for change.
Founded in 2014, Textbooks for Change uses a cross-compensation model, in which one customer segment pays for a product or service, and the profit from that revenue is used to provide the same product or service to another, underserved segment. Textbooks for Change partners with student organizations to collect used college textbooks, some of which are re-sold while others are donated to students in need at underserved universities across the globe. The organization has reused or recycled 250,000 textbooks, providing 220,000 students with access through seven campus partners in East Africa. This B-corp social enterprise tackles a problem and offers a solution that is directly relevant to college students like yourself. Have you observed a problem on your college campus or other campuses that is not being served properly? Could it result in a social enterprise?
Franchisee set out.
A franchisee of East Coast Wings, a chain with dozens of restaurants in the United States, has decided to part ways with the chain. The new store will feature the same basic sports-bar-and-restaurant concept and serve the same basic foods: chicken wings, burgers, sandwiches, and the like. The new restaurant can’t rely on the same distributors and suppliers. A new business plan is needed.
This New York Times video, “An Unlikely Business Plan,” describes entrepreneurial resurgence in Detroit, Michigan.
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Company Overviews Show How the Pieces of a Business Work
Getting started on your company summary, examples of a company summary, tips for writing a company summary, frequently asked questions (faqs).
Image by Theresa Chiechi é The Balance 2019
The company summary in a business plan —also known as the company description or overview—is a high-level look at what you are as a company and how all the elements of the business fit together.
An effective company summary should give readers, such as potential investors, a quick and easy way to understand your business, its products and services, its mission and goals, how it meets the needs of its target market, and how it stands out from competitors.
Before you begin writing your company summary, remember to stick to the big picture. Other sections of your business plan will provide the specific details of your business. The summary synthesizes all of that information into one page.
The company summary section of a business plan should include:
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) website has a lot of information available if you've never written a business plan before. The SBA provides examples of business plans for different types of companies.
Before you begin, you should decide whether you want to go with a traditional business plan format or a lean startup format. The traditional format is appropriate if you want to have a comprehensive, detail-oriented plan or if you are requesting financing. The lean startup format is best for those who have a relatively simple business and want to start it quickly or as a starting point for those who plan to refine and change the plan regularly.
No matter which type of business plan you choose, you'll need to include a company summary.
Although there are many blueprints for writing a company summary, below are a couple of examples to get you started.
You can opt for a concise opening paragraph such as this one:
XYZ Consulting is a new company that provides expertise in search marketing solutions for businesses worldwide, including website promotion, online advertising, and search engine optimization techniques to improve its clients' positioning in search engines. We cater to the higher education market, including colleges, universities, and professional educational institutions.
Several elements of the company summary are covered here, including the name (XYZ Consulting), history (new company), description of services (web promotion, SEO, advertising) and why it's needed (improve positioning in search engines), and the target market (higher education).
Starbucks breaks down the company overview on their website into the following sections:
"Our Heritage"
Here the company describes how long the company has been in business, citing its roots, the founder, Howard Schultz, and how he was inspired to open the first Starbucks in Seattle after visiting Italy. It briefly mentions the growth of millions of customers and how the company's heritage remains important to its long-term success.
"Coffee & Craft"
The overview describes the high-quality products and services being offered and why they stand out from the competition by describing the detailed process of choosing and growing coffee beans. You'll notice they don't suggest their product is a low-cost product but instead provide a high level of "experiences to savor."
"Our Partners"
Starbucks describes its employees as partners that work together in an inclusive manner to achieve success. It highlights how they are at the center of the experience.
"Pursuit of Doing Good"
The company describes its values and how it gives back to the community.
Below are excerpts of the business overview pages from the annual 10-K filing on Dec. 31, 2021, for Tesla Inc.
"We design, develop, manufacture, sell and lease high-performance fully electric vehicles and energy generation and storage systems, and offer services related to our products. We generally sell our products directly to customers, including through our website and retail locations.
We also continue to grow our customer-facing infrastructure through a global network of vehicle service centers, mobile service technicians, body shops, supercharger stations and destination chargers to accelerate the widespread adoption of our products.
We emphasize performance, attractive styling and the safety of our users and workforce in the design and manufacture of our products and are continuing to develop full self-driving technology for improved safety.
