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Several high quality business plan exemplars. Whilst these a high level exemplar reports to use in a classroom, they provide great reference of information required in a business plan. Also a great use on how to write an executive summary!

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A business plan is the secret to starting a business successfully.

The easiest way to simplify the work of writing a business plan is to start with a business plan template.

You're already investing time and energy in planning your small business-there's no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to formatting your plan. Instead, to help build a complete and effective plan, lean on time-tested structures created by entrepreneurs and startups who have come before you.

Business plans often are used to secure funding, but plenty of businesses find writing a plan valuable, even if they never work with an investor. That's why we put together a free business plan template to help you get started.

Get the template now

What our business plan template includes

This template is designed to ensure you're thinking through all of the important facets of starting a new business. It's intended to help new entrepreneurs and small business owners consider the full scope of running a business and identify functional areas they may not have considered or where they may need to level up their skills as they grow.

That said, it may not include the specific details or structure preferred by a potential investor or lender. If your goal with a business plan is to secure funding, check with your target organizations-typically banks or investors-to see if they have a template you can follow to maximize your chances of success.

This free business plan template includes seven key elements:

Executive summary: A one-page summary of your whole plan, typically written after the rest of the plan is completed.

Company description: An overview of your business. It includes many potential sub-sections, such as your legal structure (whether you're a sole proprietor or limited liability company (LLC) and type of business model. You can also add more meaningful information, such as your business' value proposition and mission statement.

The description section will also cover your management team, business strategy and objectives, and general background information about the brand.

Market analysis: This section includes everything from estimated market size to your target markets and competitive advantage. It'll include a competitive analysis of your industry to address competitors strengths and weaknesses.

Products and services: What you sell and the most important features of your products or services. It'll also include any plans for intellectual property, like patent filings or copyright. If you do market research for new product lines, it'll show up in this section of your business plan.

Marketing plan: How you intend to get the word out about your business, and what strategic decisions you've made about things like your pricing strategy. It also covers potential customers' demographics, sales plan, and your metrics and milestones for success.

Logistics and operations plan: Everything that needs to happen to turn your raw materials into products and get them into the hands of your customers.

Financial plan: It's important to include a look at your financial projections. This section includes templates for three key financial statements: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement. You can also include whether or not you need a business loan and how much it'll be.

In our business plan template, each section includes an overview of the most important information to cover and guidelines on how to approach writing and researching each one.

Get the template now

Professional business plan example

We've filled out a sample business plan as a companion to our template, featuring a fictional ecommerce business. We've noted where-and how-an entrepreneur could add more details to expand on their plans, depending on their goals.

Our fictional business creates custom greeting cards with your pet's paw prints on them, and the founder of the business is writing a plan to help understand the market, as well as the logistics and costs involved, to give themselves the best chance of success before they launch.

The sample is set up to help you get a sense of each section and understand how they apply to the planning and evaluation stages of a business plan. If you're looking for funding, this example won't be a complete or formal look at a business plan, but it will give you a great place to start and notes about where to expand.

Before you write your own, read through the following business plan example. You can download a copy in Microsoft Word or Google Docs and use it to inspire your own planning.
Download the business plan example (.doc)
Lean business plan example

A lean business plan format is a shortened version of your full business plan. It's helpful when modifying your plan for a specific audience, like investors or new hires.

Also known as a one-page business plan, it includes only the most important, need-to-know information, such as:

Company description

Suppliers

Market analysis

Team members

Customer segments

Marketing plan

Want to create a lean business plan? Read Trimming It Down: How to Create a Lean Business Plan.

A good business plan helps you operate successfully

It's tempting to dive right into execution when you're excited about a new business or side project, but taking the time to write a business plan and get your thoughts on paper allows you to do a number of beneficial things:

Test the viability of business ideas.Whether you've gotone business ideaor many, a business plan can make an idea more tangible, helping you see if it's truly viable.

Plan for your next phase.Whether your goal is to start a new business or scale an existing business to the next level, a business plan can help you understand what needs to happen and identify gaps to address.

