Helping Entrepreneurs -Free Stuff

Our objective is to provide support to small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), private, independent, and home based operations. To do that, we need to show that we can!

Sooner or later, all businesses need to prepare some form of business plan. It might be on a napkin, it might be in your head... It might be on a notepad, and it might be in a spreadsheet. All businesses need one. When the time comes that we need to get expansion capital, from lenders or investors or partners, the time has also come for a more formal business plan. And that can be a royal nuisance.

Like most of us, this probably isn’t one of your strong points, and it also is not your idea of a good time - we agree! You may ask your accountant to prepare one - and they will - and you will pay. Oh sure, some money... But the real problem is that you will pay in your time. You will need to explain to your accountant exactly how your business operates, and what your plans are. And then you will need to correct the errors, and then you will realize that it really does not look like your business at all, and it does not tell your story convincingly enough to get that investment or loan.

The Free Business Plan Model and User’s Guide is Here

So Let us Help...

We have done this so many times, that we have lost count - but more than 200 times. And then we have made the presentations... Here you can download a business plan model, and a 136 page illustrated how-to guide for it. and it is free... But your time is not, and so we have designed the model so that it is as automated as possible.

In the simplest of cases, there are 70 data points that you will need to put in - the name of your company, the name of your products, when you expect to start selling it, the growth curve, the price point, selling and volume discounts if any, your starting bank balance, the book value of your assets, your product costs either as a percentage of the price or in fixed dollar amounts... and so on. Once you are familiar with the model and moving around it, a simple business can be modeled in about 3 or 4 hours.

But, I don’t have the software...

Well, this is a spreadsheet model, so - yes, you need spreadsheet software... not a problem. There are versions of the model that are optimised for Excel (Microsoft Office), and there are versions optimised for Calc (Open Office).

Open Office is an open source, free as in beer, equivalent to the Microsoft Office suite. Calc is the spreadsheet platform, and it is both stable, 98% functionally equivalent to Excel, and just as easy to use. We know that, because we use it.

It is easy to obtain, and easy to install. Within an hour from installation, you will be able to navigate within Calc and through the model.

And we will show you how to do that !

But I don’t know the software...

Well, we have provided a short introduction for new users of Calc (and also for Excel), complete with screen shots. These mini-tutorials will get you started, and there are all kinds of resources on the web to assist you further. We show you these on the Pilot blog.

I can’t do accounting, and I’ve never done modeling...

We do, and we have. We can help if you need it.