Our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, engineering expertise, vertically integrated business model and focus on user experience differentiate us from other companies."
Competition
Tesla highlights the competitive automotive market and how the company differentiates itself from the larger, more established competitors.
"The worldwide automotive market is highly competitive and we expect it will become even more competitive in the future as we introduce additional vehicles in a broader cross-section of the passenger and commercial vehicle market and expand our vehicles’ capabilities. We believe that our vehicles compete in the market both based on their traditional segment classification as well as based on their propulsion technology.
Competing products typically include internal combustion vehicles from more established automobile manufacturers; however, many established and new automobile manufacturers have entered or have announced plans to enter the market for electric and other alternative fuel vehicles."
Intellectual Property
The company highlights its intellectual property, including trademarks and patents.
"We place a strong emphasis on our innovative approach and proprietary designs which bring intrinsic value and uniqueness to our product portfolio. As part of our business, we seek to protect the underlying intellectual property rights of these innovations and designs such as with respect to patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and other measures, including through employee and third-party nondisclosure agreements and other contractual arrangements."
Mission Statement
The company highlights its mission statement and its sustainability goals using environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and human capital resources.
"The very purpose of Tesla's existence is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. We believe the world cannot reduce carbon emissions without addressing both energy generation and consumption, and we are designing and manufacturing a complete energy and transportation ecosystem to achieve this goal. As we expand, we are building each new factory to be more efficient and sustainably designed than the previous one, including with respect to waste reduction and water usage, and we are focused on reducing the carbon footprint of our supply chain."
There are other items you can include in your company summary to expand on the areas that you'd like people to focus on, depending on your objective.
You might provide more information about the company's location, legal structure, and management team. You can also include more information about the:
You can also customize the summary if you have a specific objective or a targeted audience. For example, if the goal of your business plan is to secure funding, you might focus on areas that appeal to investors and lending institutions, including:
You may also want to address any areas of perceived weakness by explaining how you'll overcome them or compensate.
You might provide a description of the company, its location, legal structure, and management team. You can also highlight the company's business objectives, goals, and strengths. You can also customize the summary to a specific audience, such as a bank or lender, focusing on your competitive advantages and highlights of recent financial success.
Some of the discussion points to include in a company overview might be:
The Clute Institute. " Using Business Plans for Teaching Entrepreneurship ," Page 734.
U.S. Small Business Administration. " Write Your Business Plan ."
Starbucks Coffee Company. " Our Company ."
United States Securities and Exchange Commission. " Form 10-K, Annual Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(D) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2021, Tesla, Inc., " Pages 3-12.
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What is a strategic plan, what is a business plan, key components of strategic plans and business plans, elements of a strategic plan, elements of a business plan, the purpose and goals of the strategic plan and the business plan, the purpose of a strategic plan, the purpose of a business plan, the planning process: strategic plans vs. business plans, developing a strategic plan, developing a business plan, the role of stakeholders in each plan, stakeholder involvement in strategic plans, stakeholder involvement in business plans.
In the world of business, the terms strategic plans and business plans are often used interchangeably. However, there are significant differences between these two types of plans that are important for entrepreneurs and business leaders to understand.
Before delving into the differences between strategic plans and business plans, it’s important to define each term.
A strategic plan is a long-term plan that outlines an organization’s goals and objectives and the actions needed to achieve them. It typically covers a three to five-year time period and focuses on broad, high-level initiatives that will position the organization for success in the future.
Strategic planning is a crucial process for any organization that wants to succeed in today’s competitive business environment. It allows organizations to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and to develop a plan of action that will help them achieve their long-term goals.
During the strategic planning process, organizations typically conduct a thorough analysis of their internal and external environments. This includes an assessment of their current strengths and weaknesses, as well as an analysis of the market, competition, and other external factors that could impact their success.
Based on this analysis, organizations develop a set of strategic objectives and initiatives that will help them achieve their long-term goals. These initiatives may include expanding into new markets, developing new products or services, or investing in new technologies.
A business plan , on the other hand, is a detailed plan that outlines the steps a company will take to achieve its short-term goals and to operate on a daily basis. It typically covers a one to three-year time period and includes detailed financial projections, marketing plans, and operational strategies.
