How to Write a Business Plan (You’ll Actually Use)

so mike this is the grand slam business plan and a very simplified version right for people that want to be successful in starting a business it is let's go ahead and go through each one of these steps though and kind of give the recipe for success and how someone can create a business plan from scratch and make a successful business awesome do you know why most businesses fail because they don't have a direct plan of action they fail to recognize the importance of a business plan and end up doing more harm than good but don't worry about that because we are here with mike andes who is going to teach us how to write a stellar business plan step by step [Music] so this is very important to figure out how am i going to communicate my message and how am i actually going to transact with people how long should your business plan be in my opinion i like a page or two max with regards to financial projections you know how do you properly forecast your numbers funding this operation and funding the business plan is really important and mike andy's is not new to this business he owns a multi-million dollar business and he knows how to plan things right so let's go learn from mike [Music] you guys we are here with mike andes thank you for being with us again over and over tell us and those who haven't seen you a little bit about you and your business background yeah so i started mowing lawns when i was 11 years old and now we've grown up against the lawn care to be 40 locations around north america i go to gym and do real estate and stocks and other stuff like that but kind of just an entrepreneur through and through i'd say that's awesome well we can't wait to hear from you about how to write a stellar business plan so look forward to it let's do it all right you guys we're gonna dive into helping you write a awesome business plan step by step mike let's dive into it the first part of the business plan the first part in chronological order of a business plan is the executive summary okay so the executive summary is a great place to get started with the business plan and it needs to really draw the reader in so whether you're giving it to a banker or investor it needs to be short and not longer than a page draw them in and give them a reason why they should keep reading the business plan section one executive summary in this section you ask yourself why does the business exist what is your business mission or mission statement why should investors be excited about the business how important is at this point the vision mission statement in terms of a business plan you know like i look at the business plan a lot of times going to an investor or a banker right and really in my mind the vision the mission really is selling them on the idea as to why this business is going to be successful if i'm trying to get investment i want to get people passionate about what i'm trying to do so sometimes a good place to put in the executive summary why is the business exist what's its mission why does it like why are we starting this thing right and putting that in the executive summary as a way to hook them into what you're trying to do got them [Music] step number one is figuring out which product or service you're gonna sell into the market now opportunities are all over the place for example i could take the sugar figure out how to source it i could sell this to a grocery store nearby you i could take some of these elastic bands i could manufacture these and create these for the office we need them here or maybe because of coven and everything else i could go create masks so these are all opportunities they're all over the place now you gotta figure out how you can execute and create a plan around that so first here we got sugar then we got elastic bands then we got masks all opportunities to make money and create a business section two business opportunity in this section ask yourself the question what products and services do you see as most viable is there a product or service that you feel solves a problem what is your solution to that need or problem what are the potential downsides and upsides of the business we talked about business opportunity at the office there uh what's the next step yeah the next thing is the sales and marketing plan all right so this is going to include really how are you going to get your product or service and actually tell people about it i kind of look at marketing as sharing your message like how do i get people and this is like what do you think about facebook ads and google ads or maybe even mail all these different forms of marketing this is what you need to iron out in this part of your business plan like how am i going to actually tell people that i offer this service or this product that i think is so great how am i going to tell them about the need they have for what i'm selling the sales part there's so many different ways to sell things you can do it in person like a retail store right you can do it over e-commerce online you can do it direct to consumer or you can go through a wholesaler or a distributor there's so many different ways to figure out sales and it's going to really be determined by your business plan and then you're really going to govern everything to do with the business for example if i'm doing direct to consumer i don't need to go to retail stores and get a bunch of real estate involved and sales people to sell in person it's going to be a completely different model so this is very important to figure out how am i going to communicate my message and how i'm actually going to transact with people direct to consumer through a wholesaler through a distributor there's so many different avenues of sales section three is sales and marketing in this section ask yourself how do you tell people that they need your product or service how do you communicate your message with people how will they transact with you what business model will you use and what are your sales projections [Music] so when we're looking at this so far three-step process are we looking at a year ahead are we looking at three years four years five years what are we doing in terms of timing at this stage in time yeah like we've mentioned already like you know a business plan day one things change and i think most investors realize that what they want you to see is that you've actually thought about the potential downsides and upsides of what your product or business is going to become they want to see that you've actually thought about what happens if the labor market changes what happens if technology changes and the further out you're thinking they actually start to see oh like they know what they're talking about they have a plan in place when things go bad because something's gonna go bad never smooth sailing gotcha okay so there are a lot of components