If you do not think you need to invest in formal business plan creation tools, we still want to be of service by offering you a guide based on our manual business plan template. You can use it as a reference to write your business plan.

We provide this business plan template within a PDF to make sure you have access to the details regardless of how you want to reference it, as opposed to creating a Word template that might not convert well on your document processing device. Even if you cannot invest in our tools, we want you to learn how to present your planned business venture to gain support to launch. It is important to recognize that simply producing a business plan is not a guarantee you will get loan funding or another 3rd-party financing to make your dreams come true. The PDF goes into details on strategies you can try to obtain external funding.

The purpose of a business plan is to detail the start-up costs for your business venture, which is a critical first step: not specifically to sell your idea to a financier, but to prove to yourself that it is worth investing in a viable opportunity. It is important not to have high expectations of your banker embracing the concept: for obvious reasons they want to minimize their exposure to any risk of losing their investment. Usually, loans are approved for personal assets (collateral) you pledge as security for repayment. The business plan demonstrates how likely you are to be able to repay that loan (it is not as if the bank wants your assets: that is an inducement to guarantee repayment). Private lenders may be a bit more lenient, but they will ask for a higher rate of interest to offset the risk.

The core of what our services are based on is an Excel™-VBA software product “LIFTOFF!” that can manage the simulation capabilities in the worksheets, to find optimal results and any ranges of values that represent a serious risk to a new business venture.

For entrepreneurs who feel qualified to produce their business plans, this software product is available as a simple “Do It Yourself” kit with a detailed user manual that offers step-by-step instructions for building a business plan (starting with our generic business models). This option is a fixed-cost approach, ideal for people who want to explore many different opportunities, but who are careful with how much they invest in analyzing those opportunities. While we always recommend engaging expert advice before you finally invest in a business, it may be best that you explore the options and select your ideal opportunity first, and then get an expert opinion.

LIFTOFF! Software collaborates with Excel™ cell-formula functionality so that you can tweak any worksheet to reflect the needs of your business better. If you do not feel confident in your Excel™ prowess to do this yourself, engage a consultant who is trained in the use of this technology to create powerful and accurate models that represent your business. This technology adapts the tools to virtually any kind of business you have in mind, which is particularly useful if you want to consider choices between different kinds of ventures. All our programs are based on the same engine with different adaptations to worksheets that represent different business models.

Regardless of your impetus for wanting your own business, you are likely aware that starting your own business carries a certain level of risk. This PDF guide explains a process to create a solid plan to get your business launched and to give it the boost that it needs to succeed.

Many people dream of leaving the corporate world behind and gaining independence by opening their own business. Many people face retirement with insufficient pension income to maintain the lifestyle they want to maintain. Our life expectancy has expanded much more than expected in the old actuarial calculations that retirement savings were based on, a reason to delay retiring to continue adding to those savings. That too is a strong drive to start a business, but people are familiar with sobering statistics. A shocking 50% of all ventures fail in their first year because the owners were not properly prepared. Up to 90% of all ventures fail within five years, although we do not know if that represents the second retirement for many entrepreneurs, or not.

When you launch your business from inception, you are literally on your own as every aspect will be your unique creation. Starting something new is exciting: innovation depends on the efforts of entrepreneurs to take a new concept and turn it into an actual business, much like we started this business plan creation initiative. However, we need to heed an old warning. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail without reason: it is not that difficult to prepare a successful launch! While planning alone is not a magic potion, it ensures that all aspects of what you are about to launch are considered. A business failure does not mean the concept has no merit: opening the best business opportunity in the wrong location will cause it to tank, or the preparation to launch is more complex than anticipated, and the owner runs out of money before the business is viable.

Expanding a viable business venture by adding to that existing business can be the safest route to grow your business, by diversification and by opening new markets. Before you invest in such an opportunity, consider the potential of each opportunity to add bottom-line profit.

Apply due-diligence concerning each proposal and how you can make that opportunity work effectively in your existing business structure. While you might engage a business consultant to help you do this, this can become costly: a better strategy is to do your homework with the right tools, and then to engage a business consultant. Make sure your analysis is complete and paints a realistic picture of a viable opportunity that works well with your current business structure.

Diversification will typically involve expanding the range of products or services you are offering, which you can analyze by adding marketing plans to the current business plan to reflect how the strategy might affect the business bottom line. We see grocery stores adding health & beauty products, even in-house drugstores, and general merchandise or clothing, all aimed at making additional sales by capitalizing on the convenience factor for customers already in the store.

Opening new markets without opening new stores includes accommodation of different types of customers, such as kosher foods or halal foods in a grocery store, or premium pricing vs. lower priced alternatives in the fashion trade. Consider whatever that option means in your line of business and do not forget to consider the impact of attracting these customers who will also purchase from your existing product line once they are in the store.

Expanding a viable business can evolve into you adding new locations that mirror your business is another route to grow the business. Based on your experience you know what it takes to invest in such an opportunity, so consider the potential of each new location to add bottom-line profit.

Do not assume that simply duplicating the business location is a slam-dunk. Each location has its unique aspects that need to be explored since few locations are physically identical. There will be different demographics, transportation, parking, and numerous other things that seem small but that can have a big impact if you do not pay attention. However, you already have a plan, so you can take a copy of an existing location plan as a starting point by creating a fresh copy of the workbook, and then making the adjustments required to reflect what is unique for the location. So long as you own the business (this guide explains how you can transfer worksheets to other planning kits that are registered to other users, that must each invest in their software).

