The Secret Tool I Use to Write Business Plans - The Smart and Easy Way...

business consulting firms.
Business plans have always excited me. I love doing the market
research, analyzing the competition, developing marketing
strategies and all that. Yet, I still find some aspects of business
plans very boring and challenging; especially the writing aspect. If
writing a business plan can be challenging to me, I can imagine it
must be a nightmare for most people who have never written one
before.
I Used To Think The Hard Way Was The Only
Way…
The art of writing business plans must be a very tough and
challenging activity. Maybe that’s why some consultants often
charge high fees to write them. That’s what I thought. Before I
discovered the secret tool that has made my life a whole lot easier
with business plans, I think it’s a good idea to take you through all
the hard ways I followed before I finally found the secret.
From scratch…
For years, I had always written business plans the traditional way;
from scratch. Many times, I would stare at the blank page on my
computer not knowing what to write. I mean, it was all in my head
but pouring it out on paper was always a tough job for me. I also
had to bother about other things like editing, layout and
appearance of the business plan document. Although I’m good at
business planning, I have very poor design skills and this was
always a frustration for me. Writing a business plan from scratch
must be the most time-wasting and stressful activity I’ve ever
done in my whole life!
I tried templates
With time, I got to know about business plan templates. These are
formats (or skeletons) of business plans that made it easier to
write a plan. With templates, it was much better than starting from
scratch every time. I enjoyed this new method for a while before I
started to notice some of its flaws. Templates are not flexible;
they’re just too stiff. They limit your creativity and force you to
lose your uniqueness. In the end, my business plans ended up
looking like thousands of plans out there. No, I didn’t like it.
And then, samples…
From templates, I switched to sample business plans . A sample is
a finished copy of a business plan that is very similar to the kind of
business plan you’re trying to write. In short, it’s ‘copying’ another
plan that somebody else has already written. While there’s nothing
wrong with using a sample plan as a guide, it rarely helped me to
finish mine. Why? Because no two business plans can be the
exact same thing! Since the ideas and strategies are different, how
can the plans be the same?
For me, samples were just another dead end. They were great at
guiding and inspiring me during the writing process, but there were
still several things a sample business plan couldn’t do for me.
The 3 Biggest Frustrations I Faced With All These
Methods
While I was still able to write good-looking and professional
business plans with the three methods I just explained, it was
always a tough job. I found my biggest challenges were in the
following areas:
Time – Because I had to do unrelated tasks like design, I was
spending more time on these tasks than actually focusing on
writing the business plan. I had to create tables, draw graphs, add
headers and footers, and several other stuff that would just drive
me crazy. Yeah, now that I look back, I realize how much time I
wasted on all sorts of irrelevant (but important) stuff during the
writing process.
Financials – As you know, financials are a very important part of
every business plan. But not everybody has the finance and
accounting skills to prepare a Sales Forecast, Profit & Loss,
Balance Sheet and Cashflow statement . Although I have a
background in accounting, this part of business plans used to
drive me nuts sometimes. Again, if this was a challenge for me, I
wonder what most other people who don’t have any clue about
figures go through.
Appearance – Have you ever seen an ugly business plan before?
I’ve seen many of them. Because I know that most people judge a
book by its cover, I always like my business plans to look
attractive and professional. In my experience, a good-looking
business plan is always a big plus.
So, I like to make sure my cover pages look good and the colours,
fonts and outline look great. Again, due to my limited design skills,
this part was always a challenge for me. I would end up paying
somebody to take care of the design. Apart from the money this
was costing me, I didn’t like the lack of control I sometimes
suffered.
The Big Discovery That Changed My Life!
I couldn’t imagine the shock and disbelief I felt the day I stumbled
on the big discovery that changed my business plan writing
experience forever!
It wasn’t the first time I came across business plan software.
The biggest reason I never really used software to write business
plans was because I couldn’t afford them. Many of the good ones
out there are quite expensive. Why would I spend a lot of money
on software I would only use a few times a year? It didn’t make
any sense to me.
But this one I discovered was clearly different. It’s called LivePlan.
The features and benefits of LivePlan are just mind-blowing for
me. I’ve been using it for sometime now and here are just a few of
its features and benefits that have given me the most value:
Easy financials – LivePlan took away all my headaches in doing
the financials for a business plan. It has built-in formulas that
make the financials simple and easy. It simply asks me some
questions about the business and after I plug in the answers, the
calculations are done behind the scenes. In addition to the
calculations, it also creates beautiful automatic charts that save
me a lot of time.
That’s not all. While most typical business plans look three years
into the future, LivePlan allows me to include up to five years of
projections. It also allows me to set any currency or tax rates I
want.
Beautiful design themes – Yes! I never have to worry about my
poor design skills anymore. LivePlan takes care of all the design
aspects of any business plan I write nowadays. It has about ten
beautifully and professionally-designed themes that make every
business plan I write to always stand out.
Expert guidance – At every stage of writing a business
plan, LivePlan provides tips and professional guidance just in case
I get stuck. It actually has video tutorials from Tim Berry, one of
the most popular business planning experts in the world. And
many of his tips are very useful.
Samples and examples – Especially for people who are new to
business planning, LivePlan is a real godsend. It comes with a
huge library of over 500 sample business plans that have often
helped and inspired me on some business plans I’ve written. Yes,
you read that right, it has a library of 500+ business plans you can
‘copy’. There are also plenty of examples you can choose from.
Cheap and flexible – For all the wonderful benefits
that LivePlan offers, it is surprisingly cheap in my opinion. The
best part is, it’s very flexible. I only pay a monthly fee to use it
whenever I want. Based on the value it gives me, it is certainly the
most cost-effective way I know to write a business plan
nowadays.
Collaboration and sharing – If you’ll be working on a business
plan with a team, LivePlan allows different people to work on the
plan at the same time. It allows other people to review the plan,
leave comments, and even add and remove stuff depending on the
user settings. If you’re a consultant working with clients or a tutor
teaching students to write business plans, this is a feature that will
prove to be very valuable!