Who Should Write
Your Business Plan?

Some of you might not like our answer here, but we have developed a strong sense of direction in this area...

It is your business... investors / lenders / customers are relying on you to deliver the performance, managers and employees rely upon your leadership, as do your family members...

So, we feel strongly that you must take ownership of your business plan. Are we suggesting you do it all by yourself? Absolutely not! In fact, we think that within reason, the more help you get the better. If yor business isn't big enough to have a marketing management team, by all means get help from specialists to do the research. Same for the financials. And certainly get help with the word-crafting.

"But", you say, "I'm a visionary, and anyway I'm too busy running this place... and I'm not good with words..."

Who better to convey the vision and mission than the leader? In whose belly will the fire burn stronger than in yours? [Need we state the obvious - that if there really is someone there who has the fire burning more brightly than you, your succession plan should be near completion to have that person leading the company!]

As for the words themselves - they are really not as important as the message. Convey your message clearly and passionately, make sure that what you are saying is relevant to your reader, and the words will take care of themselves. And you can get lots of help in this area.

The larger your organization, the more help you will have internally, so the more you can delegate. But, we feel that you should retain ownership and champion the project even if most of it is delegated to others.

If you are larger, and have a specialized transaction coming up such as bringing in a Venture Capital firm or are going to be doing an IPO, then there is a strong case to use the guidance of their specialized services to prepare the business plan. But they are going to have to build it from the basic information that you have - they can't create it "out of the blue".

During our research, we encountered an article that we highly recommend to you. It is written by an angel investor but provides much valuable insight into business plans. Click here to view it.

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