This guide explores the nature of alternative opportunities, and how you can adapt an existing business plan to reflect an added locations expansion option into a business plan by selecting the appropriate marketing plans and/or procurement business cases, and how to make copies of the business plan that are based on a different set of selections. This way you can compare the outcome of many different alternatives and have a better idea of which business plan to pursue when considering your next opportunity to open a new business location.

You can also add a viable business to expand the operation into a multi-divisional format. There are two strategies: to operate the new business in its present format or to rebrand that business to make it more integrated as a branch location of your main business.

One perspective of the acquisition is that it can be a lower-cost expansion option because you can generally continue to operate the existing location “as is”, and focus on the rebranding and adapting the operating procedures to bring the operation in line with your brand standards. The other perspective is that this can be a major change management challenge, to make people comfortable working in a new corporate structure, helping them to adapt gradually using a support team that understands how the corporate model works, so they can mentor those employees you inherit as part of the change-over.

Some companies do this remarkably well, while other companies fail to understand the culture of the acquired business and the challenges involved in blending cultures. It is too easy for a new manager to demand changes in a way that ignores the need for a gradual transition and, in that process, to drive the best people away (= the best people are always the most talented that find other opportunities very easily). A loss of talent within the year of acquisition can turn a viable business into a write-off that can put the mother company at risk. I have lived through examples of both scenarios (multiple times, actually) and I can attest to the need for acquisition planning.

Some larger chains incorporate multiple brands, some in the same line of business as the mother company, others representing complementary but unique lines of business. Operating as unique brands can be a safety in case one of the brands gets compromised so that it does not affect the business at large. It can also be beneficial to have the management remain in place to make any integration and transformation a more gradual approach, but it is important to make sure that in the process of introducing efficiencies of scale you do not make rash moves that you cannot undo after key talent has walked out the door.

There is a major difference if you close or sell a business location because you “have to” instead of doing it because you “want to” sell. A major benefit from staying on top of your business plan is to know what direction your business is heading.

Decline

We most often think of selling when a business is in decline, or when the owner is no longer able or willing to put in the energy to rejuvenate that business. It is useful to spruce up the business plan to highlight the potential of that business (if possible), and perhaps to consider other viable uses for this location. Sometimes the existing business has simply outgrown its present location and cannot increase sales because of limited capacity, so while the owner may set sights on other locations, it is important to determine what alternative would work for a location of that size. A small supermarket that cannot expand might turn into a great location for health food retail because all the required infrastructure is already in place.

Turnaround

We seldom think of selling when a business is booming, but experienced entrepreneurs can see opportunities in a business that is in decline and take it over, to restructure the business and put new operating standards in place to make it more attractive and valuable for an entrepreneur. Without the expertise to do that, even though the turnover time is much longer than flipping houses, the potential value from seeing possibilities and creating opportunities for new entrepreneurs to invest in can be significant. The LIFTOFF! analysis tools can evaluate turnaround opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach for opening a given type of business, specifically if assets can be acquired at well below cost compared to investing in new capacity.

One additional dimension of LIFTOFF! is that it can support an Asset Purchase Analysis (which is often called a business case). The idea is to see such purchases as investments and to assess if there is a net positive impact (or ROI).

What makes LIFTOFF! unique is that it can incorporate selected asset purchases into the business plan so that you can see the impact in the context of a business operation. Large corporations often do this in isolation of a business plan, and then evaluate the acquisition based on payback or ROI results, simply because of the number of major purchases that are made, and because they do not want to share the business plan with just anyone in the corporation that gets involved with asset purchases. The asset purchase business case model is a bonus incorporated in LIFTOFF! so that you can see the big picture impact more clearly.

Even as a stand-alone functionality, the business case analysis can be a powerful tool that supports the LIFTOFF! engine throughout the life of your business whenever a major purchase is required. With the ability to link the major purchase to the business plan to explore an operational impact on your bottom-line it helps to provide much better insight, a justification for maintaining a plan that reflects what is currently going on in your business.

LIFTOFF! can be a great opportunity to build a coaching or consulting service. Not only can you prepare the model worksheets, but you can also write a formal business plan for presentation, or even customize the worksheets to reflect unique aspects of your clients’ business format.

Whether you use this as a specialization, or you add this to an accountancy or financial planning business, working with clients to produce business plans can be lucrative, especially when you use automation tools like LIFTOFF! that put your Excel™ workbooks on steroids. Entrepreneurs know that their time is valuable and that it makes more sense to outsource that work instead of going through the effort themselves. With LIFTOFF! you can sell the results of your work rather than to trade time for dollars as you consider selected sets of assumptions that the software can crank out for you, and so you increase the value of your services to clients of your business.

If you add LIFTOFF! to an accountancy or financial planning business, you can offer the service of creating business plans to deliver a competitive advantage in your field. You can produce many alternative cases with minimal additional effort once the primary set of plans is produced, which allows you to deliver more for a given service agreement cost than what is economically feasible for competitors that do not use this powerful software. You can also outsource this work to any qualified coach that will then work under your supervision to deliver the results you want.

If you use this as a coaching specialization, you can assist entrepreneurs and financial experts to adapt their Excel™ worksheets to the types of businesses for which they want a business plan customized at the cell-formula level. Part of the Coaching Guide is an extension of the Excel™ formula training that is incorporated in the LIFTOFF! User Guide, so you are more prepared for implementing significant changes.