Do-It-Yourself Business Plans

It's done.

I finally expanded the quick 10-Minute summary into a Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans.


Including:

• A clear concise 50-page Guide that describes all the requirements for a great Business Plan .


• Valuable ideas and information on the personal and strategic business decisions required before you start


• Recommended Templates for your Financial Projections


• A quick summary 10-Minute Guide to Business Plan basics


• An actual sample Business Plan that delivered results

Check it out at: http://www.diybusinessplan.com/DIYcompleteGUIDE.htm


Why Do-It-Yourself?


As a management consultant, I have often been hired to help with Business plans. (As an entrepreneur, I've also written a few of my own.) But if you hire someone, it still needs to be "your" plan. Nobody can go away and write it for you.


It needs to reflect the entrepreneur's passion, competence, knowledge and commitment to the business. A consultant can help with the planning process, words, numbers, and presentation, but investors, lenders and strategic partners need to know the entrepreneur behind the plan, not the consultant.


Learn how. And do it yourself.

Who needs a consultant?

If importing a celebrity CEO is seldom a good idea, why would you want to use that hired gun called management consultant? He (or she) may know even less about your business and may have never even been a manager or business owner. How can they contribute anything?

Since I spend a lot of my time selling that service and playing that role I had better have a good answer to that question. Some of my thoughts on the subject are already documented in the article ""Consultants: How to choose, use and not abuse them." See: Ezine articles.

The consultant cannot know your business, your environment or your issues better than you. But he (or she) can add the value of their own knowledge, experience and skills to better analyse the problems or opportunities and develop solutions and action plans with you. The consultant should assist with brainstorming, open up new possibilities to consider, suggest some different strategies, tactics and techniques to get where you want to go. They should be practical and fit your business needs, budget, timetable, priorities, capabilities and corporate culture.

A good consultant should challenge and stimulate you to do better. You are not hiring a friend to remind you how smart you are or to tell you that you already have the right solution.

More than that? You will have to pay me. I am a consultant after all.