A business plan is a critical tool for any entrepreneur or small business owner who wants to succeed. It allows them to identify their target market, develop a marketing strategy, and create a roadmap for achieving their financial goals.
When developing a business plan, entrepreneurs typically begin by conducting market research to identify their target market and assess the competition. They then develop a marketing strategy that will help them reach their target market and differentiate themselves from the competition.
In addition to marketing, a business plan also includes detailed financial projections that outline the company’s revenue and expenses over the next one to three years. This allows entrepreneurs to identify potential financial challenges and develop strategies to overcome them.
Finally, a business plan includes operational strategies that outline how the company will operate on a day-to-day basis. This includes everything from hiring and training employees to managing inventory and fulfilling orders.
In conclusion, while both strategic plans and business plans are important tools for organizations and entrepreneurs, they serve different purposes. Strategic plans focus on long-term goals and broad initiatives, while business plans focus on short-term goals and daily operations.
Strategic plans and business plans are essential tools for any organization looking to achieve long-term success. While both plans share some common elements, they differ in their focus and level of detail.
A strategic plan is a comprehensive document that outlines an organization’s long-term goals and objectives. Key components of a strategic plan include:
By outlining these key components, a strategic plan provides a roadmap for the organization to follow as it works towards its long-term goals.
A business plan is a detailed document that outlines how a company will achieve its short-term and long-term goals. While it shares some elements with a strategic plan, a business plan is more focused on the day-to-day operations of the business. Key components of a business plan include:
By including these key components, a business plan provides a detailed roadmap for the company to follow as it seeks to achieve its goals and grow its operations.
Overall, both strategic plans and business plans are essential tools for any organization looking to achieve long-term success. By outlining clear goals and strategies, these plans provide a framework for decision-making and help ensure that the organization stays focused on its long-term objectives.
Strategic plans and business plans are both essential tools for any organization. They provide a clear roadmap for achieving goals and ensuring long-term success. While the two plans are similar in some ways, they serve different purposes and have different goals.
A strategic plan is a high-level document that outlines an organization’s long-term goals and objectives. It provides a roadmap for achieving those goals and helps to align the entire organization around a shared vision. The purpose of a strategic plan is to provide a framework for making strategic decisions that will move the organization closer to its desired future state.
Developing a strategic plan requires careful consideration of an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It involves analyzing market trends, assessing the competition, and identifying potential risks and challenges. The end result is a comprehensive plan that outlines the steps necessary to achieve the organization’s long-term goals.
One of the key benefits of a strategic plan is that it helps to ensure that everyone in the organization is working towards the same goals. By creating a shared vision and providing a clear roadmap for achieving it, a strategic plan can help to align the efforts of all employees, departments, and stakeholders.
A business plan is a detailed document that outlines an organization’s short-term goals and objectives. It provides a roadmap for achieving those goals and helps to define the company’s market niche, outline its marketing and sales strategies, and determine the funding needed to cover startup costs and ongoing expenses.
The purpose of a business plan is to provide a clear and comprehensive plan for achieving the organization’s short-term goals. This includes identifying potential customers, outlining marketing and sales strategies, and determining the resources needed to launch and maintain the business.
Developing a business plan requires careful research and analysis. This includes assessing the market demand for the product or service, analyzing the competition, and identifying potential risks and challenges. The end result is a detailed plan that outlines the steps necessary to launch and grow the business.
One of the key benefits of a business plan is that it helps to ensure that the organization is well-prepared for the challenges of starting and growing a business. By providing a clear roadmap for achieving short-term goals, a business plan can help to minimize risks and increase the chances of success.
Strategic plans and business plans are both essential tools for any organization. While they serve different purposes and have different goals, they both provide a clear roadmap for achieving success. By developing a comprehensive strategic plan and a detailed business plan, organizations can ensure that they are well-prepared for both short-term and long-term success.
Planning is an essential part of any successful business, but the planning process can differ significantly depending on the type of plan being developed. Strategic plans and business plans have different goals, and therefore require different approaches to planning.
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A strategic plan is a long-term plan that outlines an organization’s goals and objectives, and the strategies it will use to achieve them. Developing a strategic plan typically involves a lengthy planning process that includes input from a wide range of stakeholders, such as executives, employees, customers, and shareholders. The planning process may involve conducting research and analysis to identify opportunities and threats in the market, as well as the organization’s strengths and weaknesses.