Clarify marketing strategy, goals, and tactics.Writing a business plan can show you the actionable next steps to take on a big, abstract idea. It can also help you narrow your strategy and identify clear-cut tactics that will support it.

Scope the necessary work.Without a concrete plan, cost overruns and delays are all but certain. A business plan can help you see the full scope of work to be done and adjust your investment of time and money accordingly.

Hire and build partnerships.When you need buy-in from potential employees and partners, especially in the early stages of your business, a clearly written business plan is one of the best tools at your disposal. A business plan provides a refined look at your goals for the business, letting partners judge for themselves whether or not they agree with your vision.

Secure funds.Securing funding for your business, whether from venture capital or a bank, is one of the most common reasons to create a business plan.

Should you use a template for a business plan?

A business plan can be as informal or formal as your situation calls for, but even if you're a fan of the back-of-the-napkin approach to planning, there are some key benefits to starting your plan from an existing outline or template.

No blank-page paralysis.A blank page can be intimidating to even the most seasoned writers. Using an established framework and guidelines can help you get past the inertia of starting your business plan, and it allows you to skip the work of building an outline from scratch. You can always adjust a template to suit your needs.

Guidance on what to include in each section.If you've never sat through a business class, you might never have created aSWOT analysisor a balance sheet before. Templates that offer guidance-in plain language-about how to fill in each section can help you navigate sometimes-daunting business jargon and create a complete and effective plan.

Knowing you've considered every section.In some cases, you may not need to complete every section of a startup business plan template, but its initial structure shows you you're choosing to omit a section as opposed to forgetting to include it in the first place.

Tips for creating a successful business plan

There are some high-level strategic guidelines beyond the advice included in this free business plan template that can help you write an effective, complete plan while minimizing busywork.

Know your audience. If you're writing a business plan for yourself in order to get clarity on your ideas and your industry as a whole, you may not need to include the same level of detail or polish you would with a business plan you want to send to potential investors. Knowing who will read your plan will help you decide how much time to spend on it.

Know your goals. Understanding the goals of your plan can help you set the right scope. If your goal is to use the plan as a roadmap for growth, you may invest more time in it than if your goal is to understand the competitive landscape of a new industry.

Take it step by step. Writing a 10- to 15-page document can feel daunting, so try to tackle one section at a time. Select a couple of sections you feel most confident writing and start there-you can start on the next few sections once those are complete. Jot down bullet-point notes in each section before you start writing to organize your thoughts and streamline the writing process.

Once you've done the strategic work, it's time to put it into action and write your plan. Download the business plan template and review our guide on writing a business plan for additional information.

Maximizing your business planning efforts

Planning is key to the success of any type of business, whether you're a startup, non-profit, or corporation.

To make sure your efforts are focused on the highest-value parts of your own business planning, like clarifying your goals, setting a strategy, and understanding the market and competitive landscape, lean on a business plan outline to handle the structure and format for you. Even if you eventually omit sections, you'll save yourself time and energy by starting with a framework already in place.
Illustrations by Rachel Tunstall
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Business plan template FAQ

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Business Plan Template: A Practical Framework for Creating Your Business Plan

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A business plan is the secret to starting a business successfully. The easiest way to simplify the work of writing a business plan is to start with a business plan template. You're already investing time and energy in planning your small business-there's no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to formatting your plan.

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New ideas - use shark tank to guide learning!

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New ideas - use shark tank to guide learning!

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Access this website to local lesson plans and ideas that have been developed around the shark tank process. Each lesson is organised into a topic (new product, evolving product, marketing etc) with a sourced shark tank YouTube video.

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14 Shark Tank Lesson Plans for Middle School (and High School!)

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Use these free shark tank lesson plans for middle school & high school, shark tank worksheet pdf, and Shark Tank project ideas to teach your students.

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Evaluating information and making decisions activity

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Evaluating information and making decisions activity

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View an issue or problem from different perspectives. Works well as a class wiki.

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This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Quite often we'll ask children to "Put your thinking cap on". Empowering learners with the skills to think creatively and critically is a gift which we can facilitate as teachers. The Developing Thinking and Reading Between the Lines PowerPoints in the Literacy Toolkit provide professional learning resources for staff to engage with materials that promote thinking.

