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1. COMPANY NAME & LOGO

Your company name will appear at the top of your plan, along with your company logo if you upload one. If you don’t have a logo yet, that’s fine. Your pitch will still look good without one.

1.1 Enter your company name:

This is the same name that will appear on the cover page of your plan.

1.2 Upload your company logo (optional):

If your company has a logo already, add it here to include it in your pitch. This is the same image that will appear on the cover page of your plan

2. HEADLINE

Start with a strong, compelling description of your company and its business opportunity. What are the keys to your success? Is it your innovative product or service? The unserved market you’ve identified? The proven team of people you’ve put together? Don’t try to cram everything into 140 characters. Just focus on what’s most important.

2.1 Describe the essence of your company in one sentence:

3. PROBLEM WORTH SOLVING:

State the problem (or problems) that you solve for your target customers. “Problems” can also appear as unmet needs or wants — the lack of a good Caribbean restaurant in your town, for example. Be sure to tackle a problem that is important to your market. Just because a need is imperfectly met does not guarantee that anyone wants to pay for a better solution.

Describe the key problem or unmet need that you will address for your customers. If you have a common business, such as a restaurant or nail salon, explain why your customers need your particular restaurant or nail salon. Do you offer lower prices? More convenient hours? A better location? A specialty that is not otherwise available in your area, such as a Moroccan restaurant or a late-night taco truck?
If your company is doing something new and different, explain why the world needs your innovation. What is it about the existing solutions that is subpar? Maybe your new medical device avoids the need for invasive surgery to treat a serious medical condition. Or maybe you are improving on a mediocre product category — creating a better hospital gown, an easier way to de-wrinkle clothing, a more convenient way to outsource your tax preparation, and so on.

If your company solves several distinct customer problems, describe them all here. 

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

Fast, high-quality lunches are in heavy demand in the downtown area. Every day thousands of office workers from local businesses are looking for lunch options that are convenient, affordable, and delicious. For all of that demand, though, there are only a handful of good ethnic restaurants in the area, and none of them specialize in Caribbean cuisine, despite its clear popularity in other nearby and similarly sized cities.
Lack of local Caribbean food is also a common complaint from international students at the nearby university, especially those from the region itself who are looking for a reminder of home. We are convinced that there is a great market opportunity here for an eatery offering affordable Caribbean-style lunches in proximity to downtown and campus. 

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

Our founder’s aunt took her nearly new car to a drive-through car wash recently and came home with more than $1,000 in paint damage. We were aghast. A few calls to local auto body shops suggested it was no fluke, though. They all reported seeing multiple cars each week with similar trouble. Debris gets caught in the brushes, or the brushes themselves wear out, and they can cause serious damage until detected.
Why do consumers continue to use automatic wash facilities despite the risks? Many people probably don’t know those risks. Beyond that, though, when they work properly, automatic car washes offer clear advantages over the alternatives. Old-fashioned home washing and self-serve wash stations are messy, time consuming, and labor intensive, and they waste a lot of water. "Touchless" car washes that only use water jets are finicky and prone to poor results. Professional hand-washing is expensive and slow. By comparison, automatic car washes seem fast, easy, and inexpensive — unless, that is, they happen to cause really expensive damage to your car. 

3.1 Either describe one major customer problem or make a short list:

3.2 Either describe one major customer problem or make a short list:

4. YOUR SOLUTION:

Explain how you solve the problem that your customers face. What does your company offer? What is it about your solution that provides a uniquely effective remedy for their pain points? Don’t just name your products or services here. Give a sense of how they solve the problem in a novel or superior way.

Explain how your company will address the problem you identified above. What products or services do you offer, and how do they meet your customers’ need? For example, if the problem is that parking near the local college is expensive and hard to find, your solution might be a bike rental service with designated pickup and dropoff locations near both classrooms and off-campus student housing.

If your company is tackling several distinct problems, describe your solutions individually here.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

We recently launched a new food truck offering reasonably priced Caribbean roast sandwiches, black beans and rice, fire-roasted street corn, and other traditional Jamaican dishes. One of our founders, Mark Powell, is an accomplished chef with experience at some of the best restaurants in the area. He won second prize at a citywide chefs’ competition last year with his specialty, a pressed pork sandwich that is the centerpiece of our new menu.

