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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Turn a business plan into profitable reality with practical hands-on tips
A solid business plan is crucial to the ultimate success of your start-up or small business. But don’t fret, your friends at For Dummies are here to help! Getting Started in Business Plans For Dummies gives you the fundamentals you need to let your business really take flight. Inside, you’ll find practical, hands-on information that will help you take your business from idea to profitable reality.
From the basics of deciding what your business is all about, to building a long-term vision of where your company will go, this book has you covered. Discover step-by-step advice for budgeting and margins, prices and profits, costs and expenses, and much more.
- Use the latest AI tools to bring your plan together quickly and more effectively
- Identify what gives your business an edge — and keep ahead of threats and competitors
- Stay right on the money, with everything you need to know to put together a sound financial forecast
- Create a smart business model that really works
Perfect for anyone starting a new business, or even just thinking about it, Getting Started in Business Plans For Dummies has everything you need in one useful package. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to plan your dream business!
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Seitenzahl: 268
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Getting Started in Business Plans For Dummies®
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Chapter 1: Letting Your Plan Take Flight
Getting Your Feet Wet
Structuring Your Plan
Getting Beyond First Base
Finding Life Hacks to Help Do the Job
Chapter 2: Figuring Out What’s So Special about You
Understanding Strategic Advantage
Developing Your Strategic Advantage Statement
Using AI to Generate More Ideas
Chapter 3: Sizing up the Competition
Understanding Why Competitor Analysis is Important
Assessing Your Competitors
Choosing Your Competitive Strategy
Chapter 4: Separating Yourself from Your Business
Deciding What Path You Want to Take
Wearing Different Hats
Building a Business with a Life of its Own
Appreciating the Limitations of Your Business
Chapter 5: Exploiting Opportunities and Avoiding Threats
Rating Your Capabilities
Identifying Opportunities and Threats
Doing a SWOT Analysis
Creating a Plan for Change
Chapter 6: Developing a Smart Marketing Plan
Laying Down the Elements of Your Plan
Selling the Hole (and Not the Drill)
Defining Your Target Market
Setting Sales Targets
Deciding on Your Marketing Strategies
Connecting the Dots
Chapter 7: Budgeting for Start-Up Expenses
Creating a Start-Up Budget
Separating Start-Up Expenses
Figuring Out How Much is Enough
Securing the Funds You Need
Chapter 8: Figuring Out Prices and Predicting Sales
Choosing a Pricing Strategy
Building a Hybrid-Pricing Plan
Forming Your Final Plan of Attack
Building Your Sales Forecast
Creating Your Month-by-Month Forecast
Chapter 9: Calculating Costs and Gross Profit
Calculating the Cost of Each Sale
Understanding Gross Profit
Analyzing Margins for Your Own Business
Building Your Gross Profit Projection
Chapter 10: Managing Expenses
Concentrating on Expenses
Fine-tuning Your Worksheet
Securing Business Intelligence
Keeping the Wolf from the Door
Chapter 11: Assembling Your First Financial Forecast
Building Your Profit & Loss Projection
Analyzing Net Profit
Taking Things a Step Further
Chapter 12: Perfecting the Final Pitch
Exploring Different Formats
Building a Cohesive Narrative
Covering All Bases
Showing Where the Money’s At
Using AI for What It’s Good At
Chapter 13: Ten Suggestions for a Plan that’s Not Shaping Up
Ensure You’re Still Legal
Find Ways to Take the Pressure Off
Experiment with Margins
Return to Competitor Analysis
Involve Your Team
Actively Seek Expert Advice
Find a Business Partner
Know When to Call it a Day
Try to Sell Your Idea
Take the Lessons with You
Index
About the Author
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
TABLE 3-1 Rating Head-to-Head Competitors
Chapter 4
TABLE 4-1 Moving from a Small Business to a Big Business
Chapter 5
TABLE 5-1 Rating Your Capabilities
TABLE 5-2 Summarizing Opportunities and Threats
Chapter 6
TABLE 6-1 Strategic Advantage versus Unique Selling Proposition
Chapter 7
TABLE 7-1 Start-up Expenses Budget
Chapter 8
TABLE 8-1 Calculating Maximum Billable Hours per Year
Chapter 9
TABLE 9-1 Variable Costs Examples for Service Businesses
TABLE 9-2 Calculating True Costs and Margins
TABLE 9-3 Cost of Producing One Bottle of Pickle
TABLE 9-4 Calculating Gross Profit and Gross Profit Margin
Chapter 10
TABLE 10-1 Using Business Benchmarks
Chapter 11
TABLE 11-1 Differences between a Profit & Loss Projection and a Cashflow Project...
