Can I Sign Minnesota Banking Business Plan Template

Can i industry sign banking minnesota business plan template

welcome to the northland small business development centers starting a business in minnesota four-part video series my name is mary and i'm a business consultant with sbdc and i am going to be leading section two which is on getting started the steps you need to take to starting your business and i'm going to talk about your business plan and what you need in your business plan and i want you to know that if you are looking for more information on them you can find them on our website first thing you need to do is get assistance and training by just watching this video you are doing just that in addition you can request to get assistance from one of our small business development center consultants you can also look at other resources such as score the sba and the minnesota department of employment and economic development all are excellent resources and all have a lot of information and help for entrepreneurs second and one of the most important is preparing your business and financial plans and you can get started on this we have templates for you to use and you can ask for assistance but these are the things that are really important to you and in fact we're going to have further information on this i'm going to talk about business plans in detail and there's another series section that will be on financial planning the third thing you're going to probably need is to obtain financing that financing might be coming from you alone family and friends might you might need to look for investors or you may need to seek a loan or a grant some people are even getting creative and doing crowdfunding next you want to look at establishing a bank account you might be asking yourself well why would i need to do that you want to keep your business and personal expenses separate it helps you track your revenues and your expenses on a monthly weekly daily and yearly basis so you know exactly where you are it also helps at the end of the year when you're working on your income taxes so you can easily provide that information to your accountant you need to determine your legal structure and there are a number of different legal structures to choose from and we will cover that in in greater detail in another one of our segments but most of our clients in the northland will usually select between a sole proprietor or a limited liability company we really like to spend time in analyzing what your business idea is and how you're going to operate before deciding which is the best fit for you once you've done that and you've got your business name you need to register your business and you do that with the state of minnesota you'll go to the secretary of state's website and register or you would register in any state that you are going to be locating your business in when you do this there is usually a small fee but it lets everyone in the state know that you are in business under your business name once you've done that one of the next steps is obtaining any licenses and permits that you need and depending on the type of business that you're running you may or may not need a license and you may or may not need permits if you are going to be a barber or you're opening a hair salon you may need to go to a separate organization entity the hair salon a stylist need to go to the minnesota department of cosmetology to get their licenses if you're opening a bar you have to have a liquor license so it really depends on what your business is that is what determines what kind of license you have and sometimes you can check with your state or city to find out what you might need one of sometimes one of the licenses or permits that you need is your sales and use tax permit if you are selling a product or a service that is taxable you are going to need to obtain your sales and use tax permit so that you can sell those products and the state of minnesota has a website that you would go to for a lot of help next you're going to register your federal and state tax ids what this your federal tax id is just like your social security number it is a tax id number that is identifies your business and we usually recommend no matter what legal entity you choose that you obtain a separate federal tax id for security purposes for you if you are going to be selling taxable items or if you are going to have employees you will want to get a state tax id as well if you're going to be selling your products or services online you're probably going to want a website and you're going to have to set up a domain name you need to go out and search and find out if your domain name is available reserve and register that as well then you can set up your website and get to business last thing on the list is understanding employer responsibilities if you are going to have employees did you know that you need to notify the state of minnesota if you have employees we have resources on our website that you can review and have that will help you in understanding employee rules and regulations let's get into the details the nitty-gritty of your business plan while there are a variety of business plans most contain very similar components but sometimes they're in a different order so we're going to spend some time going over the different components of the business plan the first one on the list is the executive summary while it is the first component it is written last so you would actually start with your detailed description of your business the the reason the executive summary is written last it is because it is a summary of all the other components so you want to write them first and then pick out the most important pieces in each one to summarize and tell your story to the reader whether it be an investor or a lender or just you but you want your executive summary to be compelling to catch their attention because if a lender reads your executive summary if they get interested and engaged in what they're reading it will lead to them reading the rest of your business plan so really where you start first is your detailed description of your business and i usually tell clients this should be somewhere between two and maybe four pages long but you want to give detailed information on your products and services your organization your operation and your management so talk about the products that you're going to sell or the services that you're going to offer talk about your hours of operation your staffing needs how you're going to manage the company and how it's organized make sure the reader