The strategic plan should be reviewed and updated annually to ensure it remains relevant and aligned with the organization’s goals. This process may involve revisiting the organization’s mission and vision statements, as well as assessing the progress made towards achieving the goals outlined in the plan.
One of the key benefits of a strategic plan is that it provides a clear direction for the organization, helping to align everyone around a common set of goals and objectives. It also helps to ensure that resources are being allocated in the most effective way possible, and that the organization is able to adapt to changes in the market.
A business plan, on the other hand, is a shorter-term plan that outlines the company’s goals and objectives for the next one to three years. The process of developing a business plan typically involves a smaller team of stakeholders focused on executing the company’s short-term goals.
The business plan may also include input from investors, lenders, and other external stakeholders who have a vested interest in the company’s success. This may involve presenting financial projections, market analysis, and other data to demonstrate the viability of the business.
One of the key benefits of a business plan is that it provides a roadmap for the company’s short-term goals, helping to ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives. It also helps to identify potential risks and challenges, and provides a framework for measuring progress and making adjustments as needed.
Overall, both strategic plans and business plans are important tools for any organization. By taking the time to develop a clear plan, companies can ensure that they are working towards their goals in the most effective way possible.
Stakeholder involvement plays a key role in both strategic plans and business plans, although the level and type of involvement can vary depending on the plan.
Stakeholder involvement is critical in the development of a strategic plan, as it ensures that all parties have a voice in shaping the organization’s future. This involvement also helps to build consensus around the organization’s goals and the strategies needed to achieve them.
Stakeholder involvement in a business plan may be more limited, as the focus is on executing short-term goals rather than shaping the organization’s long-term future. However, investors and lenders may play a significant role in the development of a business plan, as they provide funding and have a vested interest in the success of the company.
While strategic plans and business plans share some common elements, they serve very different purposes and are designed to achieve different goals. By understanding the differences between these two plans, entrepreneurs and business leaders can better plan for the future, execute their short-term goals, and position their organizations for long-term success.
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How to create a long-term plan for your small business.
I believe a timeless (and entertaining) quote famously attributed to baseball great Yogi Berra should be top of mind for entrepreneurs interested in expanding their business: “If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”
Throughout my 20-plus years of business experience, I've seen many successful companies grow by using tried and true strategies, such as managing cash flow, keeping credit scores strong and obtaining low-cost, outside funding. Another characteristic they share? Each had a solid, multiyear plan. But a 2018 survey found that 63% of small business owners only plan roughly a year in advance.
It can be tough for a multitasking business owner to step away from day-to-day tasks and focus on the future. However, I believe taking the time to formulate a strategic plan is one of the best ways to reach short- and long-term goals. “Strategic planning” might sound daunting, but the process doesn’t have to be complex. Once you've developed your three- to five-year plan, you can develop a short-term annual plan that folds right into your long-term goal.
Consider the following five steps when crafting your long-term plan:
1. Write down your mission.
This might sound simple, but there’s something very powerful about putting your plan on paper. I believe the first step to creating a strategic plan starts with making the mission of your business clear. Where are you headed, and what do you want your business to look like in three to five years? Write your answer down so you have something concrete to work toward.
Your answer might be the vision you have for the future. Write down one to two sentences to get started. Be brief and realistic, but don’t be afraid to be ambitious. For example, let's say a woman named Holly runs a bakery. Her mission might look something like this: "Holly's Bakery offers delicious, high-quality, fresh-baked desserts to high-end restaurants in the San Francisco area."
2. Set goals for your business.
These goals, some of which should be financially focused, are what can help you achieve your overall mission. Build a three- to five-year plan and forecast that matches your financial and overall business goals.
To get going, start with the big picture. Write down the ideal future you see for your business, and make sure it's related to your mission. Then use the "SMART" method to craft specific goals. SMART is a relatively common set of criteria I've observed many people use when establishing a goal. It means your goal should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.
Consider the previous hypothetical example. Holly has four long-term goals for her bakery:
1. To become the No. 1 baked dessert supplier, by dollar volume, in the city of San Francisco to restaurants with five stars.
2. Secure five-star annual ratings from every customer.
3. Grow revenue to $5 million annually by 2021.
4. Generate $350,000 annually in net income by 2021.
Separately, Holly should create a financial plan that indicates her specific goals for the year 2019.
