A business plan is an essential roadmap that outlines your business and the potential success to investors. Your overall business plan is important but there are key components and areas of focus that you may want to hone in on according to some industry professional. To give you a better understanding of what I mean I taken two industry professional from different fields and shared their thoughts on the critical and key component of a successful business plan.
Barbara Corcoran has established herself as one of the Real Estate industry moguls starting her company in New York with only $1,000 dollars. She would later turn that investment into a whopping $5 billion dollars in 25 years and then eventually sell her company in 2001 for $66 million dollars. Throughout high school and her collegiate years she wasn’t an all A student, in fact she was considered a below average student getting by with D’s. So how did she reach the pinnacle of success? She must know something about business plans that we all don’t. According to Barbara the critical and key component of a successful business plan is the executive summary. She believes this is so because most investors have so many other business plan’s to consider that they won’t read the whole plan. She states that if you answer the following question in your executive summary that you could possibly grab the reader’s attention. The questions you should answer are What problem are you going to solve, why are you uniquely qualified to solve it, Is it a good business, what’s that cost, and how long is it going to take.
Daymond John an entrepreneur and Industry pioneer is the president and CEO of FUBU, a clothing company that sells casual wear, sports wear, suits, eyewear, belts, and shoes. Daymond got his start on the streets of Queens making and selling hats. He later added the logo FUBU that stands for, “For Us, By Us.” With $100,000 dollars in start up cash he launched his enterprise in 1994. By 1998 his company had revenue of $350 million dollars. Again what was it that Daymond knew about business plans that made him successful? He explains that the critical and key component of a successful business plan is the branding. He further explains that your business plan should be focused and able to be marketed in a way that sets you apart from all other competitors.