The Star-Liner is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Fridays and Saturdays until midnight. We have a reserved space in the parking lot of the Harrison Theater, a convenient location on the east side that is within easy walking distance of both downtown and the university district.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

New steam-cleaning technology offers a superior approach to car washing, and our company is the first in our area to offer it. Popularized in Korea and just making their way into U.S. markets, automotive steam cleaners are fantastic. They use only high-speed steam vapor — no damaging brushes, no chemical detergents, no tricky pH-balanced water jets, no wastewater — to clean and sterilize the car’s surface, knocking loose any dirt or debris without harming the paint job or damaging radio antennas, roof racks, or other attachments.

Our car wash will offer two methods of steam cleaning. We will have a drive-through tunnel unit for quick, inexpensive automatic washes. For a more personal approach, we will also have bays with handheld, portable steamer units, which will enable our crew to work together to clean as many as six cars at once. In addition, the steam cleaners’ practically dry application allows us to offer engine cleaning and interior detailing as add-on services without requiring additional staff or equipment.

4.1 Either describe one major solution or make a short list:

5. TARGET MARKET:

What types of potential customers do you intend to focus on? Which group represents your primary market? Which others are worth pursuing? Selling to “everyone” is not a good approach. Take Nike as an example. Their shoes are broadly useful, but that doesn’t mean their target market is just “people with feet.” It’s tough to craft marketing messages and find sales channels to address nearly everyone in the world at once. Instead, Nike focuses on their best potential customers — aiming, say, the new Air Jordans at athletes, sports fans, young people with a sporty sense of style, and so on.
  
As you identify the best segments of the market for your solution, make your best guess at how many prospects are available in each segment and how much they typically spend each year to address the problem you solve. If you don’t know enough to put together these estimates, this is a great opportunity to do market research, talk to knowledgeable people in your industry, and get in conversation with potential customers. The more you know about your market now, the less chance you have of missing the mark later.

5.1 Make a short list of your target market segments (in priority order)
5.2 Add to each of them how many prospects do you think are in this segment?
5.3 How much does each prospect spend annually on the problem you solve?

6. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE:

Make a short list of your competitors. If you don’t have obvious direct competitors, focus on other ways that your target customers satisfy their needs now. You may have the only bowling alley in town, for example, but you’re still competing for entertainment spending that might otherwise go to movie theaters or restaurants or the local skating rink. As you add competitors, describe what makes your offering more attractive. Do you offer a lower price? A unique experience? A better location? A more tailored solution for your particular customers?

6.1 Make a short list of your competitors
6.2 How is your solution better than theirs?

6.3 Current alternatives:

Describe the competitive landscape for your products or services. Do you have direct competitors — that is, other vendors who provide the same sort of solution to the customer’s problem that you do? If so, describe who they are, what they offer, and why customers might choose them.
Don’t have any competitors doing the same thing you are doing? That is common with new, innovative companies. When Ford introduced the Model T, for example, they weren’t competing with other automobile companies yet. Their potential customers were still spending money on transportation, though. It was just on horse-drawn buggies and other traditional means. One of Ford’s early challenges was to figure out how to outcompete those well-known alternatives.
If you do not have direct competitors yet, it is still important to discuss how your potential customers are solving their problems today. Saying that you "don’t have any competition" is a big business plan mistake that is easy to avoid.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

In the geographic area we occupy, roughly halfway between downtown and campus, we face three major types of competitors. The first is other fast-casual eateries, including two other food trucks (one offering gyro sandwiches, the other juice smoothies), a hamburger joint, and Panera Bread and Chipotle chain restaurants. The second is the string of fast-food locations on the edge of campus. And the third is the half-dozen or so more upscale restaurants in the heart of downtown.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

There are numerous drive-through car washes in the local area, and all use the old-fashioned brush system, which is prone to damage and expensive to maintain. Facilities that offer hand-wash services provide higher-quality cleaning, but at a higher price with a longer wait. The only comparable steam-clean car wash option is a 40-minute drive away, which is not practical for most prospects. 

Drivers can always wash their cars at home on their own, but that tends to be a messy, time-consuming hassle. Without the water reclamation systems of professional car washes, home washing also uses far more water and rinses chemicals into the wastewater system — a big negative for eco-conscious consumers.

7. FUNDING NEEDS:

If your company is seeking funding, enter the amount you would like to raise and describe how you intend to use that money to reach your goals.
Keep in mind that some countries have strict laws about soliciting investments. To be safe, limit your description to the planned use of funds. Do not describe what equity or other benefits you are offering in return for that funding.

