Service Business Plans

Preparing a sound, bootstrap business financial plan is the absolute key ingredient for any budding entrepreneur starting a small business with bootstrap financing. Unlike a traditional business plan, a financial plan for a bootstrapped business contains six essential components. 

Components of a Successful Bootstrap Finance Plan

1. Expense Summary
The expense summary contains the start-up costs and ongoing operating expenses needed to get your business up and running. 
 
2. Projected Profit & Loss Summary
Your profit and loss summary is a key tool for determining how long it will take your business to become profitable. It reflects a very simple formula of: revenues minus expenses, equals profit or loss.
 
3. Sales Forecast Summary
Your sales forecast summary is an estimation of what you believe your sales are likely to be each month. Sales forecasting requires research and a solid knowledge of your industry, niche market and product or service.
 
Starting a small business with bootstrap financing requires laser targeted forecasting. This is not as difficult as it sounds, it just means you must really invest the time in thoroughly researching your business.
 
4. Reserve Funding Plan
Establishing a reserve funding plan is essential for weathering the “start-up storms”. This is a back up funding plan for keeping your cash flows above dangerous levels.  Your bootstrap business financial plan must include a reserve funding plan, in order for your new venture to be successful.
 
5. Cash Flow Management Plan
This is simply the anticipated inflow (sales) and outflow (expenses) of cash through your business by month. Why it’s so tricky is due to the fact that you may have slow sales or no sales when you’re just getting started. Or, perhaps your customers are not paying within terms. Even if you have great sales on paper, your cash flow management plan will determine your success to a large degree.
 
6. Balance Sheet
A balance sheet provides a good overall picture of what your business is actually worth. It takes your assets (physical goods like equipment or property) minus your liabilities (debts owed to creditors) and gives you the equity value of your business.
 
What makes these components different from what you would prepare for a business plan written for bank financing? Well, the main difference is that this plan is just for you. It is an actual plan that you must follow to achieve success in your business. I have seen far too many instances where a traditional business plan is almost completely ignored, once the bank loan check is cashed. 
 
With over one third of brand new businesses failing in their first year of operation, you owe it to yourself to minimize your start up risk, by being well prepared with a sound financial plan.
 
Where Does a Bootstrapped Business Plan Fit In?
 
Where does a bootstrap business financial plan fit in?  Well, first you must understand bootstrap financing. Starting a small business without borrowing is the ultimate goal of a bootstrapped business’ financing strategy. Many new entrepreneurs just don’t realize that you can start up a business, even if you have very little money, poor credit or don’t own a home. How is this possible? I know that I’m going against conventional wisdom here, but you really can start up a brand new business without BIG bank loans or a stockpile of cash.
 
Find the free sources of business start up funding your new business needs to survive and thrive. Start by claiming your free copy of The Bootstrapper’s Business Start-up Planner, by visiting my website.

Author: Kimberly Kelly

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You’ll also want to have two separate business plans: one for growing the business if you happen to succeed at finding an investor, and one for bootstrapping the business if you have to go it alone. …. Cayenne’s services include business plan development, financial forecasting, strategy development, market research & analysis, competitor research & analysis, presentation development, interim management, capital formation strategy, executive coaching, company valuations.

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I wanted a better way to organize and plan our own family meals, and thought there was a pretty big opportunity emerging at the intersection of social networking and the food/cooking/nutrition category. After growing a startup (VacationSpot .com) and selling it to … Why did I bootstrap the business, and why did I stay solo for so long? I suppose I’ve always been curious about what it’d be like to try to do an entire startup, at least the earliest stages, on my own.

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Accountants, bankers and financial people generally think in terms of Profit and Loss (P/L) and Balance sheets. At a high level, they’re health indicators for your business, and summaries of the way things are going. If you can understand them, your ability to … [ product business ]. Use spreadsheets to model resources against billing as far in advance as possible, so that you can predict cashflow and resource fluctuations in advance, and plan to mitigate.

Bootstrap Business Financial Plan - Starting a Small Business

Preparing a sound, bootstrap business financial plan is the absolute key ingredient for any budding entrepreneur starting a small business with bootstrap financing. Unlike a traditional business plan, a financial plan for a bootstrapped.

Technorati Tags: bootstrap business financial plan, business plan financial, writing business plans

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts lately you’ll know I’ve come to adding a few news posts from around the web on this subject. I’ve got a couple more today that are new and updated, so let me know what you think of.

Can Technical Writers Write Business Plans? « StratosphereWriting

By nature of what we do, technical writers are experts at writing business plans. We know how to do the research, we know how to write, and we know how to present material clearly. If we are not sure how to do something, we look it up.

Business Plan Software: Do You Need It? | Eliminate Debt

Writing your own business plan from scratch is certainly a possibility. Doing so gives you the freedom to format and arrange the plan in any way that you see fit. On the other hand, doing financial projections.

Secret Sauce » Blog Archive » Business Plans

A good way to think of a business plan is that’s it’s a document that provide answers to the type of questions anyone who may provide financing would like to know about your home business. You will not get outside funding without one.
Hope you enjoy the read as much as I did and please if you have something to say, use the comments form below to let everyone know your thoughts.

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