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Auto repair invoice template for Engineering

hey guys this is ky at projection up and today I'm going to show you how to write a business plan for an auto repair shop now what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to take this pre-prepared fictional business plan and I'm going to walk through the whole thing and highlight the different sections and structures and the contents of the business plan and you can get this this is a free template down in the description below that we've created and made available to anybody that would like to get it and the main purpose of today is as I'm going through I'm going to show you five key points that I think make the difference between a business plan that's just okay and one that will get approved for a loan request now what experience do I have to be talking about this with you today so before my time with projection of I was actually an SBA lender for about seven years and so during my time doing that that looked like working with startups and business owners to prepare a loan application so reviewing their business plan reviewing their financial projections and guiding them through underwriting and just doing that process and got a chance to work with hundreds of businesses to do that in reviewing their applications and then projection hub we've helped more than 50,000 small businesses create their financial projections for business plans loan applications pitch decks Acquisitions you name it and so we've worked with a lot and actually auto repair shops are one of the most common businesses we've helped on the financial projection side and again in this video I wanted to walk through and show you the business plan structure how to to prepare a business plan you can get a and then as I get to those five different sections for those key points I will stop and take a little bit more time and highlight those for you so if at any point you like today's video give it a thumbs up that really helps us as a fellow small business and subscribe to the channel if you want to see some more content not all of our content is about auto repair shops but a lot of it just about business ownership business growth that kind of thing so without further Ado let's go ahead and jump in okay so why do you need a business plan probably obvious because your lender ask you for one but really what your business plan does not need to do is educate the reader on what a repair shop does or what your specific auto repair shop does or really just like describing the the industry as a whole what we want your business plan to do is to very specifically describe your game plan to go from starting point to success and we want it to be undeniable because you're going to demonstrate attainable accessible and supported evidence supported steps that make it seem very likely that you're going to be successful so when your lender read this reads this we want them to feel like wow yeah this actually I think has a very high degree of likelihood of being successful that's really the goal of a good business plan and so let's go ahead and start to get into things here now first thing I want to talk about just in the table of contents right here is I want to point out that this business plan is only 20 21 pages long okay so it's a misconception that people think your business plan has to be really long to be good and I actually would argue the other side of that in my time as a lender of someone handed me a business plan that was more than 50 pages there's no way every word of that got read it was probably skimmed and if you have important details scattered across 50 pages or more pages that means important details are going to get missed when the loan officer is reviewing your business plan if you need to write a business plan that long to just like get all your thoughts down on paper and make sure your game plan's all ready to go please do that as an exercise for you but what you actually provide to your lender should be our refined version of that we want to jam-pack 15 to 20 pages of Rock Solid important information another thing I'll point out here is that the financial projections are almost half of the business plan um now those are definitely the most important part of the business plan and we will talk about that more when we get there but yeah I just wanted to point that out to maybe that will give you some relief that we just want to include what's really important and not a lot of extra fluff okay now getting into things here now in the first two sections we won't talk about a key Point yet but then once we get to the first key point we'll go through all five of them pretty quickly so the first thing is the executive summary here so think about this like the cover letter to a resume for a job application we just want to hit the high points of things from the business plan a couple of specific things I'll point out will be in our objectives here if you're going to include objectives I would encourage you to make them specific and measurable so in this case in just as a disclaimer for this whole thing like I said this is a fictitious example and so it's a little bit generic and some of this it's meant to just be a guide for reference so you're going to want to write in more detail in your business plan rather than just like copy and pasting this and changing the name out this is meant to be more generic to give you a guide and so by the time you delete out the non-necessary parts like the helpful hints and all that stuff and then you write in your specific details your business plan is going to be about that same length is this one is just the components are going to be a little different so that being said I would make this more specific and more measurable so here you're saying we want to establish motor mendor as the goto destination for autom automotive services so rather than saying something like that let's say something like we want to become profitable or break even in 18 months or something measurable like that longterm says expand our services Beyond Indianapolis reaching other cities I would say it like we want to open up a second or third location in 5 years or 10 years so that makes it clear to the lender like what your hopeful game plan is for this and can ultimately mean additional finan for them later down the road which they might appreciate the only thing I'll point out that you could add this section of the business plan would be a paragraph about just like the financial overview so you could have like your startup costs how much financing you plan to request your estimated Break Even Point projected Revenue that kind of stuff could be a high Lev helpful thing to add okay