Excerpts From the Chapter on Business Planning:

The first and most important step in starting a new business venture or buying one for repositioning and growth is to create a 25-35 page document called a Business Plan. If you are not committed to developing such a plan, you are probably not ready to be an Entrepreneur and might consider remaining in your current job. Let me be very clear: you must complete the business plan; you cannot hire someone else to create it. Often professionals or grant writers will suggest they can do the plan for you and charge you $1000 to $10,000 — and occasionally even (falsely) guarantee that you will raise money from their plan. The fact that it is their plan is exactly the problem; it does not come from your heart and brain…

… No new venture will raise capital from Angel Investors like me without a well-crafted business plan. It is the first thing we ask for, and we study it with high due diligence. Venture Capitalists will often re-write your plan and readjust your projections; they’ll most certainly chop your valuation before they issue a Term Sheet with their offer to invest in your company. The Business Plan is an ever evolving document; it’s not something you bind in a hard leather jacket and put on the shelf. Instead, you should keep this valuable document handy for reference, constant revision and modification. Business today is ever changing; the acceleration of technology has made it such that you’re able to alter your Business Plan as new products or offering appear in the competitive landscape, new management talent is attracted to your venture and economic and financial pressures influence your business I can promise that once you’ve created it, this document will change before you have finished the last sections of writing. Nothing in business stays the same for long — and your Business Plan has to mirror this fluidity…

I provide Real Angel Investor Observations and Comments on business plans through the years, like “Without a fully developed business plan, I would never consider investing in your venture,” and “Did Merlin the Magician do your financial projections – or some other wizard?” along with as well as a series of reflective questions at the end of each chapter to help assimilate and put the material in context. Of course, to see the rest you’ll need to buy the book!