7.1 How much funding are you seeking (please include currency)?

7.2 How will you use these funds?

8. SALES:

8.1 Describe your sales channels:

Describe how you plan to get your products or services to market. Are you selling and delivering to your target customers directly through a retail store, website, or catalog? Do you have a sales team? Do you sell through intermediaries — distributors, dealers, resellers, or others? Identifying your sales channels is important to understanding the economics of your business model.

8.2 Describe your Sales plan:

Explain how you plan to sell your products or services. You do not need to cover marketing activities here — that is, how you are going to attract potential customers. Focus instead on how you will turn those prospects who express interest — the people who visit your store, who sign up for your newsletter, who ask for an estimate — into paying customers. For a simple business, such as a food truck, that is pretty simple. You might want to talk about the payment methods you accept and any order tracking tools you are using.
For a sales-heavy business like insurance or enterprise software, talk about the nuts of bolts of the sales process. How will you nurture leads to get them ready to close? What kind of staffing do you need? Do you have a commission structure? Sales territories? Quotas? Also, describe any key sales activities that you will use to build and maintain your sales pipeline, such as prospecting calls and emails, networking events, trade associations, existing customer followup, thought leadership, referrals, and so on.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

Our food truck is equipped with an iPad running the familiar Square Register point-of-sale app. We accept payments by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Apple Pay. We also have a small till to accept cash payments and make change. The staff keeps a tip jar on the counter, but there is no pressure for customers to tip. Many do only because they enjoy our food and want to provide a little extra thanks to our staff.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

On the consumer-facing side, we are set up to take cash or mobile payments, using iPads with a virtual point-of-sale solution. About 80% of our customers prefer to use credit cards, so it’s worth the sub-3% transaction fee to offer that convenience. On the business-to-business side, our company president negotiated our existing deal with the Morris Motors dealership, but we recently added a commissioned salesperson to pursue other corporate deals.

9. MARKETING ACTIVITIES:

Describe the major components of your marketing plan. What kind of marketing activities will you use to attract customers? Do you plan to invest in signage, physical or digital advertising, email newsletters, search engine optimization, social media outreach, TV or radio commercials? Have you developed a logo and branding? Choose the activities you think are right for your business, and make sure the related expenses are included in your forecast. 
If you plan on advertising, talk about your messaging. What is the unique value proposition or selling point — your pitch — that you expect to resonate with potential customers? Talk about how that pitch positions you relative to your competitors. Are you the no-frills, low-cost option for budget-conscious shoppers? Or a premium product that is superior to the others in a key way? Or are you differentiating yourself in another way — being faster, more convenient, better for the environment, locally sourced? Make sure this is aligned with the competitive advantages that you described in the Competition section.
Describe your distribution and pricing plans. How will your customers buy your products or services? Will they pay you directly, either in your store or out in the field? Will they buy what they want on your website? Or through other retailers, distributors, or resellers? Are your customers the people actually using your products or services, or are you selling to other companies who are incorporating your solution into their own? What will your customers pay, and will those payments be one-time purchases or an ongoing arrangement?
As you can see, there is a lot to talk about here. Depending on the size and complexity of your business, you may want add additional topics to this section. Then you can just hit the high points here and refer to the other topics for more detail. For many small businesses, though, you can cover the major points well enough here.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

Although we are already getting good business in our opening weeks, our co-founder and business lead Angie Johnson is working hard to get the word out. We have solid followings on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. Our Yelp score is above four stars, and we are asking repeat customers to post reviews if they are frequent Yelp users. We have an email signup form at the truck and on our social media pages, and so far we have more than 500 subscribers and are adding about 50 per week.

Next month, we should be featured in the local version of a popular street-food app, and we are testing a local service that hands out coupons on the streets downtown and in the lobbies of several of the key office buildings. We are also working with the design lab at the university on a custom website, which will include the ability to order in advance from a smartphone or desktop computer. That project should be live by the start of the new year.