your company description here just an extension of that first section we just talked about there one thing I'll point out is this unique selling proposition if you're going to include a unique selling proposition you actually want to make sure it is something that sets you apart that is a secret sauce for example you don't want to just be even this is probably a good example you don't want to just say we have great customer service because everybody says they have great customer service so that's not really something that sets you AP is there something you do really specifically that is hard to match or a service you provide that's really difficult or a speed that you promise that's great that kind of thing is what you want to do for an unique selling proposition okay now getting into the media things here this will be our first section with a key one of our five key points market analysis so the market analysis we really want to address the actual state of the market we're going to be operating in is there room in the market for us is what we're really trying to demonstrate here so first off in the overview of the industry I want you to avoid the temptation to do like the Shark Tank thing which is there's 300 million cars in America and we only need to service .1% of those to make 300 million don't do that kind of scope we're just talking about the 10 20 mile radius of your repair shop that's our addressable Market of where you'd like to be located now the competitor analysis I think that this is a really important thing to do so you should know every competitor within a 10 that 10 to 20 M radius of you and then I would list the top 3 to five in proximity to you and I would list who they are what they specialize in what they're really good at and then maybe what they're not great at or a weakness for example maybe you're in a you're looking at a small town and there's only one auto repair shop and they have terrible reviews because they just have terrible customer service that could be a great opportunity because you'd be the only other game in town and they've taken advantage of that and haven't had a great customer experience and you're going to come in and rectify that and so you should be able to get a lot of customers from that okay so that's a kind of the thing you want to talk about with your competitors when you're doing that and then yeah outline your target market like you're going to have a specialty so I'm talking about like an auto repair shop just that's broad statement do you are you going to be like a a body shop maybe you're going to focus on like breakes you could have a specialty or you're just general service or your tire shop Etc so if you have a specialty make sure you outline that because that's obviously going to change who your direct competitors are and who your target audience will be okay so this brings us to key Point number one so all of this that is included in here you want to have your version of that you want to make sure you fill that out in Greater detail than is listed here but what can make this section go from good to Great is demonstrating any sort of data or evidence we can provide to back up the claim that we're making there's room in the market is great that's going to be music to your lender's year because you're saving them some work and so I've got some examples here and specifically I like example one and example two two or example four excuse me so example one we we've already talked about research and analyze local competition in the auto repair industry identify their strengths weaknesses pricing customer reviews Etc so that's going to help outline the supply once we've identified the Target location the other repair shops around the competitors around you will have to determine like yeah it's really competitive there are seven auto repair shops in a 10 m radius and you would know best like how many people take to support one more repair shop and so that's going to help you determine what the supply is how competitive is you don't want to shy away from that that doesn't mean if it's really competitive that doesn't mean you need to not open a business that just means you need to be prepared to say yeah we know it's going to be competitive and this is what we're going to do to disrupt that market and then on the other side we need to also demonstrate demand and I'm going to show you a way to do that now okay so I'm going to pull up a free tool here this says Google ads you can create a free free Google ads account you don't have to run advertising they have this free Keyword Planner tool what this will allow us to do is we can simulate and we can see how often do people search for a specific thing in a specific location so I'm going to say Indianapolis Indian which is it's is a maybe to your surprise it's a fairly large city bigger than would probably be my audience but just for an example sake and I want to see how often are people searching things like Auto Repair near me car shop near me brake service near me B body shop near me and this is going to do some great things this is going to be one it's going to give me other related keywords so tire fix card detailing so you might be able to pick out yours more specifically or even see if you're trying to decide what kind of shop do I want to have this could give you some good ideas for that and then it's also going to show us how often are things being searched which is funny you can see the the the trend here on all of these the trend starts to go up as we get into winter is scny but the most important thing is the trend data here okay so I can see year over year if I find the search phrases related to me mechanic or me mechanic Auto Repair near me look at these growth rates 50% up 125% 125% 125% like the ones that matter are going up pretty dramatically so to me that is an indicator that more people are searching for services that I want to provide in the Target area where I want to open up my shop that is an indicator of demand growth in demand so again this is only saying this is only demonstrating one side of the equation we also need to talk about the supply just because this is growing there might be plenty of auto repair shops and we're still going to have to compete to find our spot but this is the other side of that equation I digress include that kind of research in your business plan because it proves you're thinking about it more methodically than just saying like yeah I think that there's room in the market for me we're going to open up and that's just fine okay so include that in here okay moving along marketing and sales strategy so here you're going to outline exactly the products and services you're going to offer and then exactly what you're