A financial plan is a forecast for your business and includes an estimated balance sheet, income statement and cash-flow projections. This model helps create a road map of income and expenses to indicate where you stand now and where you’re headed in the future. Use your financial plan to determine when and where to invest funds in your long-term plan.
3. Identify broad key strategies.
Once you’ve defined your goals, think about the overall strategies and general tactics needed to achieve these goals. Your strategies might include building out facilities, purchasing equipment, securing enough financing to achieve your plan and more.
Let's look at our bakery example. For Holly to achieve her long-term goals, her key strategies would likely include hiring and training top pastry chefs, building a strong, recognizable brand in her area, developing a vertical supply chain to secure the best ingredients and securing financing to purchase quality equipment.
After you've identified these key strategies, create a specific annual plan for these strategies. For instance, regarding hiring and training pastry chefs, Holly might consider participating in recruiting events or visiting a culinary school for graduates.
A strategy to help you get specific is to look at the end goal and work backward. By reviewing her financial plan, Holly should have a good idea of when she needs a trained pastry chef ready to bake in her kitchen. Identify the costs and time associated with hiring and training, and put steps in place to meet that deadline.
4. Measure Ongoing Results
Now that you have written down your vision, established your goals and outlined strategies and specifics, it’s time to measure your progress. Choose practical benchmarks, and measure how your strategies are performing consistently. Remember to be flexible. If one strategy isn’t performing well, consider changing it so that you can still achieve your goals. As any small business owner knows, there are a number of factors that influence a marketplace. So, your strategies should be measured and revisited when you aren’t hitting results or when major events happen that could impact your business.
In Holly's case, after measuring the effectiveness of direct mail marketing, she found it wasn’t as cost-effective as she thought. So, it's time for her to consider making a change to her marketing tactics.
5. Stay positive.
To set yourself up for long-term success, keep up your efforts — and stay positive. Review and adjust the steps above to make sure you stay on track. Remember that your plan doesn’t have to be perfect to achieve your goals. And possibly most importantly, don’t hesitate to ask for help. A financial professional or even members of your team can offer direction and advice if you’re feeling stuck.
Without a plan, I believe you run the risk of failing. In my experience, a long-term plan can not only strengthen your bottom line but also help keep you motivated as you weather the inevitable ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
What are the main purposes of a business plan, why is strategic planning important to a business.
If you're starting a business you probably plan to stay in business for a long time. In order to accomplish this goal, you probably have at least an inkling of what you want your business to accomplish. You take these goals and attempt to make them come to fruition. If your successful, your business will thrive. Once you've met your original goals, you make new ones. Some of these new goals might be ones you want to meet immediately, while others will take longer. Those are your business' long-term business goals, and they're important.
If you were going on vacation, you would determine where you're going; how you were getting there; how long you were staying; and what you would do, once there. In other words, you would plan your vacation. So, if traveling to Tahiti requires some set-up and parameters, wouldn't starting and running a business also require these? A business takes time, energy and resources; the wise thing would be to sit down and determine the most effective ways of how to use your time, energy and resources – so that your business has the best chance for success.
You started your business because you wanted to fill a niche, meet a need or provide a service that's desperately needed – with the ultimate objective – to make money. To fulfill all of your business objectives, you have to set goals for your business, and a plan of action to reach each goal.
Most businesses have a combination of short-term plans and long-term plans. A short-term plan could include launching three products during a calendar year, making X-amount in profits in a certain period of time, or gaining 5,000 new social media followers in a month. A long-term plan based on those short-term plans is to expand your business from one facility to two or more within three years.
Short-term plans are more immediate objections, while long-term plans are for a longer period of time: a year is generally the minimum. Thus, your long-term plans can include goals such as five-year income projections, expansion plans, hiring goals or other bigger goals that take more than a month or two to meet. The plans should be kept separate but reviewed on a regular basis so progress can be tracked and adjustments can be made if necessary.
Revisiting the vacation scenario from above, let's say you decide to drive to your vacation destination. You've never been there before so you punch your destination into your GPS tool and use it to navigate to your destination. Once you've arrived, you can also use that same tool to find interesting places to visit and places to eat.
