Paul Tiffany - Business Plans For Dummies

While you can’t always tell a book by its cover, you can find out a lot by reading through its table of contents. You should also try dipping into the first chapter. If you’re browsing on the web, booksellers like Amazon.com often include a detailed table of contents, along with the first chapter, directly on their website. Readers’ reviews and ratings that you can find online can also help steer you toward other particularly useful books. And don’t forget to ask colleagues, business advisers, family and friends, or investors to list their favorite business-planning go-to sources. The results may surprise you.

The basic principles of business planning may be timeless, but certain subjects — where and how to acquire funding, for example — change rapidly. An unrevised three-year-old site may already be ancient history. If you want to find timely information, such as details about tax considerations for a small business, be sure to check the source’s original posting or publication date.

For the timeliest info, turn to relevant blogs, podcasts, social media, chat rooms, magazines, newspapers, and journals. For a broader and deeper sweep of trends and events, read the books. They offer a terrific way to keep up on what’s happening in the world of business in general — and your industry in particular. The business press also provides an efficient way to routinely scan the business environment for trends or new developments that may affect your business plan. If you’re not sure what online or print sources focus on your particular industry or your geographic region, do a quick search on the Internet (see the next section for more details).

Today, countless numbers of websites offer information on business planning. Some are free; others tease you with a sample of what they have to offer and then charge you for more detailed data via “freemium” options. In our experience, some of the freebies can be just as helpful as the pay-now sites, so we suggest that you first check the no-cost offers before surrendering your credit card data. In particular, the U.S. federal government offers heaps of solid information on planning, starting, and operating your own business through its Small Business Administration site ( www.sba.gov ). And if you reside outside the United States, you will likely find that many public institutions in your region offer similar resources; business planning, after all, is not a U.S. monopoly.

A treasure trove of business-planning information and resources is available online. To help you sort through all the riches, we’ve put together a list of popular sites that provide useful and reliable tips, tools, and examples — including dozens of real-life business plans:

www.sba.gov : The Small Business Administration (SBA) site is far and away the best source of information about planning, funding, starting, and running a small business. You find useful FAQs, as well as counseling help and shareware software programs that you can download for a nominal fee.

www.irs.gov/smallbiz : A great site if you run a small business or are self-employed. The IRS provides all kinds of useful industry and profession-specific information. The site also includes links to other helpful non-IRS business resources on the web.

www.nfib.com : The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) calls itself the largest advocacy organization to represent small and independent businesses in the United States. Its website features a set of tools and tips that small business owners may find useful.

www.score.org : The Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) offers free consulting to start-up business owners. Along with a way to contact SCORE, their website includes updated success stories about a variety of small- and medium-sized businesses. Also useful is a list of business-related links.

www.nolo.com : You can’t find a better place than Nolo to turn for basic information on the legal aspects of virtually any kind of business. The website also offers free advice, including info on insuring your home business, independent contractor arrangements, trademarks and copyrights, debts, bankruptcies, and employment law.

Lists of the hottest business-related websites have a way of going out of date fast — kind of like teenage fashion when you think about it. And a resource that appears hot to one would-be entrepreneur may not be suited for another. Your best bet is to scout around the web yourself, looking for useful resources. On search engine sites, the keywords business and plan lead you to plenty of generic business-planning information; if you Google “business plan website,” you will be taken immediately to countless pages that link to sources, some that offer free advice, others that sell products. For a more efficient hunt, tailor your search by using keywords specific to your business area ( technology, retail, travel, children’s games, social media influencer, ethnic beauty products, financial services, and so on) along with the words business plan and see what you come up with. Make sure to bookmark any promising sites so that you can return to explore them later in more detail. Check out the nearby sidebar “Internet hotspots for business-planning info” for helpful website addresses.

Beyond sharing some basic business-planning tools, the Internet is also a great place to search for the latest information about competitors, markets, business trends, new technologies, you name it — all the things you need to know to put together a complete picture of your business environment. We’re constantly amazed at how much information you can find in corporate press releases, company home pages, executive bios, online business blogs or magazine articles, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registrations, and thousands of other publicly available online documents.

And one last thing: Don’t be hesitant to simply email or dial up a potential source of information relevant to your search. You’d be surprised at how helpful others can be when you ask them in a polite and sincere manner. Kindness counts!

The Internet may be a gold mine of business information, but you may also find plenty of fool’s gold. Unlike typical print-based informational articles, which are typically fact-checked for accuracy, as we’ve sadly come to know much of the info on the Internet hasn’t been validated. Often the website providing the info is simply trying to sell you something or scrape and then peddle your private profile. So be cautious out there.

Follow three simple rules when you use the Internet for business research:

Make sure the material is current. Many web documents aren’t dated, so you may not know whether what you read is the latest scoop or ancient history. Look for a date. If you can’t find one, dig a little further to make sure that the information is still relevant; you can often do this by cross-checking the facts on another website.