Chapter 3

Writing a Business Plan

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Defining a business plan

Bullet Understanding strategic plans

Bullet Writing a white-paper business plan

Bullet Writing a new-venture plan

In Book 6, Chapter 2, I describe how to create a pro forma plan of business financial forecasts by using the bizplan.xls business plan workbook, which you can download from https://stephenlnelson.com/wp-content/uploads/10_year_bizplan-1.xlsx. If you do not own a Microsoft Excel software license, Google Sheets and Excel for the Web provide a web-based Microsoft Excel program for free.

If you do create a forecast, you probably also want to create a companion business plan. For this reason, you also need to know about writing such a plan. I don't go into tedious detail about how to do this. I just provide you some useful information about business plans, and I give you some tips about how to write a workable business plan.

What the Term “Business Plan” Means

In truth, the term business plan refers to three separate things:

  • A strategic plan: A discussion or description of a firm's overall strategy
  • A new-venture plan: ...

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