understands what you're doing they don't need to know how to do it though the next section is your goals and we separate these into two categories short-term goals which are less than one year and long-term goals which are usually one to five years and in each one i say recommend you would include two to four no more than five things that you want to accomplish we always encourage that you use the smart approach smart meaning specific measurable attainable realistic and time-bound so an example might be in year one i want to increase my revenues by ten percent per month very specific and very measurable and very time-bound swot analysis that is the next section that you're going to complete and that includes your strengths your weaknesses opportunities and threats i'm going to talk about the first two first so your strengths and weaknesses are things within turn inside the company or internally so they're really about you and i find many clients that have a hard time talking about their strengths but this is really your opportunity to tell the reader why you are qualified to run your business so be sure and talk about past experiences in the industry or managing a company your educational background your commitment your customer service and again in this section in for each one of these components just like in your goals include two to four no more than five so your weaknesses weaknesses could be a lack of funding that would be why you would be doing working on your business plan and applying for a loan outside of the company opportunities and threats an example of a threat might be possible competition or existing competition opportunity you might be looking at expanding you're going to start your your business in one market area but look to expand into another and explain that the next section is industry characteristics and trends and a lot of our clients know about the in the industry that they are looking to open a business in if not google you can find a lot of information online and then if you need additional help you contacted the sbdc and work with one of our consultants because we have access to resources that you might have to pay for if you were to use them and we can help you with both your industry trends and characteristics the next section would be your customer characteristics and we talked a little bit about this in section one but this is really broken up into your identifying your customer demographics their psychographics and their geographics and you want to identify what those characteristics are your different customers and you may have more than one group of customers but to start out with your demographics those are things that are visible or countable things that you can see like their age their sex might be their income range or education so are there things specific about your customers that you can identify demographically next is your psychographics their beliefs and values are they going to believe in the product or service that you're offering if you're opening um a organically grown garden and you're going to be sell selling your products some people are really believe very heavily and want to eat and consume only organic products so that would be a psychographic and then geographics where are you located where are your customers located do they need to be close to you or or if you're going to be selling online are they nationwide or worldwide so identifying where they exist the next section is the competition so you want to identify and describe the strengths and weaknesses of two or three of your competitors know what their strengths are know what their weaknesses are so that you can identify what your competitive advantage is over them because you're going to be selling against them the next section is your market analysis and this includes understanding the market that you're getting into where you're going to be locating so you might want to find out what traffic counts if you're going to have a retail store somewhere are am i going to have enough exposure what is the population in the area that i'm going to be locating my business in understanding and explaining and describing that in your business plan and once you've determined what your market analysis is and you've defined that then you want to move on to your marketing strategy and your marketing strategy when you approach this you really need to think of your customer so when you go back and think about your customer characteristics and how is it going to be easiest for me to market to them is it on social media is it through radio is it through newspaper is it word of mouth but determine how these people shop and that will help you determine how you're going to market your product one of the last sections is your financial plan and your assumptions and the financial plan is the numbers portion of your business plan so we often say in a business plan it's telling your story in words and then in numbers and the financial plan is telling your story in numbers it usually includes a profit and loss statement so explaining your revenues and identifying your expenses and then what your net profit is going to be and it might include a balance sheet and cash flow analysis this may seem overwhelming if it does there's always people that can help you along with your financial plan you need to include a list of assumptions and assumptions are an explanation of the numbers in your financial plan that the reader might not understand so an example would be you explain i'm going to have 5 000 in sales a month by explaining that would be an average of x number of product sales or my payroll is a certain dollar amount your assumptions is explaining that would be maybe three full-time employees and two part-time employees but explaining those line items that the reader isn't going to understand and you want to eliminate as many questions as possible and do as thorough a job as you can explaining the last section of the business plan is your appendix and this is where you might include pictures of your product your location your logo you might include a references or resumes letters of recommendation from people or letters of commitment from people who are going to be buying from you this ends my part of the workshop on steps to starting a business and components to your business plan information on both of these can be found at our website and please feel free to register for free consulting services consultants are here to help you through these steps and with your business plan good luck to you in starting your business and i hope to see your business soon you