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
FIGURE 2-1: An example statement of strategic advantage.
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5-1: The principles of a SWOT analysis.
FIGURE 5-2: Plotting business strategy using a SWOT analysis.
Chapter 9
FIGURE 9-1: Identifying variable costs for your business.
FIGURE 9-2: Building a gross profit projection for a service with employees or ...
FIGURE 9-3: Building a gross profit projection for a business selling lots of d...
Chapter 10
FIGURE 10-1: Forecasting expenses for the months ahead.
FIGURE 10-2: Looking at expense percentages is part of the benchmarking process...
Chapter 11
FIGURE 11-1: Total sales form the first line of your Profit & Loss Projection.
FIGURE 11-2: Cost of sales and gross profit show below total sales on your Prof...
FIGURE 11-3: Your completed Profit & Loss Projection.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Begin Reading
Index
About the Author
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Getting Started in Business Plans For Dummies®, 2ndEdition
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Introduction
Igrew up in Scotland, where the winters can be wild, wet, and cold. My father was a self-employed landscape gardener and, each year, as the days grew shorter, he would start hatching entrepreneurial plots to see the family through the scant earnings of the winter months. Handmade garden furniture, barrels from the local brewery scrubbed back and filled with violets, gold-leaf mirror restoration and beach-scavenged scallop shells were but a few of the ill-fated ventures that would transform our Victorian flat into a hive of industry for a few fleeting months of each year.
I started my first business at the age of 26 and have been in business ever since, oscillating in a manner not unlike my father’s between the more stable income of business consulting and the somewhat precarious existence of writing and publishing.
Yet when working on this book, I realized something quite fundamental. While I’ve been steadily successful for more than 20 years, all too often the sensible-cardigan-wearing-accountant side of me wins out against the risk-taking-creative-why-don’t-we-try-this side of me. Possibly due to the rather feast-and-famine finances of my childhood, I typically spend more time analyzing profit margins than I do thinking of creative new products; I focus more on managing risk than being a trendsetter. If you’ve been in business before, I’m sure you too have experienced this natural tension between your entrepreneurial side and the inner voice of ‘reason’.
One challenge for me in writing this book has been to find ways to encourage dreams to flourish while simultaneously exploring the somewhat sobering process of writing a business plan. I’m writing this introduction having just finished the last chapter of this book and, happily, I think that the process has worked on me. I’m itching with impatience to begin my next business venture, and feel utterly optimistic about its prospects. (I remain my father’s daughter, after all.)
I hope you have a similar experience with this book, and that I share enough inspiration for your inner entrepreneur to thrive while at the same time providing unshakeable feet-on-the-ground practicality.
About This Book
I like to think that this book is a bit different from other business planning books, not least because this book is part of the For Dummies series. Dummies books aren’t about thinking that you’re a ‘dummy’ — far from it. What the For Dummies series is all about is balancing heavyweight topics with a lightweight mindset, and sharing a ‘can-do’ attitude that encourages anyone — no matter how young or old, how inexperienced or how veteran — to give the subject at hand a go.
I like to think that the Dummies way of thinking has helped me to bring a fresh approach to the subject of business planning. I’ve tried not to get bogged down in the same old stodgy discussions of mission statements, values and organizational charts; instead, I’ve focused more on working with others, being creative and thinking of your business as something that’s unique and separate from yourself.
You may be surprised by the fact that I devote five whole chapters to the topic of finance (you’ll only find one finance chapter in most business planning books). I’m a real advocate of the importance of financial planning and, in this book, I try to break the topic down into bite-sized chunks that anyone can understand, even if they haven’t done any bookkeeping or accounting before.
I also understand that most people who’ve worked in business end up with knowledge that’s patchy. You may know heaps about marketing but nothing about finance, or vice versa. The beauty of Dummies books is that you can just leap in, find the chunk of information that addresses your query, and start reading from there.
One more thing. Throughout this book you’ll see sidebars — text that sits in a separate box with gray shading. Think of sidebars as the nut topping on your ice-cream: Nice to have, but not essential. Feel free to skip these bits.
Foolish Assumptions
When writing this book, I make no assumptions about your prior experience. Maybe you’ve been in business all your life or maybe you’ve never been in business before. It could be that you’re a tech geek or it’s possible that you hate computers. Maybe you love numbers or — much more likely — you may have a somewhat queasy feeling when it comes to math.