Think of a business plan as a business' GPS. You can use the strategic business plan to guide your business from one objective to the next, find the best course of action for your business and recognize and correct issues as they arise. This is where you'll include the short and long term plans you have for the business, as well as other pertinent information such as key personnel, the business' mission statement, competitor information and market research and development ideas. Financial projects are also a vital part of a business plan.
Having a long term plan for your business shows that you are in it for the long haul. Knowing where you want to be in three, five or even ten years can help you choose the short-term plans of an organization. Long-term business goals don't have to be large goals. The goal to never miss a client deadline could be a long-term goal. Most of a business' short-term plans lead toward long-term plans, so when making immediate business plans, keeping a longer-term objective in mind isn't a bad idea. A long term plan gives you something to aim for as well as a built-in measuring tool to review the progress of your short-term plans.
K.A. Francis has been a freelance and small business owner for 20 years. She has been writing about personal finance and budgeting since 2008. She taught Accounting, Management, Marketing and Business Law at WV Business College and Belmont College and holds a BA and an MAED in Education and Training.
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Can i afford to buy a house, renting vs. buying: making the jump to homeownership.
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Buying a home can be a great way to build long-term wealth. But the idea that renting is a waste of money is a myth. In fact, sometimes it can be the better choice.
There's no clear right or wrong answer about whether you should buy or rent. The best fit depends on your finances, lifestyle, and several other factors.
The pros and cons of renting are often the inverse of those for buying. On the plus side, a landlord takes care of repairs, and you have the flexibility to move more easily. However, you have to abide by the landlord's prices and rules, and you don't get the financial benefits of building equity or deducting taxes.
Here are the pros and cons of buying a house instead of continuing to rent:
Read Insider's guide to the best mortgage lenders for first-time buyers>>
It's crucial to consider if the timing is right to buy. This doesn't just refer to whether it's a good time in the real estate market. You should also ask yourself whether it's the right time in your life to buy.
Low inventory is a chronic problem in the real estate market. According to recent research from Realtor.com , in 2022 there was a 6.5 million home gap between the number of single-family homes being constructed and household formations.
"It's not going to be a quick fix," says Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors.
It can be especially difficult to find homes at an accessible price for new buyers. A 2021 analysis by Freddie Mac found that the lack of entry level homes, or starter homes, is even more severe than the overall inventory shortage.
The lack of housing drives a competitive landscape. While competition has calmed down somewhat this year, buyers often still have to make multiple offers on homes before they get one accepted.
Additionally, a lack of housing may force compromise for prospective buyers. Mark Stapp, a real estate professor at Arizona State University, warns against having "unrealistic expectations." He says buyers need to understand the limits of their budget and "be willing to make trade-offs in size, price, location, or amenities."
Low inventory can make it more difficult to buy a home, but it doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't buy. Just know that wish lists might have to be negotiated when there aren't enough properties to begin with.
Housing prices continue to rise at a faster pace than income. At the start of 2023, the median sales price in the US was $436,800, according to data from the US Census Bureau and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development .
New York real estate agent Lauren Hurwitz advises clients to think about how long they plan to stay in a home. If buyers are looking during an especially robust time, the length of their investment matters.
"If you're buying for 30 years, it doesn't really matter as much," Hurwitz, a broker with Compass, says. "If you're buying for five to seven years … I cannot guarantee you that you're going to get all that money back."
When creating a budget, Stapp says not to set an upper limit that's too high. Buyers might want to stretch to reach their highest possible price, he cautions, but an unexpected jump in costs, like gas or food prices, might put stress on their monthly budgets.
"You've got to make sure you have enough buffer to absorb some of these shocks," he says.
The interest rate you lock in for a mortgage will greatly determine your monthly payments. Mortgage rates are affected by a wide range of factors, including the overall economy and the short-term interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.
Buyers can't control macroeconomic forces, but can still tip the scales in their favor.
"It feels trite to say 'shop around,' but most people don't do it," says Benjamin Keys, professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania.
A 30-year fixed mortgage isn't just some "plain vanilla contract," Keys says. Instead, there are variations across mortgage lenders in the rate and origination fees they'll offer you.
"It sounds like really lame advice but can actually save thousands of dollars over the life of the loan," Keys says.
