Free Business Plans and Resources

Business Plan Resources to Plan for Your Success

Coming up with an idea for your business may have seemed effortless compared to creating a business plan necessary to help ensure your success or to gain funding. A business plan for a start-up is as individual as the business itself, and although it may seem complex, it is actually fairly easy to develop one. At their most basic, business plans detail the product or service you are going to sell, to whom you will sell it, when and how you are going to sell it, your anticipated sales and gross profit, the marketing and production costs, and the return on investment.
While developing a business plan can seem overwhelming, especially if you've never written one before, there are fortunately quite a few business plan resources available online and offline to help. For example, SCORE - Counselors to America's Small Business offers free business plan templates, as well as free, one-on-one local mentoring help to lay the foundation for your business success. In addition, its web site offers an extensive collection of links to other sites and organizations that provide assistance with business plans and free business plan samples you can use as a base for your own. BizToolkit.org also offers free business plans and other start-up resources for businesses of any kind on their free access site.

The most widely well-known U.S. resource for assistance, both online and offline, for business plans is the Small Business Administration , but much of their information is applicable to business start-ups worldwide. In addition to local resources in every state, its site also offers a small business planner section, which contains extensive guidance on nearly everything you need to know about how to make your business a success, from writing a business plan to running a business to selling a business.

For other offline start-up resources concerning business plans, many local Chambers of Commerce have members available to answer questions for those starting a business, including ones about writing an effective business plan.

There are also numerous books that provide advice on structuring a business plan for a start-up. Some even include free business plan templates for a variety of businesses, and you can customize these to the specifics of your business start-up. Two excellent books of this nature are Small Business Management, which is accompanied by a CD that offers free business plans, and Bankable Business Plans , which offers clear, concise, step-by-step directions for creating your own business plan. Your local public library most likely has these books or similar ones available to help you write yours.

Whatever field your business start-up is in, strongly consider taking advantage of the resources available in order to develop a business plan that will take you from a start-up to an established business.