How to Make Your Business Dream a Reality

If you are like most entrepreneurs with an exciting business idea, you know you’ll need a few things to make your dream a reality.

At a minimum, you need (1) a great business plan, and (2) the money and resources (which also takes money) to make your dream business dreams a reality. A great business plan template will help get you both.

What does a business plan template have to do with it?

A great business plan framework or template, like the free one provided below, will help you write your business plan smarter and faster because it will help you organize your most important thoughts, reduce unnecessary headaches, convey the critical information to investors and get you capital needed faster to build your business sooner.

Business Plan Writing is a Waste of Time?

Smart people often debate whether writing a business plan is a big waste of time, but it’s actually a waste of time to have that argument!

Those who argue that business plans are useless are confusing plans with planning.  Planning is a smart thing to do, of course.

“If you’re failing to plan, you’re planning to fail.” Benjamin Franklin

Smart investors know that your business plan is not going to happen.  It’s a  work of fiction. So why do they still want to see your business plan? Lots of reasons.

They know that your business plan required a lot of effort, deep thinking, research, careful consideration, etc.  Plus, they’re not really investing in the plan; they’re investing in the team.

And ultimately, investors are really just investing in the belief that your team will turn their investment dollars into a 50-100X return.

Business Plan Templates

Smart entrepreneurs go looking for free business plan templates and good samples and examples of business plans because:

• They want to save time
• They want to reduce headaches
• They want to write a rock-solid plan
• They want to get it done, and move on to building their products, services and a great company!

How many business plan templates, samples and examples are needed?  One, or two, maybe.

Here’s the little dirty secret about writing a business plan — there’s not a “right” business plan.  There are many right business plans.  There is not single structure that all investors want to see.

However, there are things every business plan should contain. The most common components to a business plan, which should be in every business plan, are things like the Executive Summary, the Management Team, the Product or Service and Financials.

The free downloadable business plan template provided by PlanCrazy (use the Don’t Go Crazy Version first) will get you focused on the top 7 most important sections of a business plan, so you don’t overthink it.