We based our product pricing on a close study of all of our competitors in the downtown and campus areas. Our sandwiches and other entrees are currently $7 to $9 each, with side dishes ranging from $3 to $5. Those prices appear to be going over well, but we will continue to gather feedback and are open to price changes as we get to know our market better.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

We don’t have a dedicated marketing person yet, but we’ve had good success so far with our do-it-yourself strategy of "try everything and see what sticks." High-visibility signage is key to gaining local attention, and we made a good decision to invest heavily there to establish a premium position around both our steam technology and our hands-on "Steam Team" for customer service.
Beyond that, marketing tactics that have worked well include loyalty cards (we switched from our own paper punch cards to a multi-vendor swipe card program), encouraging Yelp reviews, and offering discounts to followers on social media. Print ads in the newspaper and one attempt at billboard advertising did not do well, and we have no immediate plans to try those again. Experimenting with Google search advertising and sponsoring vintage auto shows had more mixed results, but we still think there are good opportunities there.

9.1 Marketing plan:

10. FORECAST:

When you are confident that you have identified a market with a problem worth solving, it's time to put together a quick financial forecast for your solution. Can you actually turn a profit? Some opportunities look good at a glance, but don't hold up to financial scrutiny. If you are planning for an already established company, setting financial targets is just as important so you can track your progress in the coming year.

10.1 Revenue streams :

If you aren't ready to prepare a detailed revenue forecast (or don't want to share revenue numbers in your pitch), just use the area to explain how your company will make money. Are you selling products directly? Or through third parties? Delivering services? Bringing in revenue from partnerships, royalties, or other arrangements?

10.2 Major costs:

Use this area to explain the cost structure of your business. What are your major costs of doing business? How will your expenses scale as your company grows? Do you need to budget for capital equipment, property, or other major purchases?

10.3 Key Assumptions:

Describe how you came up with the values in your financial forecast. Did you project your revenue based on past results, market research, your best guess at how many people who visit your store and what percentage of them might buy, or some other method? What kind of growth are you assuming? What are your key hires and notable expenses? What level of profit do you expect to generate?

Your readers can see the full forecast detail in your plan. Use this space to craft the story behind the numbers. How do your financial projections reinforce your sense that this is a strong business opportunity and one worthy of your time and investment?

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

We expect to serve an average of 20 customers per hour during year 1 and then increase that to 25 per hour in year 2. We craft our food by hand, so the small kitchen does have some constraints. We want our dishes to be as fresh as possible, so we’ll figure out the best mix of preparing food on demand and preparing ahead of time. The weekend evenings should be slightly less busy than lunch, so we are assuming 15 weekend customers per hour in year 1 and 20 in year 2. The average customer order value should be around $11 for year 1 and $13 for year 2. In year 2, we will be adding daily drink specials and are working to obtain our liquor license, so we can sell local craft beer on the weekends.

In our first two years, we are projecting $331,000 and then $500,000 in revenue with a 15% profit margin. We expect food supplies to be our top expense. The first-year payroll costs will be minimal as Mark will be doing most of the cooking. As things ramp up, we will bring on a couple of employees to help out. Fuel expenses should be minimal as we plan on leaving the truck onsite and have minimal need to travel. We will have a modest advertising budget — much of our marketing will be word of mouth and no-cost social media — as well as a small maintenance and repair budget for the truck. The equipment is new and shouldn’t cost more than $1,000 annually to maintain and repair for the first two years.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

We are expecting to be able to process 250 cars daily through the drive-through steam tunnel. Our basic wash will be $10 with the option to steam the undercarriage and wheels for an additional $5. We are assuming 75% of our customers will choose the basic wash and 25% will upgrade. Those assumptions suggest an average charge of $11.25 per customer. We expect the first three months of operations to be slower, starting at 50 cars per day for the first month, followed by 150 and 200 cars daily for the next two months. By month 4 we should be operating at capacity.

We plan to have 6-12 customers per day taking advantage of our detailing service. The average price for that service will be $150, with list prices ranging from $130 to $250. Detailing will include interior, engine, carpet, upholstery, and trunk cleaning. The price will vary based on the make and model, condition of the vehicle, special requirements (pets, cigarette smoke), and range of services being performed.

While the retail sales will not be the primary focus our business we are assuming $200 daily in sales from retail starting in month 4.

Using these assumptions, we are projecting $949,000 in sales in year 1 and $1,085,000 in sales in year 2.

11. YOUR ADVANTAGES:

Identify your key advantages over the other competitors and alternatives in your market. Do you have the lowest price in a market where all of the solutions are basically the same? If not, why should customers choose your solution? Is it better somehow — easier, faster, better tasting, longer lasting, more conveniently located, backed by better customer service? Or is it a specialized solution that is better for a particular group of customers?