It can even help to treat it just like a salary negotiation, informing banks what rates you were able to find elsewhere.
"Make the banks compete with one another. They'll be very clear when they can't," says Keys.
Market factors can fluctuate, but experts stress that the decision of when to buy is ultimately personal. The most important question any individual should consider is: "How long do I plan to live here?"
"Renting provides some of that flexibility in life," says Stapp. Living in a rental allows people to make quicker changes to their lifestyle or to move for better job opportunities.
Such rapid changes can make the costs of homeownership burdensome in the short term. Selling a house is a longer process and includes many more costs such as transfer taxes, realtor fees, title insurance, and origination fees on a mortgage.
A family's size and its potential to grow is another factor to consider. "If you're going to have very different needs as the family grows, then owning for a really short period of time can be very costly," Keys says.
Homeownership also costs more than just the monthly mortgage payment. Repairs and upgrades can dig into an individual's savings.
Keys says buyers need to be prepared for maintenance issues that are "potentially very costly, and are going to vary quite a bit, depending on the age of the house and how well the house has been maintained."
Fixing a roof, for example, might be a steep cost if you're selling a home in the short term.
When deciding whether you can afford to buy a house, you should look at two aspects: the upfront costs and monthly payments.
The most obvious upfront expense is the down payment . You can often get a conventional mortgage with as little as 3% down.
You should also factor closing costs into your upfront expenses. This could include an appraisal, an underwriting fee, a mortgage origination fee, and even a certain amount of property taxes paid at closing.
Finally, ask yourself how much you want to have left in savings after closing. By completely draining your savings to buy a house, you put yourself at risk in case of an emergency.
To determine how much you can afford to pay monthly, a good strategy is to follow the 28/36 rule .
The 28/36 rule refers to how much debt you can take on to still qualify for a conforming mortgage. According to the rule, you should spend 28% or less of your gross monthly income (which is the amount you earn before paying taxes) on housing. This includes your mortgage, property taxes, mortgage insurance, homeowners insurance, and HOA fees, but not costs like utility bills.
The rule also states that you should spend a maximum of 36% of your gross monthly income on all debts, such as your mortgage, car loan payments, and student loan debt.
Many mortgage lenders follow the 28/36 rule when deciding how much to approve you to borrow. Every lender is different, though, so you may qualify even if you have more debt. Regardless, it's important to consider how much you can pay each month and still live comfortably.
If monthly mortgage payments would be a financial strain, it could be better to keep renting for now.
There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question; for some, buying is better than renting because the benefits of owning a home — the equity-building, the predictability, having a place to call their own — makes sense for their lifestyle and finances. But it's not the right choice for everyone.
Renting can make more sense than buying depending on where you live. If you live in an area where mortgage payments are significantly more expensive than the average rent, or if your lifestyle is better-suited to renting, it might make more sense to rent than to buy.
Owning a home has many advantages. When you own your home, you'll be building equity with every mortgage payment, and you may get certain tax benefits as well. Owning a home can also provide more predictability, since you don't have to worry about a landlord deciding not to renew your lease or hiking your rent.
Renting can come with a lot of advantages as well. Renting comes with far fewer responsibilities and extra costs than owning does. You'll also have the flexibility of being able to more easily move when your lease is up if you decide to.
It's absolutely ok to never buy a house; plenty of people are lifelong renters for a variety of reasons. When weighing buying vs. renting, it's important that you consider what works best for you. There's no right or wrong answer.
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Business Plan: A business plan is a written document that describes in detail how a business, usually a new one, is going to achieve its goals. A business plan lays out a written plan from a ...
Describe Your Services or Products. The business plan should have a section that explains the services or products that you're offering. This is the part where you can also describe how they fit ...
A good business plan guides you through each stage of starting and managing your business. You'll use your business plan as a roadmap for how to structure, run, and grow your new business. It's a way to think through the key elements of your business. Business plans can help you get funding or bring on new business partners.
Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It's also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. After completing your plan, you can ...
Tips on Writing a Business Plan. 1. Be clear and concise: Keep your language simple and straightforward. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms. A clear and concise business plan is easier for investors and stakeholders to understand and demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively. 2.
