The One Page Business Plan: Start With a Vision, Build a Company

Jim Horan's book, "The One Page Business Plan," helps to dispel myths regarding business plans, and helps put a plan together quickly and concisely.

Business plans are important to any business because they help layout where a company is headed in many ways. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, business plans show current financial projections and help with future estimated ones. It can help strategize personnel and sales goals, and can also help with funding if you need to expand.

The introduction of The One Page Business Plan lays out what business plans are and what they aren't, and lists common myths. For example, they don't need to be long in length or take a great amount of time to compile for one to be useful for the business. And just what can you do with a business plan with only one page? Horan suggests it can be used for presentations to test ideas, to help with career motivation, and also summarize ideas.

How to Assemble a One Page Business Plan

The One Page Business Plan has many fillable fields to help make the process easy. The worksheets with boxes, circles, and fill-in fields make it easy to brainstorm and categorize ideas. Exercises are in each chapter where you are presented with a topic, like What's Working in Your Company? and What Targets Will You Aim For? The answers are used to help craft together the main parts of the business plan.

The Five Main Parts to the Business Plan

The goal of The One Page Business Plan is to put together in paragraph form these five parts: Vision; Mission; Objectives; Strategies; and Plans. While both the Vision and Mission statements may be the shortest in length, they are two of the most important. With them you can see what your company stands for and why it is there.

The Objectives and Strategies are more in depth and focus on actual results. They are the 'goals' part of the business plan and through the exercises you identify ways to achieve them. Using all four of the previous parts, the last element, Plans, can be implemented for the projections. Horan gives tips on how to put the business plan in action, and has several finished business plans to be uses for examples.

Recommended for Those Needing to Put Together Ideas

If you need a business plan with in-depth financial projections or long summaries, then this book isn't for you. It is useful for those who have many ideas and don't know where to go with them, or who need a little focus in business. The One Page Business Plan helps to quickly identify problem areas in the business and helps to develop strategies by putting ideas together in a useful way.

Book Information:

• The One Page Business Plan: Start With a Vision, Build a Company!; by Jim Horan
• The One Page Business Plan Company, 2003
• ISBN: 1891315072
• Softcover, 97 pages