Note that your advantages may be different for different types of competitors. For example, imagine that your company offers high-end leather-bound notebooks. Compared to a supplier of cheap paper notebooks, you might offer higher-quality materials, construction, and cover designs. Compared to a competitor making note-taking software for tablet computers, your advantages might be the low-distraction nature of paper, the old-fashioned pleasure of handwriting, and the lack of need for a battery.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

Our new food truck offers a unique combination of advantages that is unmatched by our competitors. Compared to the other fast-casual options, we differentiate ourselves by offering a unique cuisine option (we are the only Caribbean place in the area), better side dishes (especially compared to the one-dish gyro truck down the street), healthier food (especially compared to the burger place), and a stronger focus on local and sustainable ingredients. Our food is also more exciting, less predictable, and more suitably "urban" fare than the nearby chain restaurants.

Compared to the traditional fast food of Taco Bell and McDonald’s, there really is just no comparison. Our food is fresh and healthy and made with evident love and care, and it costs only a little more than the microwaved patties and frozen fries down the block.

Against the nicer sit-down restaurants, we offer similarly high-quality and professionally crafted food but with the convenience, speed, and lack of pretense that diners clearly have come to prefer. Our food truck is a public gathering spot, not a private country club.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

Our steam-cleaning technology provides a quick and powerful clean without damaging the exterior surface of the car. The high-pressure steam can remove all dirt and grime with practically no human effort, as well as remove waxy or tarry residue from chrome, moldings and bumpers. Steam cleaning uses only the power of superheated water and thus leaves no toxic residues behind. Such residues from traditional methods are bad for the environment. They are also bad for cleaning cars, since they can cause streaking. Since there are no harmful chemicals involved in steam cleaning, there is no need to deal with wastewater.

11.1 Your advantages:

12. SWOT ANALYSIS:

Don't be intimidated by the technical-sounding term. Preparing a SWOT analysis is actually very simple. The acronym just stands for "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats." The idea behind this exercise is to describe your company's strategic position in those four areas. 

What are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of your company? Where do you see your most promising opportunities in the marketplace? What competitive threats do you need to avoid or overcome to take advantage of those opportunities?

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

The strengths of our new company are obvious: a unique concept for the area, a great chef, award-winning food, a strong location, and solid business expertise to manage costs and help the company grow. Weaknesses include a lack of experience in scaling up a food truck business to maintain quality with new staff, the need to outsource the mechanical maintenance and repairs that are endemic to this type of business, and the low-margin nature of our industry.

For opportunities, we see promising growth potential in adding a second truck to better serve our two core geographical markets, expanding into catering and special events, and seeing if we can get a food-cart space at the local baseball stadium. The most obvious threat is that others like our concept and open their own Caribbean eateries, although they will be hard pressed to beat our food. More concerning is the remote threat of one of the nation’s growing Caribbean-theme restaurant or fast-casual chains opening a location here, which could siphon off core customers and put us at a disadvantage with their brand recognition and marketing budget. We are working hard to make the most of our first-mover advantage. When locals think of Caribbean food, we want them to automatically think of the Star-Liner.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

The Steam Team’s notable strengths include an innovative and superior technological solution, strong and capable management, top-notch customer service, and ample financing to execute on our first-mover advantage. On the flipside, we do have weaknesses: steam cleaning is unfamiliar to most local car owners, its advantages are not obvious without explanation, and the downsides of other solutions (specifically, the risk of damage from brush-based systems and the environmental impact of home washing) are not well known. We need to educate the market, and that can be a slow and expensive process.

We see great opportunity in the corporate channel as car dealerships and rental franchises discover the benefits of outsourcing their cleaning to us, rather than paying to upgrade their old-school equipment. We are also excited about the opportunity to open new locations and better serve other neighborhoods and outlying areas of the town. Threats include the potential for others to open rival steam-based car washes in the area (though we do have a good runway to establish name recognition and a strong reputation); the increasing affordability of portable steam cleaners, which could encourage low-end competition or enable corporate prospects to invest in their own solutions; and the remote chance that an early run of negative reviews on Yelp could hurt our adoption. In all of these cases, doing the best job we can to thrill our customers and get early traction is the right answer.

12.1 SWOT analysis:

13. LOCATIONS & FACILITIES

Describe your company’s physical locations. This might be your office, store locations, manufacturing plants, storage facilities — whatever is relevant to your business. How much space do you have available, and how well will it meet your current and future needs?