Purposes of a Business Plan. In an era where 48% of businesses survive half a decade on, having a clear, defined, and well-thought-out business plan is a crucial first step for setting up a business for long-term success. Here's why I think a business plan is important: 1. Securing Financing From Investors
A Harvard Business Review study found that the ideal time to write a business plan is between 6 and 12 months after deciding to start a business. But the reality can be more nuanced - it depends on the stage a business is in, or the type of business plan being written. Ideal times to write a business plan include: When you have an idea for a ...
Your business plan should compellingly illustrate why potential partners should collaborate with your company. Preparing for an IPO (Initial Public Offering): If your long-term strategy includes taking your company public, a comprehensive business plan is essential to attract public market investors. It must provide a detailed view of your ...
Writing a business plan requires research and attention to detail for each section. Below, you'll find a 9-step guide for researching and defining each element in the plan. Write an executive summary. Draft a business description. Conduct market analysis. List your management and organisation structure.
To get a better sense of what a 21st century business plan is, it's best to look at what it's not. Or, more specifically, what it's not anymore. When most people think about a business plan, the first thing that usually comes to mind is an incredibly dense, 50-plus-page manifesto that's as hard to write as it is to read.
It's the roadmap for your business. The outline of your goals, objectives, and the steps you'll take to get there. It describes the structure of your organization, how it operates, as well as the financial expectations and actual performance. A business plan can help you explore ideas, successfully start a business, manage operations, and ...
A traditional business plan is a high-level document that provides a long-term view of the business's direction. This includes detailed financial projections, a marketing plan , and an overview of day-to-day operations, including project management and direct operations.
Here are some of the components of an effective business plan. 1. Executive Summary. One of the key elements of a business plan is the executive summary. Write the executive summary as part of the concluding topics in the business plan. Creating an executive summary with all the facts and information available is easier.
A business plan is likely to describe the business and industry, market strategies, sales potential, and competitive analysis, as well as the company's long-term goals and objectives. An in-depth formal business plan would follow at later stages after various iterations to business model canvases.
Target market (who will buy your product or services) Competitive advantage (what sets you apart in the marketplace to allow you to succeed) Objectives and goals (plans for growth) Company's history, such as a family business that's been in operation for multiple generations. Business objectives, including short-term and long-term goals.
This will ultimately drive sales. 6. Organization & Management. This can be broken into separate sections, but both leadership and plans for employees must be addressed. This should include a ...
Which section of a business plan includes a long term picture of what the business to become and what it will look like when it gets there? Mission statement Which section of the business plan provides a description of the key strategic influences of the businesses such as the market it will serve, the kinds of services...
A business plan is a detailed document that outlines how a company will achieve its short-term and long-term goals. While it shares some elements with a strategic plan, a business plan is more focused on the day-to-day operations of the business. Key components of a business plan include:
2. Secure five-star annual ratings from every customer. 3. Grow revenue to $5 million annually by 2021. 4. Generate $350,000 annually in net income by 2021. Separately, Holly should create a ...
When companies develop business plans, it allows employees at all levels to see the company as a whole enterprise. Business plans can be used to start a company, apply for a business loan, plan long-term strategies and maintain a business. Business plans vary by type, but most business plans contain the following parts:
Business Plan Overview. Most business plans have several distinct sections (Figure 5.1.5.1). The business plan can range from a few pages to twenty-five pages or more, depending on the purpose and the intended audience. For our discussion, we'll describe a brief business plan and a standard business plan.
A short-term plan could include launching three products during a calendar year, making X-amount in profits in a certain period of time, or gaining 5,000 new social media followers in a month. A ...
Have short-term and long-term plans like one for sales, marketing, pricing, operations, and so on. It helps you reach business milestones. A well-researched business plan gives you the liberty to think accurately about the basic elements of your business and thereby assists in your decision-making process as you move forward.
Buying a home can be a great way to build long-term wealth. But the idea that renting is a waste of money is a myth. In fact, sometimes it can be the better choice.
The short- and long-term impacts also include invisible costs such as displacement of (typically lower-income) residents, gentrification and potential environmental harm, Zimbalist said.
Our plan in the shorter term is to use AI to help humans evaluate the outputs of more complex models and monitor complex systems, and in the longer term to use AI to help us come up with new ideas for better alignment techniques. Importantly, we think we often have to make progress on AI safety and capabilities together.