Business Plans For Dummies. Paul Tiffany

or magazine articles, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registrations, and thousands of other publicly available online documents.

      And one last thing: Don’t be hesitant to simply email or dial up a potential source of information relevant to your search. You’d be surprised at how helpful others can be when you ask them in a polite and sincere manner. Kindness counts!

      

The Internet may be a gold mine of business information, but you may also find plenty of fool’s gold. Unlike typical print-based informational articles, which are typically fact-checked for accuracy, as we’ve sadly come to know much of the info on the Internet hasn’t been validated. Often the website providing the info is simply trying to sell you something or scrape and then peddle your private profile. So be cautious out there.

      

Follow three simple rules when you use the Internet for business research:

       Make sure the material is current. Many web documents aren’t dated, so you may not know whether what you read is the latest scoop or ancient history. Look for a date. If you can’t find one, dig a little further to make sure that the information is still relevant; you can often do this by cross-checking the facts on another website.

       Know your sources. In the wide world of the World Wide Web, you may be hard-pressed to know exactly where the stuff you read comes from. If you read a rave review of a new business-software program, and the review comes from a respected business source, you can put your faith in it (and just as true, a blatantly negative one might be from a paid troll). If it appears without a source, be suspicious. Similarly, if the grammar and spelling of the review seems odd — or clearly wrong — be on guard.

       Double-check key facts and statistics. If you use specific pieces of information — about business trends, markets, competitors, technology, and so on — as the central building blocks of your business plan, make doubly sure that they’re correct. If you build your financial projections on a forecast that the market for digital widgets will grow at 40 percent a year, for example, you better make sure that information is true and not some widget inventor’s private fantasy. And if the data is absolutely crucial to your plan, follow the advice of the old sage: If still in doubt, throw it out.

      Purchasing business-planning software

      Business-planning software allows you to automatically assemble all the components of a business plan, turning them into a printer-ready, spiffy-looking document. The best programs also make easy work of the financial parts of business planning — creating income statements and cash-flow statements, for example, or making financial projections. Some software programs add graphics, such as tables and charts, which provide an easy way for your audience to see what you describe in the written document.

      

Business-planning software programs can sometimes make the job of business planning too easy. With all their bells and whistles, they may trick you into skipping the serious (that is, difficult) work of creating and writing an effective plan. Keep in mind that the best software-planning tools guide you through the important aspects of business planning and then keep track of your words, sentences, and paragraphs. But they don’t think for you. You still need to do the serious mental work yourself.

      

Investors, and bankers who make a living reviewing and funding business plans, are all too familiar with the look and feel of the most popular software-generated business-planning documents. If you use one of these programs, make sure you customize your plan to make it unique. The last thing you want is for your business plan to look exactly like a hundred others that cross a VC’s (venture capitalist) desk every month.

      Seeking professional help

      No one knows the ins and outs of planning and running a business better than people who have done it. And most businesspeople are happy to share their experience and expertise, as long as you don’t plan on becoming a competitor! Many are even willing to mentor first-time entrepreneurs. Don’t be afraid to turn to a seasoned veteran for advice if you run into questions you can’t answer or run out of ideas to get your business off the ground.

Finding expert advice is surprisingly easy. The first place to look is in your own contact list. You may have an easier time getting help from someone you already know on a personal level. Ask your friends and colleagues for suggestions. Other good places to look for help are the local Chamber of Commerce, a nearby college or university (the local junior college might have an evening course on business start-ups), or the business section of your favorite news source. And don’t forget one other invaluable location that we should all hope never disappears: your friendly local library. The pros there can usually point you to a mass of relevant data specific to your inquiry. These sources are not limited to the United States; like nearly everything else, mentoring has gone global. For example, in the UK the British Library has excellent help for folks seeking start-up advice; see www.bl.uk/business-and-ip-centre/about.

      Of course, you may end up paying for expert advice. Nothing odd about that — in fact, there’s a whole industry out there ready and willing to help. When you really need a lifeline, the advice could be well worth it. Later on, your advisers may pay you back by becoming your mentors or advocates, cheering on your business as you search for funding or those elusive first customers.

      

Choose experts with experience in a business similar to the one you’re planning. After you identify a person, decide exactly what kind of assistance you need. You can’t ask someone to plan your whole business for you, after all. But you can ask them to fine-tune the look of your web page, for example, or review and critique your financial projections.

      

Retired businesspeople represent a rich — and underused — source of expertise. By default, they have more experience than almost anyone else, and they often look for ways to use their experiences to help others. Contact the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), a nationwide organization that works with the Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide help to business owners. SCORE (www.score.org) has a free online newsletter and provides free email counseling. The group also has local chapters around the country, with retired businesspeople ready and willing to help.

      Finding friendly advice

      Many local communities have organizations of businesspeople who convene to share ideas, exchange contacts, help each other out, and just plain socialize. Lots of research shows that Americans especially seem to love this sort of clubbiness, but it’s definitely not limited to one demographic. Some groups consist of folks who’ve worked in the same industry or firm in the past or share mutual interests, and other organizations focus on helping specific groups like women, recent immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, or freelancers. Thanks to the Internet, you can find business groups that regularly schedule either online or in-person support meetings.

Business networking organizations are an invaluable resource for help in planning and running your business. For information about what’s available in your community, check with your local Chamber of Commerce. There’s nothing better than talking to someone who’s been there, done that, so you don’t fall into avoidable traps. Ask whether they have a mentoring program. Because websites change so fast, the best way to find a networking