My mission is business planning help for everybody who owns or runs a business. I stand for lean business planning, plan-as-you-go planning that’s simple, streamlined, and manages change with regular review and revisions. I call it the PRRR cycle (for Plan-run-review-revise). It’s not that business plan document you do once and then forget. It’s a core plan, just big enough to run your business, that you keep live and on a computer. You review it monthly. You don’t dress it up with fancy summaries and descriptions until you need them for a specific business plan event.

I do deal with formal business plan documents on occasion, mostly as reader,  angel investment group member, and judge; but I hate how the image and myth of the daunting old-fashioned business plan gets in the way of business planning for most people.

Don’t hire me to help until you’ve first looked at the free advice and coaching on business planning I’ve put on the web. And also the almost-free, productized advice, economically accessible, in my books and software. For years, my goal  has been to give you better business planning.

If you do want to consider me as a business planning consultant, cool. I’m happy to help you with your business planning at various stages, collaboration points, and strategy levels. Notice please that I use the phrase “business planning consulting,” not “business plan consulting.” That’s on purpose. I’m never going to just do a plan for you; I’ll help you do a plan for yourself. Having a plan done by an outsider is a waste of money. So here are some ways I can help.

Real Review:

I can give you a comprehensive business plan review. The deliverable includes a marked-up and commented-on copy of the document, plus a long email from me detailing suggestions and my view of the plan’s suitability for business management,  for backing up a loan application, or for seeking investment. I especially like to work with Business Plan Pro (bpdx) files or password access to Liveplan.com. Click here for more information …

Real Numbers:

I prefer an interactive job, working with you, to develop realistic and credible business planning projections including sales, cost of sales, expenses, profit or loss, balance sheet, and — by far the most important — cash flow projections. It’s not magic; it’s still just an educated guess. But I’ve had a lot of experience with this and  I can help you get numbers based on specific assumptions, measurable, and as credible as projected numbers get. Aside from piecing apart the assumptions, I can also help you find industry profiles for reality checks against standards for gross margin, net profits, and so forth.

Realize, of course, that your projections will still be wrong. It’s not about guessing right. Instead, it’s a matter of connecting dots and making reasonable assumptions, which you can then pull apart and use to track plan vs. actual, so that as time goes on you have something you can review, revise, and manage. Click here for more information …

Speaking and workshops:

From an hour or so on business planning or starting a business to half-day, full-day, and day-and-a-half business planning workshops, I do a fair amount of speaking to groups in person and in webinars. Click here for more information…

For additional information:

Please contact me for more information…