Writing a Business Plan for Aging in Place

I presented the first draft of the business plan for Aging in Place in Darien to the Strategic Planning Committee, and they loved it. Going through the planning process and then reading an actual draft of the resulting plan helped us all sort through our thoughts and goals, ask ourselves more questions, then really focus on how to make everything extremely clear for us and for a potential board of directors and funders.

I'm now editing.

The process of business planning has so much value. I wish more people understood this. One person on our committee is a member of SCORE (a volunteer group that helps entrepreneurs with their plans for free). Interestingly, he said, "I hope you charge a lot when you do plans for business owners. This has real value. It's an outstanding plan."  (I'm donating my time to Aging in Place as my own form of personal outreach to the community. I also sit on the Advisory Board.) But I was struck by the comment. I told him that many entrepreneurs think I charge too much for my service. He said they don't understand what I can do.

Basically, I get people to think and to explain all facets of their their business. I take that and write it all down in a way that tells a clear story of the true value of the company. The resulting document becomes a road map for achieving goals and a marketing document to attract investors -- or in this case --  funders.

 

10 Questions Your Business Plan Must Answer

This week an entrepreneur called me to see if I could help her develop a business plan. She found me on the Internet and had been intrigued by my Web site, particularly my list of 10 questions a business plan must answer. http://www.upstartbusinessplanning.com/15601.html

I told her that I had developed the questions based upon my 10 years of experience in writing business plans and my 15 years of mentoring and teaching entrepreneurs. Since I've been trying to include useful tips in some of my posts, I thought I'd put down my list of 10 Questions. These are the sorts of questions you need to answer to develop a successful business and to be able to interest investors or lenders. There are a lot of ways to express the essentials that are covered by my questions. I'm using language with the least amount of jargon.

If you want to learn the venture capitalist jargon, know more about business planning or speak to me about answering the questions for your business, email me at: upstartwyn@gmail.com.

Ten Questions Your Business Plan Must Answer
1. What is your big idea?
2. What are you selling?
3. Who will buy it?
4. Why will they buy it?
5. How large is the market of potential buyers and is it growing?
6. Who is your competition and how is you business different from theirs?
7. What will it take to make and sell your product or service?
8. How will you get the news out to potential buyers?
9. Who makes up your management team?
10. How and when will you make a profit?