The Perfect Business Plan

Creating a custom business plan is the first step in developing any new business. That business plan will become your intellectual property, and you have a right to enforce its use if a prospective backer decides to exclude you. An entrepreneur must develop a business plan, just as an architect must draw blueprints before building a custom home. While many templates are available for creating a business plan, every business plan should include the main elements of who, what, where, why, and how. A template will only help if you understand the business science involved and can explain the plan’s elements, including issues such as theories on startup capital and the various stages of finance, the basic structure of the business, governmental compliance, tax structuring, sales, and marketing, to name just a few. The business plan should also address the future of the enterprise. A business plan involves anticipating a series of stepping stones necessary to reach different milestones at different times.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with little experience, expertise, or knowledge regarding a subject tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. On the other hand, there can also be an opposite effect for high performers, who tend to underestimate their skills instead. It’s not uncommon for people to underestimate their abilities and then meet someone with fewer abilities who has learned to maximize their efforts. After that, they may feel more confident in their skills and want to venture outside their comfort zone. That “if they can do it, surely I can do it” attitude has inspired many entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs need self-confidence and a foundation to work from, but it’s equally important for them to be careful not to exceed their capabilities, as this can lead to potential pitfalls.

Ideally, the budding entrepreneur just starting has taken some business courses and understands the business world reasonably. Some entrepreneurs lacking business expertise may want to wing it to learn as they go. This book is designed more for the latter by providing a brief overview of the various business sciences and how somebody can incorporate them into creating a business plan.

The business plan is only a starting point as business plans rarely stay static as a company grows. Circumstances and resources are prone to change, and it’s vital to make timely adjustments to meet the evolving needs of the business.

This adaptability is a key strength of a well-designed business plan, as it allows entrepreneurs to stay prepared and flexible in the face of changing business environments.

Fredrick Winslow Taylor, one of the first behavior theorists to attempt to understand employee motivation, revolutionized the field with his theory of scientific management, also known as Taylorism. This theory, designed to analyze the productivity of the workforce, had a profound impact on the way we understand and manage employees today.

Taylor’s basic theory of motivation was that workers are motivated by money. He saw employees not as individuals but as pieces of a larger workforce; by doing so, his theory stresses that giving employees individual tasks, supplying them with the tools necessary, and paying them based on their productivity was the best way to motivate them. Taylor’s theory developed in the late 1890s and is still relevant in the industrial engineering and manufacturing industries. One of America’s great armor plate-making plants, The Midvale Steel Company, was the birthplace of scientific management. In 1877, at age 22, Taylor started as a clerk with Midvale and advanced to foreman by 1880. As foreman, Taylor was disturbed by the failure of team members to produce more than roughly one-third of what he deemed to be a good day’s work. Taylor became determined to use scientific methods to determine how long men should take to perform a given task. In the fall of 1882, he started to put the first features of scientific management into operation. The ability to anticipate and understand these changes is a prerequisite for survival in ever-changing markets. Your objective should be to adapt your plan as per the business needs, and to do so promptly.

This book has been designed to help make you aware of what common business knowledge is available and help you pick and choose which components you believe will benefit your business plan. Your business plan can be something you can take to the bank. Bankers and lenders require a written memorandum explaining how somebody will use their money. They want to hear about both the negative and the positive points. The business plan is what they have to guide their decisions. Your job is to convince lenders you have what it takes to make everybody prosperous and that you can mitigate the negative factors. At the same time, you also want to protect your intellectual property rights should they like your business plan but not like you.

Who this course is for:

• This course and the book, ‘The Perfect Business Plan,’ are intended for budding entrepreneurs to help prepare a working business plan that can be taken to investors.