you guys to a business plan to a really good business plan and we have a complete guide on how you can write a business plan on our uplift.com forward slash blog so make sure you check that out the link is going to be in the description below [Music] step number two is that you have to do market research and analyze that data to make sure the product or service you're offering the market is actually going to be accepted and they want to buy it so let me show you this around in just this office right now we can do a little bit of market research around drinks for example i might be wanting to sell a drink and make a business around that i'm going to look right now and say okay we got coffee here that's cold we also have some other water we have someone who does not have a drinking cup on their table over here we have someone with coffee over here we have someone with a reusable cup and so i'm going to take all of that data and this is when you're going to go talk to people survey people maybe do some market research around who accepts what type of drink and who is it carbonated is it a reusable cup is it a cold cup a cold drink is it a hot drink these are all different types of data points you need to know when you do your market research to make sure your product or service is going to be purchased section four is market analysis in this section ask yourself have you talked to people and surveyed people what data points have you studied what types of market analysis have you done what customer demographics are you looking for what kind of location or physical location will you need the next thing we need to think about is company organization [Music] so a lot of times when we look at company organization we're thinking about an org chart so let's go over this whiteboard let me show you what an org chart might look like when you're first thinking about your business now what's really unique about when you first start your business is the fact that your name might fill in multiple boxes at the beginning and there's a kind of traditional hierarchy of a business that you look at you know maybe this top part this position is gonna be the ceo then maybe you have office manager over here so for example we have different positions underneath the ceo's level position and then underneath each of these people you're also going to have probably employees down the road this might be you know five years down the road kind of plan but what's going to happen is when you first start your business you're probably going to fill in a lot of these boxes so what i would do is have an org chart what are the positions that you need and then fill out next to it okay mike is going to fill this role oh but you know what at the beginning there's only two employees so mike is also gonna have to fill this role and he's gonna have to fill this role at to start off down the road we'll have to get our own advertising manager to replace him in that position but maybe there's if there's only two people starting mike is the office manager the advertising person the ceo etc and then say bob he's also the sales manager he's the production manner he's also gonna be on the front lines no actually on the floor of creating the product or service so this is what an org chart's gonna basically look like what are the positions and then who is responsible to actually carry out those functions within the business that might change that will change as the business grows section 5 is about company organization in this section ask yourself have you built an organizational chart yet what is your business hierarchy what positions are offered at your company what positions will you need filled and when who is responsible for what and how will they get the job done with questions 10 seconds let's dive into it how often do you look at a business plan i probably look at four or five a week four or five times a week how do you define unique sales proposition and how do you make yourself stand out in your business a unique selling proposition i think really has to do with the owner itself like your age could be a unique selling proposition your experience uh your level of expertise in a certain area that's really your usp our unique selling proposition in my mind okay how long should your business plan be in my opinion i like a page or two max to understand but if you're gonna be going to a bank or to a lender or trying to get investors they're probably gonna want something quite a bit more substantial like 30 or 40 pages okay how do you measure your success i measure my success honestly by my contentment and my happiness and i'm content i feel like i'm successful and that's really how i measure someone else's success as well do you need to have an exit strategy um i think so but sometimes your exit strategy can be that you're going to keep it forever or you're going to hand it off to your kids one day and so it could be a generational business down the road can you make amendments to a business plan absolutely honestly i think day one you make an amendment because like you can have a plan in place have a map in place but it's not like a gps that's like perfectly guided things change things happen detours happen and that literally starts the moment you're in business so it's a given yep why are business skills important i think it's really important just to have something to chart your success against right whether your goals are really lofty and you fall short of them or whether you surpass them and beat them having those goals is something to benchmark yourself against [Music] all right so you guys we are in step five company organization which you briefly touched on what's the next step let's keep going it's really looking at financial projections and what the business is going to do in the future when it comes to money sales etc okay [Music] with regards to financial projections you know how do you properly forecast your numbers what's this what's the process look like yeah i think everything builds on itself for example if i'm spending money on marketing and i know my customer acquisition cost if i know how much i'm spending on marketing i should know how many customers i'm going to get then i got to figure out okay well how much is each customer worth to my business how much per customer is going to bring into this company that can give me a kind of a good sales figure then what the people that you're going to be showing this business plan to like a banker an investor et cetera they're going to be really interested in what do those projects look like over time are they growing your sales growing is your profits growing this is really really important when it comes to selling either like getting funding which we'll get into in a second or when it comes to convincing people to come work for you when you're a startup and you really don't have much track record