going to charge for those products and services again this is a little bit generic here just listen to what I'm saying make sure you include what you're providing and what you're going to charge for the things you're providing talk a little bit about your sales strategy this doesn't need to be um you know rocket science we going to talk about um you're going to have a website you're going to do some loyalty programs you're going to remind people when it's time for an oil change and ask if they need help with things Etc all of the things you see in here again minimum requirement you should include your version of all of these sections in here with some effort and some detail now the key point so key Point number two is going to be demonstrating customer acquisition or traction so this can be a little tricky but it's similar to what we just did in the first key point and that is we can't just say we're going to build it and people are going to show up your lenders is not going to love to hear that but if you can demonstrate to your lender that you're doing everything you can so that when the day comes when you open the doors there's going to be customers there that's going to make them feel a lot better about investing or providing you a loan so there are two ways to demonstrate traction and those two things are one pre-launch revenue and two names of interested people on a list now one might sound a little bit complicated but I guess let me explain so let's say for example you are have always been really great at repairing cars and maybe that necessarily hasn't always been like your job maybe you've worked in mechanic shops maybe it's you've started to have the idea you would actually like to open your own Shop officially maybe you already have been or you could be start preparing stuff on the side whether that's friends and family friends of friends start getting appointments start doing that out of whatever space you can go to people's homes and do it do simple repairs maintenance oil changes Etc it doesn't have to be anything crazy but just start doing that right that's something you could include if you could say in your business plan in the last 18 months you've performed 112 maintenance things on your own formulate and building a regular customer base who said they would love to come use your car shop if they ever need additional Services that's great right that's better than nothing you could also do I really like this example three VIP launch Club this works for like any business and that is you could start collecting um a list of signups from interested customers who'd receive a discounted services for the first year and their name permanently on the wall as long as they come in and activate it by hir paying for services within the first few months of opening this I promise you maybe it sounds silly but as a lender if someone told me that they had 350 people on a list signed up that said they would be interested in coming in to have work done within the first two months am I going to think all of those 300 and some people are going to show up no absolutely not but if some percentage do that's better than nothing so those are examples of traction right there are things you can do that demonstrate hustle and grit that you are doing whatever it takes so that when day one official day one comes you're not at Ground Zero you've already put in the work to either have some customers have some income or you're very confident some people are going to show up and you're not going to just be waiting for people to maybe come or not okay so that's key Point number two I promise you include that type of information in your business plan it will help you okay operations and management here we're going to start to talk about just like the logistics of the shop itself you can see efficiency workflow service management how you're going to recruit people train people C how you're going to do customer support customer service that's all great you need to fill that out give some of that attention but the main takeaway that I want you to come out of this section is relevant demonstrating relevant industry experience we want to make sure the lender has no concerns whatsoever that you know what you're getting yourself into and you know know how to actually run this business and do this business so if you personally or individually have all of this is not relevant have all of the necessary experience so maybe you've managed an auto repair shop before or you've owned one before or you've worked in one for a long time whatever that may be if you possess all of the necessary skills make sure you list all of those necessary skills to to prove like yes me and me alone I do have what it takes and I know what I'm getting myself into I know that I can do this if you possess only maybe a portion of the skills okay so maybe everything there is to know about repairing a car but you've never owned a business before or managed people before or have done advertising before maybe you have a partner in the business or you have to hire a key employee and you find out who that employee is going to be and they're going to be there when you open your doors to help do some of those things that you don't know how to do so the basically basically what we want to try to accomplish is to demonstrate to the lenders that we have a well-rounded prepared experienced team to be successful when the business launches and we don't have any blind spots it's essentially what we're going to do so either you do that by yourself if you have all of the necessary skills or you supplement that with building a team around you or having a partner in the business or co-founder or something of that sort okay now the big one Financial projections okay so this is always the time where Founders start to get a little overwhelmed a little nervous about it just stick with me okay I'm promising going to give you some options here so first off we just have a breakdown of our startup costs our startup expenses so this would be a good section to talk about also how much financing we're going to going to need so here we're outlining that it's going to require $200,000 to get up and running and we've raised $240,000 okay so if we need $200,000 and we have 240 we might say requesting a loan of 150,000 and I'm putting 50,000 in of my own money or 40,000 in my own money okay that's a good place to just show how that money is going to be used and then here's a quick Financial overview for the first five years so you're going to outline some key financial points like Revenue cost goods sold profitability operating expenses as a percentage of income revenue and then we have like new customers regular customers how many employees we're going