If location is important in your market, as with a restaurant or an art gallery, explain the benefits of where you are located. Do you get a lot of vehicle or foot traffic passing by? Is your target customer type heavily represented in your neighborhood's demographics? Are you close to other key resources, such as a key supplier’s office or shipping ports or freeways?

If you are working from a home office, talk about how well that is working for you. Are you planning to move to an outside office later? If so, when and why?

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

We recently signed a one-year lease for a commercially zoned space in front of the Harrison Theater. Our truck has a reserved place and can be locked and boarded securely overnight, which saves us the time and fuel cost of driving it home each night. The Harrison is a popular entertainment space on evenings and weekends, hosting live music and showings of classic 35mm films. The theater does not have a restaurant, though, so we have been able to establish ourselves as its on-site food provider. This location is conveniently located in a safe neighborhood near both the downtown district and the university, so it is easy for us to attract customers from both of those areas.

As noted earlier, we hope to expand in the future to offer two food trucks — one directly downtown and one on campus — and potentially to sell our fare from a concession stand at local major-league baseball games. Those are more ideas than plans at this point, but we do think they are strong opportunities to explore when the time is right.

EXAMPLE: Brewery

Our company currently operates out of a 15,000-square-foot industrial space in the city’s historic railway district. After several decades of no-frills industrial use, the area has grown of late into a hip and desirable neighborhood, and the market value of our facility is up an estimated 10-15% since we bought it. The better news is that it has good room for expansion, so we should be able to grow in place at least through year 3 of our plan.

If we decide to explore adding a public tasting room, we have the option to build that as an expansion of our current facility, sacrificing extra parking lot space. Several other microbreweries in our neighborhood have take that path already and seem to be faring well.

13.1 Locations & Facilities:

14. TECHNOLOGY

Describe any important software, hardware, or other information technology that you use now or plan to use later to operate your business. That might include a point-of-sale system to take payments, an e-commerce engine for your website, a CRM solution for managing your pipeline, marketing tools for generating leads, and so on. For an industrial company, be sure to cover any industry-specific technologies that you have developed or purchased to power or manage your operations.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

Our only customer-facing technology is the iPad mounted on a stand on the truck’s counter. We use it to accept credit card payments through Square Register and to enable customers to sign up for our email newsletter using the MailChimp Subscribe app. Behind the scenes, Angie is using QuickBooks Online for our bookkeeping, Gusto for our payroll processing, MailChimp to send email newsletters, and the usual social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) to connect with our customers and solicit feedback.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

In the office, we use QuickBooks Desktop as our accounting solution and a collection of company-specific Excel spreadsheets to track inventory usage, consumables, and so on. Our payroll is handled through Paychex. For the corporate channel, we are using Highrise as a simple CRM, just to track leads, conversation notes, and so on. We may upgrade to Salesforce later if we get enough traction in the B2B space. For customer payments, we use an iPad-based point-of-sale system that enables us to take payment on any of the major credit cards. We also recently replaced our paper punch cards — buy nine washes, get the tenth free — with a more convenient loyalty swipe cards, increasing usage by more than 20%.

14.1 Technology:

15. EQUIPMENT & TOOLS

List any specialty equipment that you have or plan to acquire to do your work. This is an important component of the business plan for many industrial companies. A steel fabrication plant, for example, needs CNC lines, welding machines, drill presses, and other metalworking tools. Likewise, with a photography studio business, having the right sort of cameras, lighting rigs, editing tools, and so on is going to be key.

If your forecast includes plans to make major capital expenditures — investing in another fermenting tank for your microbrewery, for instance — be sure to discuss the cost, benefits, and timing of those purchases here.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

We lucked into a good deal on a used but well-maintained food truck for just over $16,000. It’s a 14-foot model, which is a good size for our current business. It was configured as a burger bus, so it already had propane, electrical, and water systems. It was also fully framed and came with most of the equipment we needed — a six-foot hood with fire suppression system, 24-inch griddle and grill, four-burner range, oven, hood exhaust fan, upright refrigerator, under-counter freezer, work table, two sinks, and so on — plus a pop-out window for serving customers.

