How Students Can Create a Successful Business Plan

Starting your own business in college is an exciting yet risky and frightening endeavor. Students have plenty of ambitions and ideas. At the same time, they often lack a budget and have almost 100% of their time busy with schoolwork. So, planning and launching a startup is something that young people might find incredibly challenging.

Despite all the hardships, becoming an entrepreneur in college IS possible. There are plenty of examples of successful student startups that kicked off. But, if you step on this path, be sure that you’ll have plenty of work to do.

First of all, you might want to enlist the help of professionals to keep your studies covered. Luckily, you can easily order essay paper on PaperWriter and get writers with MA and Ph.D. degrees to tackle your tasks while you are busy. And secondly, you will want to write a killer business plan. Here, we will tell why and how to do it right.

Why Do You Need a Business Plan?

Lacking time for literally anything, college entrepreneurs might want to skip the step where they have to write a business plan. It can be rather hard to figure out and time-consuming. But the truth is that you should never skip this step.

Why? First and foremost, such documents are commonly used by investors to assess the feasibility of a startup before investing in it. So, creating one is a must if you want to get a loan or other types of funding.

There are more reasons too. Writing a document like this will help you evaluate the viability of your ideas, define the scope of your future enterprise, conduct the so-needed research, and even understand the competition.

All in all, not skipping this step is a good way to lay out your ideas in a well-structured way and get an actionable roadmap to success.

3 Common Business Plan Formats

One of the few things to know before writing is that there are several formats of this document.

Below are the three most common options:

Traditional – This is the longest, most detailed, and most common format. It can consist of dozens of pages and goes into deep detail, which is why it takes the longest to create. However, if you are planning to appeal to lenders or venture capitalist firms, you will likely have to craft a plan like this.
Lean – The next format is basically a shorter version of the previous one. It generally has the same structure (later, we will tell you what needs to be included) but focuses only on the most important information. Entrepreneurs often use this option to modify existing plans for new target markets or to onboard new staff.
Nonprofit – For entrepreneurs looking to build an enterprise that operates for social or public benefit will need to resort to this format. It includes everything from the traditional format plus a detailed section that focuses on the impact you want to make with your startup.

As was mentioned earlier, these are the most common formats. In reality, there are other ways to write a business plan too. If you are wondering which option to choose, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Analyze your ideas and pick a format that will let you convey the most important information about your startup to your audience.

Writing a Solid Business Plan in 9 Steps

Finally, knowing the importance and benefits of having this document, we are getting to the most complicated part – writing a business plan.

If you want to achieve your goals and avoid common mistakes, follow the step-by-step guide below:

Start With an Executive Summary

It’s a very brief section that strives to filter out all the technical details and give busy investors an intriguing overview of your startup to make them want to read further.

A good executive summary should involve your business concept, goals, vision, product description, target market, marketing strategy, current and projected financial state, and the amount of money you are looking for.

Craft a Company Description

Next, your plan should present a clear description of your company. It should involve the niche, vision, background information, objectives, structure, etc. Be sure to do lots of research when putting everything together in this section.

Perform and Present Marketing Analysis

This section is one of the most crucial ones. At this stage, you need to research and understand relevant industry trends, define your ideal customer profile, and make informed guesses concerning the future state of the market.

Outline Organization and Management

The next part of this document should tell readers how you are (or will) operate your company). This section has to reflect on the organization of your enterprise and tell the readers who will be running it.

Tell About Your Products and/or Services

The next section is there to outline the key details and important information about the products or services your business will offer.

Perform Customer Segmentation

This section is there to show how you are going to approach your customers in the future. Segmentation is an important process of breaking your target audience into groups based on their behaviors, locations, interests, values, and other characteristics. Later, the segments you identify will help you market your goods easier and effectively.

Present a Marketing Plan

The next thing readers will want to know is how you will market your products. Use this section to outline where you will sell, how your products will set you apart from the competition, what prices make sense, and how you will promote your goods.

Present a Logistics and Operations Overview

This section should tell everything about how your enterprise will operate and distribute goods to customers.

Present a Financial Overview

Finally, the last section should uncover the financial side of your startup. It should tell your readers how your business will spend money and generate revenue. For investors, this would be the most important part.