How I Was Able to Write A Business Plan Without Crying

What is it about writing a business plan that is so frightening? How I was able to change my frame of mind, and write a business plan that just might get me funded.

So, I’ve been writing a business plan for Hatch Network for the past week. We’ve been talking about writing a new one, since the last one we attempted to write is two years old and, well, doesn’t contain anything that actually ended up doing.

I’ve been dreading it for some reason. On the one hand, I think it’s just an aversion to writing long documents, and I know you’re with me on that one. On the other hand, writing a business plan is all about big vision, and that can be scary. It’s funny, because when I daydream about how great we want it to be and all the good we want to do in the world, it makes me smile, and I hurry back to work on all the baby steps we take to build a business. But when it comes to actually putting the bigger vision in a plan, on real paper, it feels like crossing a road blindfolded.

Nothing like a little fear to stop me dead in my tracks. Are you with me, sisters?

But then I woke up one morning, over the Thanksgiving holiday, which for most entrepreneurs, just means a few days where no one was answering all the emails we continue to send out, and I was inspired to start writing.

The bigger vision for Hatch Network has been on my mind a lot lately, and the fact is, we’re going to need some working capital to execute our big plans, and improve upon what we’ve started. And we know that to get money, you need… say it with me… a business plan!

Since I had already read all my friends’ status updates on Facebook, I thought I would just take a crack at the executive summary, since that seemed easy enough. I’m a bite sized kind of girl, so I figured if I could just break off a piece, albeit a very important piece, I’d get rolling. I’d tried before, but trying to get those ideas to work together, and paint a bigger picture hadn’t worked – again – too daunting, and well, I wasn’t inspired to put it down on paper because I wasn’t confident that I knew what was really possible.

Before I started though, I took one moment as I wrote the word “Business Plan” and had a thought…

I’m writing this for MYSELF.

So I started on the executive summary, which many people assert is the only thing an investor or lender will read, aside from the financial pages in the back. I wrote about our vision, our experience and research so far… then I wrote down a big, fat number that had a dollar sign in front of it, and listed the ways I would use that money to grow our business. I wrote as if that were already being granted to us, and this was what we were going to do with it.

Then it was on… I couldn’t stop. Something about writing with the purpose of telling MYSELF exactly what we wanted and how we were going to do it, inspired me. Suddenly, I was outlining all of our ideas, and saying why they were important and how we were going to execute them. I pored over research about women in business, and teaching entrepreneurship, using excerpts and citing the sources in our plan. I described the business in detail, the industry, all about our competitors, I wrote about our barriers to entry (even though we were already entered), and what our marketing efforts should be. The surprising thing was, I knew it all. I had done the research, I did have the experience, I knew what my customer wanted, I saw what the future held.

This newfound confidence, discovered by writing down what I ALREADY KNEW, was a major boost. It was proof of what I had heard so many times before… that the power to make things happen is already within you.

It came clear to me that anything would be possible.

I started to get a little cocky, and  I added a section called “Where we want to be”. It isn’t a category that any business plan writing class or software will include, but I was never really one to follow those “rules” and such. So I wrote it… a bigger vision for a brand that will serve millions of people to be great entrepreneurs through positive, fun, and practical skill building experiences. There, I said it.

The moral of the story is this… if I can do it, you can do it. Below is an outline that I made up all on my own, so that I would actually like writing a business plan. Sure, it may be missing some of the “practical” stuff, but that’s boring to write. If someone really needs it, I can add it later, but I wrote this one for myself first.

Claire’s Business Plan Outline for People Who Hate the Rules For Writing A Business Plan:

Executive Summary: Tell yourself why this business prospect is interesting, and what is your mission. Give yourself a brief outline of your customer, your market, your competition, your product, why you’re qualified to be the person to do this, what you’ve done so far, and how much money you want to get started.

Business Description: Describe your business in more detail, and include your mission statement.

Market and Market Size: Do yourself the favor of diligently spending some time reading articles, studies, statistics, and details of your market and how many people buy the stuff. Describe your customer, where they can be reached, and how your product solves their needs.

Product Offerings: Write a description of each and every product you want to offer. Include how you will distribute it, your best guestimate at a price, and a pulled from outer space revenue projection for the next year.

Competition: In bold text, write exactly who they are (e.g.: For-profit Women’s Business Organizations), then list them, describe their business model/offerings, and then write, “What I know:” and describe how you *really* feel about what they’re doing. (You may need to tone this down later, but if they suck at serving the market, say so.) Then have a section that talks about how you’re different from the others called “Differentiation”. Evaluate them using the same criteria – it may be their offerings, prices, sales, market share, or customer support. You can determine which criteria are most relevant to your market (and what you can actually measure).

Barrier to Entry: Let’s face, we all have the same barrier to entry, and it’s money to buy time. So write that down. Then write the other obstacles that you need to work around to make things happen. Maybe you need better technology, or a patent. List and briefly describe. You don’t have to solve those here.

Where We Want to Be: My rogue Business Plan entry. Yes, you have a mission statement. That’s nice. Now just state, plain and simple, and with a big head, what you absolutely see your company in the long run.

Management Team: Ok, so if you’re it, start asking for help. A management team can include your support staff or contractors that you’ve worked with. The point is, you have a team of people working for you, with a shared vision for your company. Aside from your management team, add a list of advisors to beef up the section. Find a mentor, or a consultant who you can bounce ideas off of, and check in with them regularly. Then ask them if they wouldn’t mind being on your advisory board. When they say yes, then bug them for a bio, and include it here. You can’t do this alone, so if you haven’t already, start finding your advisors. These can certainly be people that have already worked for you – in fact, that’s a good thing, because it shows there is a team commitment. Team is good.

Exiting Options: I know it always seems weird to have a big dream but be thinking about how it ends, but it’s a good idea. Once you build this beast, what are you going to do with it? Will it be bought by a bigger beast? Will it grow to be a self-sustaining, global behemoth? You might not leave these ideas in your final plan, but go ahead and write out your options. It’ll change the way you think about growth.

Financials: Yes, these suck. You should attempt to create a cash flow statement, income statement, and a balance sheet. A good bookkeeper or accountant can probably sell you some time to set up the documents and help you plug in numbers. Here is some nutshell information: The Income Statement is where you include projections for your business, including expenses and income, and yes, you can guess in the beginning. The Cash Flow Statement shows how your company will manage it’s cash from month to month, and includes income and receivables, and total expenses. The Balance Sheet takes a financial picture of your business on an annual basis, and includes assets, liabilities, and equity. I’m going to leave it at that, because even just writing short descriptions is painful. I got help with ours.

My outline isn’t perfect, but it’s a fire starter.

You can certainly search online or in the hundreds of business plan books for tips and guidelines; there is software that can provide a lot of templates – even for the financials. Many investors and lenders will have their own requirements and requests, so if you’re going after someone specific, you can ask them directly what exactly they need to see.

So take a break from writing your book, your blog, and your website copy and write a business plan for YOU!

Are you a business plan writer? Have you had an experience writing you own that you’d like to share? Please comment below to keep the conversation going!