The Business Plan 179Getting Help for Your Road Map
“People have great ideas in their head all the
time, but it’s the people who get it in a busi-
ness plan who succeed,” advises Wes Moss.
He should know. Moss is a former contestant
on Donald Trump’s TV show “The Apprentice”
and a self-described entrepreneur advocate.
Fortunately there’s a lot of help beyond
this textbook for entrepreneurs warming up to
write business plans. Those who want addi-
tional training or a quick review, for example,
can enroll in a face-to-face seminar or an
online workshop specifically created for entre-
preneurs writing business plans. Some of this
training is even free. Resources for finding
programs include your local Small Business
Development Center, or the Small Business
Administration Web site (www.sba.gov).
Colleges and universities in your area may
also offer specialized programs through their
business school or continuing studies office.
The Internet also provides many resources
for business plan writers and much of that
help is also free. The Small Business
Administration’s site has basic information
along with sample business plans.
Washington-based non-profit One Economy
uses funding from the eBay Foundation to
support a site (www.thebeehive.org) with an
interactive program called “Build a Business
Plan Tool” which allows nascent entrepre-
neurs to create a fill-in-the-blank plan up to
40 pages long. They report more than 6,000
people have signed up to use this free pro-
gram. Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The
Wall Street Journal, also sponsors a site for
entrepreneurs (www.StartupJournal.com).
They have sample plans for a wide variety of
businesses—from coffee kiosks to pet pho-
tography to high-tech marketing—posted on
their site, and also offer a no-cost Web-based
tool for creating a mini business plan.
More hands-on help is available from
companies that produce computer programs
to help develop business plans. Palo Alto
Software annually produces a program called
Business Plan Pro (www.paloalto.com) for
around $100; it uses “wizards” to make plan
writing easier. The program can be down-
loaded from the Web, and is also available in
a premier edition with enhanced financials
and comparison features. Smart Online
(www.onebiz.smartonline.com) offers a simi-
lar interactive business plan program as part
of a package with accounting, personnel,
marketing, and other interface products. They
market their bundle of services for a monthly
fee of around $50, which allows up to five
users to access the site. Smart Online will
also evaluate or even write a business plan
for a fee ranging from $300 to $3000.
Paying someone else to write a new ven-
ture’s plan may be the ultimate service (but it
is not recommended by most academics and
financiers). It’s certainly the most expensive;
companies such as Masterplanz (www.mas-
terplanz.com) charge up to $15,000 to write a
plan. “A lot of people are great technicians,
but not great accountants or great writers,”
says a Masterplanz spokesman.
Entrepreneur Rosalind Resnick has made
a business out of helping other entrepreneurs
write their plans. The manifesto posted on
her Axxess Business Centers, Inc., Web site
(www.abcbizhelp.net) proclaims, “People who
get things for free generally don’t take them
as seriously as things they’ve got to pay for.”
SOURCE:Adapted from Jessica Mintz, “First Things
First,” The Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2004.
Retrieved from the Web March 4, 2006,
http://online.wsj.com/aticle_print/SB110131302046583059.
html, http://www.sba.com, http://www.thebeehive.org,
http://www.StartupJournal.com, http://www.paloalto.com,
http://www.onebiz.smartonline.com, http://www.masterplanz.com, and
http://www.abcbizhelp.net.STREET STORY 5.3