Many of our posts have referred to the work of Bloom; however, when I was at an Active Literacy CPD session in Falkirk recently, the Six Hat materials were mentioned during a round table discussion.

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats is a tool which can be used by practitioners to promote thinking. Each hat colour represents a different aspect of thinking.

Some of the resources, tailored to middle/upper Primary and Secondary, suggest physically wearing coloured representations of the hats when beginning to engage with the materials. This way, learners are physically moving between the hats; therefore they are moving between the different modes of thinking.

There are banks of free resources that are available to support the teaching of thinking skills using the De Bono's Six Hats materials. The Six Hats materials can be used in conjunction with other Higher Order Thinking materials. Check out the resources below:

CLICK HERE - Using Six Hats as a reflection tool
CLICK HERE - Using the Six Hats to Respond to Literature
CLICK HERE - Six Hats Display
CLICK HERE - Thinking Display
CLICK HERE - FREE De Bono Thinking Resources

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Quite often we'll ask children to "Put your thinking cap on". Empowering learners with the skills to think creatively and critically is a gift which we can facilitate as teachers. The Developing Thinking and Reading Between the Lines PowerPoints in the Literacy Toolkit provide professional learning resources for staff to engage with materials that promote thinking.

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Individual Presentations using Canva- Education

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Individual Presentations using Canva- Education

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Students join pieces of information about their new business using a template of choice from Canva Education.

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Canva for Education and Flipgrid Partner to Unlock Student Creativity

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Canva for Education and Flipgrid Partner to Unlock Student Creativity

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This gives you access to questions created on Flipgrid that will allow students to work collaboratively and comment on each other's project to suggest improvements.

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Flipgrid is where social and emotional learning happens! The leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families.

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What high quality integration looks like

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What high quality integration looks like

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This article is a must read if you want clear examples of digital tools used at each stage of SAMR.

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Good technology integration isn't about using the fanciest tool, it's about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy-or strategies-for the lesson at hand.

The biggest obstacle to teaching online probably isn't the technology. Teachers seek out educational technology, in fact, because it "can have considerable positive impacts on student performance," according to a 2016 study -improving test scores and allowing teachers to assess student achievement more efficiently. The big problem is how to integrate it: Beyond the sheer number of tech tools available, the same researchers identified "inadequate professional development and training" as the primary obstacle to using technology productively in classrooms.

Understandably, the emergence of the coronavirus has dramatically accelerated the process of integrating edtech, as educators around the country race to get online as fast as they can. But as many of our teachers have noted, the current state of K-12 online learning is more like triage-a form of crisis management-and not at all like skillfully managed distance education.

What's missing from the conversation right now, which makes sense given the immediacy of the need, is a focus on the bigger question of what the highest quality technology integration actually looks like. That's an important conversation to have, because in a post-coronavirus world there's likely to be a greater emphasis on digital learning, even as we return to physical schools and take advantage of face-to-face opportunities.

A Hierarchy of Tech Uses

A powerful conceptual tool to think about technology integration-and edtech's best uses-is the SAMR model, developed in 2010 by education researcher Ruben Puentedura, who was the 1991 recipient of a Phi Beta Kappa teaching award.

The SAMR model lays out four tiers of online learning, presented roughly in order of their sophistication and transformative power: substitution, augmentation, modification, and r edefinition. When switching to an online format, teachers often focus on the first two levels, which involve replacing traditional materials with digital ones: converting lessons and worksheets into PDFs and posting them online, or recording lectures on video and making them available for asynchronous learning, for example.
Creative Commons
Those are important steps, especially when teaching online for the first time, but in classrooms where tech integration has moved to the mastery level, the last two levels of the SAMR model-modification and redefinition-should also be in the mix. Students in classes where this kind of mastery is embedded find more novel and immersive uses for technology. They are creators and publishers of their own work across multiple forms of media, for example, or they are inviting professionals to provide feedback on their work products, or participating in digital forums with other peers around the world.

