Most people do not know what they are getting when purchasing a business plan. Because of this inexperience, entrepreneurs often get subpar documents that are brought to us for editing. Below is a comparison of select portions of a $400 business plan a client sent for editing. Certain details have been redacted for the privacy of the client.
Cover Sheet
Original average bplan vs Your Startup Guru update
First impressions make a big difference. The cover sheet of the original is bland and generic while the updated version is bold and primes the reader for the rest of the document.
Table of Contents
The original table of contents was 39 pages long. That is too long especially when it is filled with pointless content such as “global ecommerce sales growth”. This is a used car dealership so global online sales is outside the scope of this business plan. Our business plans are concise, informative, and direct.
Executive Summary
An executive summary is a 1-2 page document that tells the reader everything they need to know about the business. The “purpose of the plan” section is pointless because anyone reading a business plan knows what the purpose of a business plan is. Also, the opportunity section of the original executive summary is filled with errors and uncompelling.
Income Statement
The income statement is one of three major financial statements that all investors will scrutinize. It is a shame that in the original, the income statement was more of an afterthought. It shows astronomically high gross and net profit margins that are unrealistic and borderline fraudulent. Your Startup Guru financial statements come with an income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement with 3 or 5-year projections that are based on industry averages and client-specific costs and overhead.
The business plans and pitch decks we create for our clients are meticulously researched so that the most crucial and actionable information applicable to their business is found.
Kansas City Kwik Dry Total Cleaning needed a business plan to launch and meet startup capital expenditures. With the custom-made business plan we created for Kansas City Kwik Dry Total Cleaning, they are well on their way to providing exceptional janitorial services in the Greater Kansas City area.
Contact us to get your expertly written business plan.
Osys Naturals offers a fantastic line of skin care solutions for razor burn, razor bumps, ingrown hair, and skin irritations.
Osys Naturals came to Your Startup Guru seeking financing to expand his company. Through our business plan and fundraising services Osys was able to secure the capital necessary to grow.
Pabst Blue Ribbon’s (or PBR) rise and fall is a story of a market finding a product — unfortunately, it 170 years for it to happen. PBR has been around for 170 years but only in 2008 enjoyed a 6 year boom in popularity (outside of a brief moment in the 1970s). If hipsters were around 170 years ago, it wouldn’t have taken one hundred seventy years for PBR to find popularity.
It is better to find an under-served market and create a product/service for them than wait for a market to find your product/service.
Hipsters are known for following the latest trends and fashions, while eschewing things regarded as being within the cultural mainstream. Hence the term, “I was into __________ before it was cool.”
So why did hipsters like PBR? To put it simply, it was “retro chic”, anti-mainstream, and with many people still trying to recover from an economic recession, Pabst Blue Ribbon’s low price point was an attractive option. This brings us to a tool in marketing used to find customer groups — psychographic segmentation.
What is Psychographic Segmentation for Business?
Psychographic segmentation is used in market research as a way to divide consumers into sub-groups based on shared psychological characteristics, including subconscious or conscious beliefs, motivations, and priorities to explain and predict consumer behavior. Any dimension can be used to segment a group of consumers such as style, variety, availability, price, etc.
Hipsters avoided things that were popular and some of them were not price sensitive so they were willing to consider a range of beers that occupied a certain psychographic zone.
Psychographic segmentation of hipster beer consumption
As PBR’s popularity grew, it was departing from the zone of consideration – the region of price and popularity where hipsters were willing purchase from. Also, as hipsterism became more mainstream, the association of PBR with hipsters caused a self-fueling downward cycle.
Shift in Pabst Blue Ribbon popularity caused hipster abandonment
Slumping PBR sales. Images property of their respective publishers
How to Use Psychographic Segmentation for Business?
Since you don’t have over one hundred fifty years for your product or service to be found by a market, it is better to find an under-served market and create a product/service for them than wait for a market to find your product/service. You can read about more businesses that found a need and filled that need.
Your Startup Guru used psychographic analysis to differentiate our client’s brand from that of their competitors yet stay true to their envisioned identity:
Swimsuit brand psychographic differentiation
How to Do Market Research for Business?
There are many sources at your disposal to gain a deeper insight into who your customers are and segments within that market.
Ask potential customers: Surveying is a form of primary market research. Ask them how they use their product, what they like/dislike about it. How long they have used it, is it expensive, how does it make them feel, etc. These questions will give you valuable insight on the psychology of the user.
Pose as a customer and visit your competitor’s store/website. Learn how they do what they do. See what they do well, what they can improve on. Sometimes employees are very happy to share details you cannot find anywhere else.
