I came across a excellent article at Entrepreneur University today that deserves a shout out. It's designed to answer the question, "What should a business plan look like?"

The feature presents material by Dave Turkin of Accessible Business Consultants. Turkin is a full service business consultant with over 32 years of experience working with small-medium size businesses.

The style of a good Business Plan is unique. It is between the syntax of a SEC document in which every aspect of the business is doomed to failure and a marketing piece in which everything about the business is wonderful. It is a factual document, but it's also a presentation piece, in which the positives can be featured, but not overly emphasized, and the negatives are disclosed as well as explained.

Turkin looks at the essential components of a business plan, presents a list of things not to put in it, and talks about whether or not you really need a consultant to come write the plan for you.

It's a good piece

A Basic How To on Business Plans
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