I also make no assumptions about the age of your business, and realize that for many people reading this book, your business is still a seedling waiting to be watered. (For this reason, I include practical advice such as how to budget for personal expenses while you’re building your business, and why things such as your relationships and family situation are all part of the picture.)
Last, I don’t try to guess where you live in the world. After all, the principles of business planning are universal, whether you’re in the snowdrifts of Alaska, the stone country of Australia, or the kilt-swaying highlands of Scotland.
Icons Used in This Book
Tie a knot in that elephant’s trunk, pin an egg timer to your shirt but, whatever you do, don’t forget the pointers next to this icon.
This icon points to ways to give your business plan that extra spark.
Real-life stories from others who’ve been there and done that.
A pitfall for the unwary. Read these warnings carefully.
Where to Go from Here
Getting Started in Business Plans For Dummies, 2nd edition, is no page-turning thriller (probably a good thing given the subject matter) and doesn’t require you to start at the beginning and follow through to the end. Instead, feel free to jump in and start reading from whatever section is most relevant to you:
New to business and you’ve never created a business plan before? I suggest you read Chapters 1, 2 and 3 before doing much else. Chapter 1 provides an overview for creating your plan, and Chapters 2 and 3 help you to consolidate your business concept. From here, you’re probably best to read the chapters in the order that I present them, because these chapters follow the same sequence as the topics within a business plan.
If business strategy is more your concern, Chapters 2 to 5 and 11 are the places to be.
Are financial projections a source of woe? Chapters 7 to 11 are here to help.
For advice on creating a plan that can’t fail to impress prospective lenders or investors, Chapter 12 explains how to pull your plan together. And, finally, Chapter 13 provides advice and encouragement if things aren’t looking as good as you’d hoped.
Chapter 1
Letting Your Plan Take Flight
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting started without another moment’s hesitation
Deciding what elements to include in your plan
Understanding why business planning is harder than it looks
Tricking yourself into doing the deed
Abusiness plan is as much a way of thinking as it is a document. Some of the most important elements of a business plan can be done while talking with colleagues, walking along the beach, or taking time out over a cup of coffee.
Key to a business planning mindset is a willingness to be objective about strategy, the ability to think of your business as something that’s separate from you, and the discipline to analyze your financials (even if you’re not naturally good with numbers).
Importantly, a business plan doesn’t necessarily require days or weeks of your time. I often recommend to people they approach their plan in bite-sized chunks, whether this be redesigning pricing strategies, spending time researching competitors, or experimenting with different pricing models.
In this chapter, I talk about who a business plan is for, what goes into a plan, and how you might start thinking about your business model. I also explain why it can be hard to be objective and motivated about planning for your business, and share a few insights into how to keep yourself on track.
Getting Your Feet Wet
In Getting Started in Business Plans For Dummies, 2nd edition, I place less emphasis on the importance of creating a written plan and more on why planning is best viewed as a frame of mind. The neat thing about this way of thinking is that you can start with your plan at any time, even if you know you have only one hour free this week and you’re flying overseas for a holiday the next.
Planning can even be fun once you get started. Some of my best business ideas have come to me while lying in the hammock on holidays, digging up weeds in the garden, or having a quiet coffee.
Choosing your dance partners
Unless you’ve run a business before, creating a business plan almost certainly needs a little help from outside. The good news is that all you have to do is ask. Consider the following sources:
Business planning courses: In my opinion, a structured course spread over several weeks or even months is the very best possible way to accumulate basic planning skills. Not only do you have the discipline of working on your plan at least once a week, but you also usually receive expert mentoring from the teacher or teachers, as well as peer support from other people in a similar position to you.
Business advisory centers:
Depending on where you are in the world, business advisory centers have different names and structures. However, most state and federal governments fund some form of free advisory center.
Business consultants:
While I warn against delegating the whole planning process to outsiders, expert consultants can be a great resource, especially if you retain control and ownership of your plan.
Your accountant:
I strongly recommend that you do your own financial projections, rather than delegating this task to a bookkeeper or accountant. (I explain just how in
Chapters 7
through to
11
.) However, after you have made your best attempt, consider asking your accountant to review your figures, and help you to identify anything that doesn’t make sense or seems unrealistic.
Your lawyer:
Your lawyer is an excellent source of advice for managing risk, in particular for protecting your name and your brand, limiting liability through company structures, or reviewing contracts.
Friends and family:
Not only is the advice of friends and family usually free, but these people also understand you like nobody else. Support and encouragement from friends and family is invaluable on those doubtful days when you think you (and your new business idea) may be crazy.