Industry and trade publications for your particular sector are also a great source of information. Some are free while some require memberships.
So What Should Pabst Blue Ribbon Do?
Given that hipsterism is on the way out, a brand extension with Pabst [pick your color] Ribbon which is guerilla marketed to a new niche market segment such as Yuccies: Young Urban Creatives (that are a slice of Gen Y) with product placement on their YouTube channels is a viability…or wait another +100 years for market tastes to circle back.
Contact us today to get started on market research that will help pinpoint your target market.
Javier Fregoso started Mexicali Taco & Co in 2010, with not much money to open a restaurant he decided to start humbly only at a parking space near Downtown LA, with only a cart and a pick-up truck he started his dream of serving good tacos. The word started to spread out and eventually, they had a crowd of hundreds of people following them, in only 2 years plus blood, sweat and tears they were able to open their first brick and mortar in 2012, he always had that goal since the first day setting up of bringing the best tacos to Los Angeles, after opening the restaurant it became a huge success, it was a no brainer for them, they had a vision and they made it happened. Now in 2019 Javier decided to bring a better, higher and revolutionary concept to Orange County. After marrying his beloved wife Danielle, Mezquite was created, a new generation of tacos that will bring quality, authenticity and dedicated customer service to provide the best experience just like if you were at a family BBQ.
Your Startup Guru created a business plan that allowed Carlos Robles to request $1.8 million for expansion capital for Dream Pools and his other startup, Super 10 Trucking.
Carlos’ situation required a 1-week delivery period while also mixing in complex financial projections that included the assets of his pool construction business with his trucking business.
In the end, the plan was delivered and Carlos is now able to grow his businesses.
SportsYap! is a fun sports-centric social networking app that allows users to challenge other fans, find your favorite sports loving celeb, view real-time scores, and much more.
SportsYap! came to Your Startup Guru for a business plan which allowed them to secure funding for app development costs, overhead expenditures and other startup expenses.
Wishful Events is a fantastic on-side childcare service for events such as weddings, company BBQs and other outings. Wishful Events provides a high-quality service with customized age-appropriate games and activities so parents are free to enjoy the day.
Your Startup Guru
Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Name
Domain
Purpose
Expiry
Type
YSC
youtube.com
YouTube session cookie.
53 years
HTTP
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.
Name
Domain
Purpose
Expiry
Type
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
youtube.com
YouTube cookie.
6 months
HTTP
Analytics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
Name
Domain
Purpose
Expiry
Type
__utma
your-startup-guru.com
Google Analytics long-term user and session tracking identifier.
2 years
HTTP
__utmc
your-startup-guru.com
Legacy Google Analytics short-term technical cookie used along with __utmb to determine new users sessions.
53 years
HTTP
__utmz
your-startup-guru.com
Google Analytics campaign and traffic source tracking cookie.
6 months
HTTP
__utmt
your-startup-guru.com
Google Analytics technical cookie used to throttle request rate.
Session
HTTP
_gid
your-startup-guru.com
Google Universal Analytics short-time unique user tracking identifier.
1 days
HTTP
IDE
doubleclick.net
Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes.
2 years
HTTP
__utmb
your-startup-guru.com
Google Analytics short-term functional cookie used to determine new users and sessions.
Session
HTTP
_ga
your-startup-guru.com
Google Universal Analytics long-time unique user tracking identifier.
2 years
HTTP
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
We do not use cookies of this type.
Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies.
Name
Domain
Purpose
Expiry
Type
poptin_old_user
your-startup-guru.com
---
2 days
---
poptin_user_id
your-startup-guru.com
---
1 year
---
_gcl_au
your-startup-guru.com
---
3 months
---
_gat_UA-170819293-1
your-startup-guru.com
---
Session
---
_gat_gtag_UA_170819293_1
your-startup-guru.com
---
Session
---
poptin_user_ip
your-startup-guru.com
---
1 year
---
poptin_user_country_code
your-startup-guru.com
---
1 year
---
poptin_session_account_02661686eb284
your-startup-guru.com
---
1 month
---
poptin_session
your-startup-guru.com
---
Session
---
poptin_c_visitor
your-startup-guru.com
---
1 month
---
_ir
api.pinterest.com
---
Session
---
_ga_HRJBBMZDPP
your-startup-guru.com
---
2 years
---
test_cookie
doubleclick.net
A generic test cookie set by a wide range of web platforms.
Session
HTTP
Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient. The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies we need your permission. This site uses different types of cookies. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages.
You must be logged in to post a comment.