okay now how realistic is it to actually meet those projections and set the right expectations with our viewers that that maybe not the case how do you adjust how you shift everything with the business plan you're just you're really guessing right you're trying to you're trying to have data behind those guesses and you're wanting to come up with like i said how much were you spending on marketing well maybe the industry average of customer acquisition cost or cac you can get that you can figure out what the average for the industry is and then project based upon that what your sales are going to be so i think it's always a guess and i think anyone looking at a business plan knows hey these aren't going to happen these are not you know historical data points that we're giving but it's our best guess based upon data that we have proving to people that you have good data is the important part do i have industry average for customer acquisition costs do i have industry average for lifetime value of a customer to come up with the sales projections that's what's really important because we know someone's either going to go higher or below it's not getting it right it's about having a step-by-step process what's going to happen when things go wrong to get started as well exactly you guys this is for you we do have a fully downloadable pdf business plan outline in the description below as well so make sure you hit that link and take advantage of it section 6 financial projections in this section ask yourself the following and use the above section of the business plan to build out the financial projections how much do customer acquisition cost what is the industry average of the customer acquisition how much will each customer bring into the company what is the industry average what are your financial projections over time how will sales and profits grow [Music] what's after financial projections it's like the old saying it takes money to make money so funding this operation and funding the business plan is really important and it's gonna be really important for a banker or an investor they're gonna know this stuff okay i like that part of the word funding is the word fun well sometimes it's not so fun trying to pitch this to a banker or an investor but it's very important how are you going to actually make get the money to make this all happen create the product create the service buy trucks or equipment the real estate the office space whatever you might be needing how are you going to fund it you can bootstrap it that means you're coming up with the money yourself maybe you even go into debt you use debt to fund finance the business uh you can go ahead and get an investor that's going to give you angel round or uh seed funding and give you the money it's investing in the business and there's just so many different ways that you can get the money it's a matter of what's going to be the best thing for the business is the business high growth where you want investors and they're going to be getting equity in exchange for money or is it something that you want to bootstrap or maybe a loan from your local credit union where you can actually do this without having to go to investors because it sounds great to get free money from an investor but trust me this has got to be bulletproof for someone just give you money and say good luck go for it on that note is it is it a variation of different business plans when i go to the bank versus like when i go to investors or see angels and things like that yeah like honestly most investors that are you know friends and family for example they can be considered investors they're not going to sit down and you know read a 40 40-page financial document but definitely if you're going to a bank if you're going to angel round or sophisticated like vc venture capitalists they're going to be wanting to see every single data point where where did these numbers come from where are these industry averages that you came up with where do they come from you have to have a lot of proof behind that so a lot of times most small businesses get started with bootstrapping or loans from a local bank right just the easiest form of doing so and usually the requirements of all that business plan being exactly ironed out is less stringent than if you were trying to go raise funding from a venture capitalist or an angel investor okay and how do i determine how much money is needed i mean out of all these six seven steps what's two or three steps determine this is how much cash i need to get going yeah i think i really believe at number two really you know figuring out your business opportunity what is the mvp or the minimum viable product how how much do i need to get how much money do i need just to get started like if i'm trying to start my landscaping business i don't need a massive truck and a big trailer and a bunch of chainsaws i might start with a rake a shovel and start weeding and made trimming a couple bushes so minimum viable product is very very important because that's what the people you're pitching are gonna be interested in how soon can you make money and actually make this a profitable business section seven is about funding in this section ask yourself are you catering your business to the funding type you are seeking what is the mvp or minimum viable product how much money do you need to get started how soon can you make money and make this a profitable business you also want to outline the money needed and plan how the money will be spent mike i know we can talk forever about business plans here and there but i think what we've done is summarize it in really good way so thank you for that thank you for all this uh any last words of wisdom and tell people also how we can find how they can find you yeah i think the most important thing is to get started right i think so many people they see all of this and they're so intimidated get started day one is not easy but get started on the journey in terms of following me you know just search mike andy's on youtube or facebook or something in tiktok any of those will work awesome guys thank you so much for watching make sure you take a few seconds subscribe to our channel like this video and we also love hearing your comments reread all of them thank you so much for watching

Channel: UpFlip

Views: 95,263

Keywords: business plan, how to write a business plan, business plan example, business plan template, how to make a business plan, writing a business plan, what is a business plan, business plan sample, business planning, one page business plan, simple business plan template, business plan step by step, business planning and strategy, how to write a business plan for startup, creating a business plan, business plan for beginners, free business plan, mike andes, upflip

Id: Seac5PbUZXk

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021