How to write a business plan (for creative types)

Snap Food Truckers share tips for getting your plan down tight. “Add a slush fund,” “prepare an elevator pitch,” and “don’t freak out” rank high on the list.

By Amy Schroeder

Want to write a business plan, but don’t know where to get started?

Load up on these tips from Brooklynites Zeph Courtney and Liz Schroeter Courtney, the co-creators of Snap, a bio-fueled hamburger-and-hot dog truck launching in New York in 2011.

Dream a little dream: They don't have the official Snap Food Truck just yet, but it'll look something like this. Only way flashier. Here, Liz Schroeter Courtney and Zeph Courtney envision their future.

DIYBA: What was it like to write a business plan for the first time?

Snap Food Truck: While a lot of it was common sense in the end, we learned a lot by attending free seminars by the Small Business Development Center in Brooklyn.

Though the business plan is ultimately used to present your concept to investors, lenders, and so forth, the process of building the business plan is an invaluable step in getting your ideas out on the table and considering all the angles—marketing, financing, target consumer, etc.—to confirm for yourself that it all adds up.

We’ve revised our plan at least 10 times during the two years since we hatched the idea, each time tweaking some detail to make it more solid. That’s important to understand—your business plan can always be changing, whether it’s redefining your mission statement or deciding you should plan for two part-time employees instead of one.

A big part of a business plan, and the part that can be very intimidating, is projecting how much profit you expect to make. We took some examples from the SBDC seminars and then downloaded template spreadsheets from the SCORE site. SCORE is a nonprofit staffed by volunteer retired business people, and they are a great resource for business plan advice and examples.

You don’t need to be a math person to build a profit-and-loss spreadsheet or a cash-flow statement, but if numbers and formulas make you go cross-eyed, you should get help with this step. Once we grasped how these spreadsheets worked, it was actually fun to play with small changes and see how it affected our overall expected profitability.

For some creative types, idea generation is no sweat, but planning can be an itchy challenge. Did you find yourself having to rein yourself to buckle down?

At first we talked about the plans all the time, but soon we realized that we needed to schedule focused time to work on the plans. If we didn’t, it would either take over our lives or it would constantly get put on the back burner.

The first year of planning was somewhat slow because we also were in the midst of planning our wedding—a good thing for sure, but distracting to say the least. Still the pressure was on because one of us hadn’t been working full time since the recession kicked in, and the other was busy with a full-time job. Given the economic situation, we had the urgency to start the business, yet very little time together to plan.

To keep things moving, we scheduled meetings every Sunday where we’d make a weekly to-do list. We also created an account on Basecamp, where we track milestones, to-do lists, and assign tasks and share documents.

Sometimes we’re frustrated with how long the process takes, but we’ve made incredible headway considering everything happening in our lives. Case in point: We’re writing this advice from the studio where our band, Diehard, is recording. It really is hard to get creative types to focus on one project!

SNAP FOOD TRUCK’S BUSINESS-PLAN DO’S:

• Make realistic assumptions.

Be honest with yourself, and do tons of research, when projecting how much you think you can sell in a month, the cost of supplies, or how many employees you’ll need to hire. Make notes for what these assumptions are (for your readers and for yourself when you go back later and wonder why the hell you expected to sell 500 burgers a day). This might be easy if, say, your business is just you and one partner working on a website from home, or it could be super complicated if you need a lot of raw materials and a warehouse or a kitchen.

• Remember who you’re writing for.

No one cares why you want to start your business, except maybe your parents. This plan will be presented to lenders and investors, so write it for their interest—answer questions like, “Why does the world need this business?” and “What problem is the business solving?”

You aren’t just starting up a cheese shop because you love cheese (even if you are); you’re doing it because you recognized an opening in the market for cheese shops in a particular neighborhood. Lots of people there are demanding good cheese, but there isn’t any available. A lender will read that and be able to imagine this business succeeding. Furthermore, you might realize that no one in your neighborhood is demanding cheese, and you might want to consider a different location or a different product.

• Get advice.

The Small Business Administration offers entrepreneurs free assistance, including workshops and one-on-one counseling. They back local Small Business Development Centers like the one we’ve relied on in Brooklyn. These, along with nonprofits like SCORE, and your public library can also be great resources for connecting with local small businesses to get first-hand advice and build partnerships.

• Realize that size matters.

Having a detailed business plan that’s several pages and hits all the standard points is important, but it’s equally important to have a smart, quick elevator pitch. Most importantly, you need to know your plan inside and out so that you can present whatever version of it makes sense for a given audience—whether it’s a 30-second synopsis, a one-page overview, or an email that zeros in on a particular angle of your business.

SNAP FOOD TRUCK’S DON’TS BUSINESS-PLAN DONT’S:

• Don’t forget to calculate costs like insurance, permits, and advertising. And then add a slush fund of just-in-case money should something unexpected come up. Which it will.

• Don’t freak out. We read somewhere that as important as a business plan is, once you are actually in business, the plan pretty much goes out the window. Nothing will work out exactly as you expected, and that’s okay. As long as you have made realistic assumptions, you should be prepared to roll with the punches. Contact us in a year and we’ll tell you how things are stacking up against our “plan.”

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Get more biz tips for creative types in DIYBA How-To.