Taking Advice From The Experts

The first business plan expert that I took advice from was Paul Grant, who is the founder of The Funding Game and NextMentor in the Mentoring Program. He mentioned that the most important piece of a business plan is the executive summary. He stated that it is important to make the executive summary easy to read and not too lengthy. This is because of the fact that investors take a first look at the executive summary to decide if they want to read on or meet with you in person. Investors look at an executive summary like an employer looks at a cover letter or resume.

When developing my business plan, I put a lot of thought into the executive summary based on Grant’s recommendations. This not only made the summary more concise and to the point, but it really helped me prioritize the points of the company that I needed to get across in a short amount of time. It helped me weed out sentences based on what the investor needs to know, before getting bored and running out of time. It really helped me define what makes my company unique and something worth investing in.

The second business plan expert that I took advice from was from Greg Alexander, the CEO of Atlanta Family Fun Centers. He stresses the importance of reducing the risk for an investor, and to show that you take your competition seriously. It’s recommended that you leave room for unexpected changes in your business plan.

While developing my plan, when I needed to adjust numbers or budgets at all, I at first started getting really frustrated. One number change in my budget could make me have rerun and rethink the entire plan. After doing this a couple of times, I started to realize that although I did have to do my work over again in order to make a small change, it was probably a good sign. It is important to be confident with a business plan, but it definitely needs to be something that you are able to alter due to conditions, sales, competition etc. It definitely helped me assess lots of different possibilities and changes and how to go about altering them.

The third business plan expert that I took advice from was Sean Christiansen, the Chief Technology Officer at the University of Central Florida Venture Lab. He stated that one of the most important parts of a business plan is pointing out potential competitors’ barriers to entry. He mentioned that it is extremely important to point out to investors how you will prevent competitors from gaining control of your market.

I felt like I learned a lot during the development of this part of the business plan because it not only helped me realize what advantages my company would have over competitors, but helped me realize what the company would have to do to in order keep our customers and make it more difficult for competitors to come into the market. Before, I honestly was only thinking about competitive advantages and gaining new customers, but Christiansen’s words made me realize that I not only have to be proactive towards what my company can offer, but also reactive when thinking about other business looking for my target market as well.


References:
http://bpexpertviews.blogspot.com/