It's tempting to think of SAMR as a mountain to be summited. But good technology integration isn't about living at the top of the SAMR model; it's about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy-or strategies-for the lesson at hand.

Here's a closer look at good classroom practices at each level in the model:

Substitution

"Substitution" means replacing traditional activities and materials-like in-class lectures or paper worksheets-with digital versions. There is no substantial change to the content, just the way that it is delivered.

The goal here is to keep things simple: there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Scan your lessons and worksheets, convert them into PDFs, and post them online using Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, or a similar file-sharing service. Think about the information you have on your walls, such as the classroom norms, the daily schedule, or vocabulary lists, and convert them into digital formats that students can easily reference.

It may also help to provide synchronous as well as asynchronous versions of your lectures. If you're holding class meetings over a videoconferencing service like Zoom or Skype, provide a recording for students who can't attend. You can also create your own instructional videos for students to view at their own pace.

Augmentation

This level involves incorporating interactive digital enhancements and elements like comments, hyperlinks, or multimedia. The content remains unchanged, but students can now take advantage of digital features to enhance the lesson.

For example, students can create digital portfolios to create multimedia presentations, giving them more options to demonstrate their understanding of a topic. And instead of handing out paper quizzes, you can gamify your quizzes with tools like Socrative and Kahoot.

Teachers can also create virtual bulletin boards-using an app like Padlet -where students can post questions, links, and pictures.

Modification

At this level, teachers can think about using a learning management system like Google Classroom, Moodle, Schoology, or Canvas to handle the logistical aspects of running a classroom, like tracking grades, messaging students, creating a calendar, and posting assignments.

Teaching online opens up new channels of communication, many of which can help students who have traditionally been marginalized. Research shows that girls may be less likely to speak up in class, for example, so they may benefit from backchannels -alternative conversations that can run alongside instruction-that encourage participation.

Zoom's text chat feature, meanwhile, gives students an opportunity to write their questions out, which can feel less intrusive if there are dozens of students participating in the call. Also, students who prefer to collect their thoughts may benefit from slower-paced, asynchronous discussions in an online forum or email threads.

Redefinition

Learning is fundamentally transformed at the "redefinition" level, enabling activities that were previously impossible in the classroom.

For example, virtual pen pals can connect students to other parts of the world, whether it's with other students or experts in a field. Virtual field trips enable students to visit locations like the Amazon rainforest, the Louvre, or the Egyptian pyramids. After reading a book in class, you can invite the author to chat about their work and answer questions.

Technology also provides an opportunity to bring authentic audiences into your virtual classroom, and can make publishers out of your students. Kids can write their own wikis or blogs for public consumption and feedback-and platforms like Quadblogging can connect distant classrooms together so students both write and respond. Students can tackle local problems-like investigating the water quality of a nearby river-and invite members of the community to assess their digital proposals.

Going Beyond SAMR

Finally, consider how technology can be used not just as a way to deliver content, but also to strengthen relationships with your students. For elementary school teacher John Thomas, Seesaw and Flipgrid allow him to share a daily greeting, which his students then respond to-or to each other-with a typed or voiced comment. It's a good way to provide some stability while they're isolated.

How can my lesson be improved using technology?

How can I engage and empower students through technology?

How can online learning more closely resemble authentic, real-world learning?

Remember, again, that SAMR is sometimes thought of as a mountain to summit, but it's really more like a toolbox. The goal isn't to use the most sophisticated tool, but to find the right one for the job. More importantly, however, it's a way to reflect on your technology integration by thinking about a few key questions:

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A Powerful Model for Understanding Good Tech Integration

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Good technology integration isn't about using the fanciest tool, it's about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy-or strategies-for the lesson at hand.

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Nearpod lesson- Identifying a Business Idea

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Nearpod lesson- Identifying a Business Idea

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Help students make connections to the real world using this teaching pedagogy.

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How to Create Rich Experimental Learning Units - TeachHUB

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How do you prepare modern students for real-world scenarios? Learn how to create rich experimental learning units to engage students in transformative ways.