Your spouse/life partner:
Last but not least. Need I say more?
Even if you don’t have all of the skills required to create a plan, you won’t find a better motivator for acquiring these skills than the feast-and-famine of your business venture. Experience is a generous teacher.
Deciding who this plan is for
The easy answer to the question of who your plan is for is you, of course. Your plan is an ongoing process, not a massive document that you create every year or so. When you create a business plan for your own use only, you can pick a structure, time and format that work well for you.
Of course, in real life the impetus for most business plans is to seek capital, either from an investor or via a bank loan. In Chapter 12, I explain how to frame your plan according to your audience: Investors are typically more interested in a high rate of return and the excitement of a clever business idea; banks are usually more interested in collateral, consistent trading results and your personal credit rating.
Regardless of who is likely to read your plan, I strongly suggest that when it comes to the financials — sales targets, income projections, profit projections and so on — you be consistent. Don’t have one version of financials for your own purposes, and another spruced-up version for the bank. Instead, stay as realistic as possible. This tactic helps you gain respect from any likely investors and keeps you grounded as to what lies ahead.
Subscribing to a planning app
In this book, I try to provide you with all the information you need to build your plan. You may be wondering how to use this book alongside the many business planning apps available.
Even with this book to hand, a business planning app undoubtedly makes the process easier. Apps such as Bizplan, Enloop, LivePlan and PlanGuru help you to structure each section of your plan, can offer suggested wording based on your industry, and are excellent for creating financial forecasts, particularly if numbers don’t come naturally to you.
I suggest you weigh up the pros and cons for yourself by subscribing to a service such as www.liveplan.com for a month or so. The monthly fee is usually fairly modest, and represents a small financial commitment for what is potentially a significant saving of your time.
I’ve written this book so it can go hand in hand with any business planning app, aiming to provide guidance as to what’s important, and what’s not. For example, almost anyone can explain the concept of strategic advantage in a few sentences, and most planning apps simply provide a definition, followed by a template where you can write your own. However, in real life, I find that strategic advantage is super tricky to understand and it’s for this reason that I devote two whole chapters to the subject (Chapters 2 and 3), highlighting how fundamental this concept is to business success.
ARE YOU READY?
I find that if someone really wants to start their own business, wild horses can’t hold them back. The idea keeps coming around and around until that person finally takes the leap and says, ‘I’m going to give it a go’.
So if you’re champing at the bit to start your new business, I have just three questions to ask you first:
Do you have experience in the kind of business you’re planning to start? For example, if you’re looking at buying a coffee van, have you actually spent a few weeks selling coffee in this way? Do you have barista or retail experience?Do you definitely have enough capital to get started? If you’re not sure, do you think you may be better saving for a while before you launch your business? (See Chapter 7 for more on budgeting for start-up expenses.)Is your partner/spouse/family supportive of this venture?If your answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, I suggest that you try to temper your enthusiasm just a little. And if you still can’t wait, hey, I completely understand.
Structuring Your Plan
The best business plan format for a company with a turnover of $100 million and 200 employees is going to be utterly different from the best format for a start-up business with no employees. For this reason, you can find as many possible formats for a business plan as recipes for Bolognese sauce.
Most formats, however, have certain key elements in common, although the sequence of these elements varies. These key elements are as follows:
A cover page and table of contents.
An Executive Summary.
I explain how to write this in
Chapter 12
.
Your point of difference and strategic advantage (usually but not always part of your Executive Summary).
For more on these topics, see
Chapters 2
and
3
.
Your vision for the future.
Although I devote most of a chapter to this topic (see
Chapter 3
), the aim is to distil this vision into a sentence or two, either as part of your Executive Summary, or part of your pitch for funding.
A SWOT analysis.
I cover this topic in
Chapter 5
.
A competitor analysis and marketing plan.
Chapter 3
talks about competitor analysis and competitive strategy, and
Chapter 6
provides a complete summary of how to construct a marketing plan.
A people plan. A business isn’t anything without the people who run it, and your skills, entrepreneurialism, and natural abilities are as much a part of the mix as anything else, as are the skills of the people you choose to involve in your business. This part of your plan needs to outline the people element of your business: Who does what, and why they’re the best choice for the job.
Even if you don’t have any employees yet, you can still include details about any consultants, advisers, mentors, or professionals who you plan to involve in your business. These details help to establish credibility for anybody else reading your plan, and prompt you to think further outside the business than just yourself.