All told, we invested about $20,000 in the truck. We spent several thousand dollars adapting the layout and equipment in the food prep area to meet our cooking needs, though we were able to partially offset that by selling the deep fryer and a few other unnecessary pieces on Craigslist. We also paid for a custom paint job with our logo and branding.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

After we purchased the lot, we found a company that provided a turnkey steam wash station that included a tunnel and six bays. We negotiated with them to be able to purchase our own handheld units for the hand washing bays, which brought the price down to an even $330,000.

Once we had the structure in place, we acquired six handheld interior/exterior steamers, microfiber cloths, and storage racks. For our lobby we got furniture and decor, which includes a coffee pot and snack bar, as well as tasteful car accessories for impulse buying while customers wait. To complete the luxurious feel of our service station, we purchased a landscaping package that included initial installation and a year of maintenance.

15.1 Equipment & Tools:

16. KEY METRICS

Explain which performance metrics are most important for understanding how your business is doing. What does success mean for you, and how will you know it when you see it? Is it critical to contain your direct costs in a low-margin industry? To generate a certain number of leads to keep your sales pipeline full? To get a certain level of traffic on your website or convert a certain percentage of those visitors into customers? To keep a certain amount of cash in the bank?

The goal here is to keep your plan alive by tracking your actual results, identifying poor assumptions or weak performance as early as possible, and correcting course right away to keep your business on track. The first step is to get clear on which metrics are going to be the most important to watch closely.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

Our focus right now is on the most basic metrics: daily revenue, food costs, payroll, repairs, and profit margins. Food ingredients are expensive, especially when purchased in small batches, and food trucks like ours are inherently low-margin operations. We are doing OK so far, but it is critical that we keep a close eye on our margins as we scale up.

EXAMPLE: Car Wash

Since our prices are fixed, we are focused on maximizing our unit counts. How many types of each service — tunnel washes, hand washes, premium packages, etc. — can we sell? Likewise, because our prices have such a wide range, we want to keep a close eye on our mix of sales. If we are booking our time with $10 washes but not selling premium services, we are going to have to work a lot harder for the money.

Our costs are relatively consistent with the major exception of labor. We want to staff our crews generously to provide fast, top-notch service. If we don’t keep our unit counts up, though, our labor costs per unit will climb, so we are watching that closely too.

16.1 Key Metrics:

17. COMPANY

17.1 Ownership & Structure:

Use this area to specify who owns your company. If there are multiple owners, describe each of them and how much of an ownership stake they have. Also, identify your company’s legal structure. Is it a sole proprietorship — that is, just you working for yourself? Or a partnership, such as a limited-liability corporation (LLC) or partnership (LLP), where the profits pass through to the partners involved? Or a nonprofit organization? Or a proper S- or C-type corporation with its own tax obligations and the rest?

If you are just getting started on your business and are not familiar with these options, searching online for "business structures" should provide plenty of background reading on the pros and cons of the various options.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

The Star-Liner LLC is registered as a limited-liability corporation. Our two founders, Angie Johnson and Mark Powell, are co-owners with equal shares. No outside investors are involved at this point in time, though there might be an opportunity for that as the business grows.

EXAMPLE: Brewery

Our company is incorporated as an S-type organization in the state of Washington. We have five co-owners with equal shares: the four original members of our management team and the Henry brothers’ dad, who provided the original seed funding to help us get off the ground and continues to serve as a valuable advisor.

17.2 Company History:

Tell the story of your company so far. If it’s a newer business, what have you done so far, and what kind of traction have you gotten in the marketplace? If it’s a longtime business, who started it, when and where, and what was the original product or service? What has changed since then? Talk about good years, bad years, new services, new locations, new partners. Highlight an important date or event that had an impact on the business. Show the reader where the company started and how it got to where it is now.

If your company is still in the idea stage or is just getting started, you can just remove this topic from your plan for now. You can always add it back later when you have some history to talk about.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

We got started on this business about nine months as a side project. Mark still had a full-time role working as a sous chef downtown, and Angie was doing marketing consulting for a couple of local businesses. In our spare time, we tested and perfected our recipes, acquired and tricked out the truck, and then spent months and months jumping through all of the legal and regulatory hoops it takes to be able to actually start serving food in this city. That happened about two months ago, so we are still getting our business model and daily operations dialed in, but we are already turning a small profit and having a great time.

EXAMPLE: Brewery

As unlikely as it sounds, our growing company originally started as a side project, something we did in our spare time away from our "real" job as a touring bluegrass band. Five years later and with three kids now between us, it’s the other way around. We still play music together for fun, but crafting and selling distinctive American-style hard ciders are what we do for real.