Chapter 2 touches on this topic, while Chapter 4 explores the people side of your plan in more depth. (People planning doesn’t necessarily take a huge amount of time at first, but is something that can be a huge time-waster if you don’t get it right.)
A risk-management plan, if appropriate.
The more risk in your business, the more important it is to include a risk-management strategy in your plan.
A summary of operations, if appropriate.
I talk about how to write this summary in
Chapter 12
.
Financial reports. For most new businesses, the financial part of your plan may be as simple as a Profit & Loss Projection for the next 12 months. Established businesses may include projections for 24 or 36 months ahead, as well as historical Profit & Loss reports and Balance Sheets for the previous year or years. Financials often also include break-even analysis, Cashflow Projections, and budgets.
For more on creating a Profit & Loss Projection, see Chapters 8 through to 11.
For new or growing businesses that require a certain sales volume before the model becomes profitable, I suggest you extend your projections for at least a couple of years to demonstrate the long-term viability of your concept.
The ask.
I talk more about asking for money in
Chapter 12
.
If you feel daunted by the preceding list, I suggest you start with the basics: Your point of difference, a SWOT analysis, a marketing plan, and a Profit & Loss Projection for the next 12 months. With these elements in place, you can return to complete more details in your plan as soon as you have the stamina.
Getting Beyond First Base
We humans often like to stick with what we know and what feels right — and business plans are no exception. In this section, I delve into the psychology of business plans, focusing on how human bias and subconscious behaviors can serve to undermine the objectivity so essential to good planning.
Guarding against optimism
People often ascribe the high failure rates of venture capital to perceived levels of risk, and proof that the system is working as it should. However, I’d argue that these failure rates have more to do with the nature of what it means to be human. Specifically, we humans are an overly optimistic bunch, with subconscious instincts that often override rational decision-making.
The majority of humans are endowed with something known as optimism bias — the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. And, as someone who has spent their life around entrepreneurs, I reckon the average business owner has optimism bias on steroids.
Of course, optimism is one thing, but wearing blinkers is another. How can you temper such optimism, along with other unconscious biases, to ensure your business plan is as good as can be? In this section, I consider how some innate and completely normal human behaviors might affect your ability to create a smart business plan.
Confirmation bias
Humans love confirmation bias — that inexorable pull that makes us look for evidence to validate what we already think, and disregard information supporting other points of view. (Next time you’re making a decision or expressing an opinion about something, see if you can spot your own confirmation bias. Perhaps you like to you seek out stories that confirm your political viewpoint? Or you cling to one-off customer anecdotes that validate your new idea, and dismiss negative customer reviews that suggest otherwise?)
Confirmation bias is, of course, counter-productive to creating a business plan, particularly if you’re seeking fresh ideas or wanting to assess the potential of a new business model.
When creating your business plan, be wary of placing too much emphasis on information that reinforces your existing beliefs. Try to involve outside advisers during the information-gathering stage, perhaps even seeking out those who you know are likely to challenge or disagree with you. (Chapter 5 provides some good frameworks for this information-gathering process.)
The planning fallacy
The planning fallacy is a concept developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979, and outlines the predisposition of humans to be overly optimistic about timelines or planning outcomes, even in the face of more general knowledge or past experience that would suggest otherwise.
The planning fallacy is most likely to arise when we trust our intuition and disregard past experience. Unfortunately, because planning is inherently about the future, we’re inclined to look forward, rather than backwards, and we happily forget how often projects run over, things cost more than budgeted, or sales orders fall through. We’re also likely to forget how our competitors behave — for example, getting excited about new opportunities while simultaneously disregarding the likelihood of our competitors doing exactly the same thing.
So, how do you avoid falling foul of the planning fallacy? Similar to avoiding confirmation bias, try to involve multiple perspectives and get input from experts or external advisors of the challenges or time required. In addition, you may be able to refer to past projects or industry benchmarks to guide your estimates, rather than relying solely on gut feeling. (For more about benchmarks, see Chapter 10.)
The Dunning-Kruger effect
Humans also tend to be optimistic in their struggle to make sense of the future and its mix of certainty and uncertainty. Or, put another way, because we don’t yet know what we do not know, we tend to overestimate ourselves. This overestimation of competence, along with the inability to critically analyze our own abilities, is known as the Dunning–Kruger effect.
I’ve observed the Dunning–Kruger effect in action more times than I care to mention and, indeed, can see how often I’ve overestimated my own abilities. I’ve been influenced by life experiences that have been ultimately quite misleading, and sometimes my intuition and business decisions have been quite unhinged from reality.