We called the company’s original location "The Ciderworks" as a joke: it was just half of a two-car garage in the Henrys’ family home. One of our chief concerns was making sure not to spill anything on their mom’s car, which was usually parked in the other side of the garage. Once we got into what we were doing, though, we came up with a really great cider recipe — an early version of what we now sell as Appleseed Reserve — and decided to take our little Ciderworks operation to a commercial space. It caught on with some of the more progressive bars and farm-to-table restaurants in town, and we were off and running.

17.3 Management Team:

List the members of the management team, including yourself. Describe each person’s skills and experience and what they will be doing for the company. How do they make your team stronger? Do they have specific expertise in your industry or subject matter? Do they have experience starting or managing other small businesses? Use this space to really emphasize the strengths of yourself and your team. Assuming you have identified a great market opportunity, why are you the right ones to capitalize on it?
If you are a sole proprietor or otherwise working by yourself, just focus on your own skills, experience, and past successes. You may want to rename this section to avoid the "team" language.

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

Our business is a collaboration between two good friends: Mark Powell and Angie Johnson. We haven’t bothered with job titles, but Mark basically runs the food side of the business, and Angie does almost everything else. Angie graduated three years ago with a master’s degree in business from the local university. She has experience in the marketing department at a large accounting firm here in town and has consulted with several area businesses. She also interned for two summers with a major advertising agency in New York City, so she has strong sales and marketing skills.

Mark is a rising star among local chefs. He attended the Culinary Institute of America for two years before going to work for a series of well-regarded restaurants in New York and here in town. He is a fantastic cook, but more than that, he understands how to run a commercial kitchen to produce consistently high-quality food. We met at a local cooking competition last year and became fast friends. Our initially only semi-serious brainstorming on potential opportunities to work together resulted, after a couple of false starts, in the initial plan for this business.

EXAMPLE: Brewery

The executive team at Chapman Ciderworks is the same as the lineup of the Odds and Ends String Band: Chris Henry (CEO, vocals), Charlie Jackson-Stearns (brewmaster, drums), Annie Meredith (sales and marketing, fiddle), and Adam Henry (operations, tub bass, accordion). Just like on stage, though, all four of us have a hand in pretty much everything. We all contribute marketing ideas, we all taste and tweak the brews, we all haggle with fruit sellers and make trips to new orchards to sample their latest batches of apples.

As we scale up, it’s going to be an interesting challenge to figure out how to incorporate new team members without losing the chemistry that has gotten us to where we are today. We are ready for that challenge, though. To get where we want to go, we are going to need a much bigger band.

17.4 Advisors:

Describe any mentors, investors, former professors, industry or subject-matter experts, knowledgeable friends or family members, small-business counselors, or others who can help you as a business owner. If you have an important question or a new business challenge, who will you turn to for advice? What makes them a good resource for you and your company?

EXAMPLE: Food Truck

The food truck business can be tough to figure out, especially in the early days when you are wading through all of the licensing and permit requirements. Luckily for us, there is a great community of food truck owners in town. Technically these people seem like they should be our competitors, but the business is so fragmented and hyperlocal that truck owners who set up in different areas of town or who focus on events, catering, and so on have been openly supportive from the start and a huge help to us.

On the business side, Angie is getting regular advice and counseling from her mother, who has decades of experience in the food industry and currently holds a vice-president role at a Fortune 1000 corporation that manages produce distribution in the grocery channel.

For now, Angie is keeping the books herself, using QuickBooks Online. Before tax time, though, we’d like to find a good accountant with a strong background in small-business consulting.

EXAMPLE: Brewery

Outside of our management team, the opinion we trust the most belongs to Leon Henry, the father of two of our executives and the original investor in our business. Leon is a semi-retired consultant in the music industry today, but over the course of his 30-year career he worked as an agent for a chart-topping country singer, managed the road crews for several other touring music acts, and started, grew, and sold his own record label. His business advice and strategic mind has been a huge help to us from day 1.

On the industry side, we are fortunate to have close relationships with several experienced brewmasters in the area, most notably Chris Kinney, who started his own microbrewery back in the 1990s and built it into a regional best-seller before it was acquired by Anheuser-Busch. He only brews for fun these days, but his industry knowledge and familiarity with both growth and acquisition scenarios makes him a great informal advisory resource for us going forward.

That's it! You're done. 
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