to need that kind of thing key ratio of these again these different high level Financial details then we've got a breakdown of our monthly recurring expenses for the first 5 years and then a 5-year projected financial statement of a profit and loss or an income statement cash flow projections balance sheet and then our break even analysis sales growth here okay so those charts and graphs were made using this template now I know Shameless plug don't roll your eyes don't run away just yet okay you have to have Financial projections for your business plan especially if you're going to be trying to get financing I promise you you have to have them there are three ways you can get projections one you can create them yourself from scratch it's going to be very difficult to do for them to be correct and reliable the first time you give projections to your lender you want them to be as good as possible because if they're not they will have a hard time trusting them when you give them additional variations after the fact two you could pay an accountant to create your projections for you definitely a viable option it's just going to be more costly it's going to cost to thousands of dollars $1,000 several thousand I know this because we create Financial projections for people from scratch and they cost a lot of money three you use a template typically developed by an accountant is the best to fill that out okay so that's what we have here this is our version of the template that R CPA OnStaff has created okay and let me just give you the quick rundown it's very easy to use you're only editing these blue tabs and the blue cells on the blue tabs so we're putting in things like are we going to have any investors here are the big things that need to be purchased are we planning to have any loans right and then this little green box is going to calculate yes you do have enough cash to do what you say you want to do this tab right here before you get overwhelmed by this again we're only editing the the blue sales I love this tab in our template because most projection templates will just ask you what is your projected monthly revenue and you might be like I don't know you're just going to pull a number out of thin air this template is actually going to help you calculate the revenue okay using the numbers that you need to know as the business owner okay so you're going to you're going to calculate how you're going to acquire your customers here some simple numbers and then you'll put in like the actual Services you're going to provide the costs of those services or the price of the services and the cost of those services and it's going to calculate do some calculations for you okay so you're barely putting any information there and then you're going to put in your typical and your expect expected monthly expenses and then if you're going to have any salary read employees they will go here and then the templates going to do the rest it's going to create all of the things that you need for your business plan that your lender needs to see as they're doing their underwriting okay so I've linked that template in the description down below if you want to get it it is less than $100 and if you stick around to the end of this video I'll give you a discount on that template as well it comes with free support our team is available to answer questions for you we also provide a complimentary review if you complete your projections and send them to us we'll give you a full review of them and say like here's thing you should let out for we we would change this totally for free we've got a free video guide here on how to fill it out so it'll show you how to fill out the whole thing okay so you have to have Financial projections but that's not key Point number four key Point number four is your financial projections need to be realistic okay so the best way to go about doing this is once you've completed your projections you need to Benchmark them against industry expectations an easy way to do this is take some of these key numbers or any number for that matter even when you're filling this out if you don't know number one of these just do this practice okay I want to look to see I want to make sure I'm not way out of my depth when it comes to net income okay so I want to I want to see what's typical you can either go to Google and just search for it right so I see here 10% profit margin 15% 25% okay you can also use a tool like chat GPT or Bard if you're comfortable with that net profit 10 to 20% okay so let's go back to my projections first year is always going to be a wash okay don't pay too much attention to for year you're just trying to survive and then 1% negative -2% 2% 10% okay so I'm on the conservative side which is good right like I could probably even be a little more aggressive with my projections because I know I'm on the the Lower Side of the industry average okay so that's an example of an easy step you can do with any number in your projections to make sure that it's within reason and your lender is going to see that's reasonable when you fill them out okay that brings us down to the fifth and final Point Key Point number five you're not not going to write in your business plan this is just a little bit of cautionary advice you need to be prepared to have the conversation about skin in the game with your lender what is skin in the game there's three different examples I'll give you but this is eventually this is essentially you sharing in the risk with your lender okay so example number one your lender is not going to give you a loan for 100% of the money that you need they're probably going to give you up to 80% maybe 90% of the funds that you need the other 10 to 20% you're going to need to come up with that as your personal investment your cash investment lender doesn't typically where care where you got that money from as long as it's behind them when it comes to getting paid back that's one two you're going to have to personally guarantee the loan when I was a lender people would come to me all the time and say okay before we get started I want to keep my personal and my business separate I don't want my name on the loan it's all for the business if only it it worked that way that would be great but that's just not realistic that is great advice when it comes to bookkeeping and bank accounts but you will have to personally guarantee the loan especially if it's an SBA loan key Point number three the bank is going to want to try to collateralize your loan if you find a lender that does not need collateral your interest rate is probably going to be really high okay so that's just a risk you have to be willing to to deal with so auto repair shops come with a decent amount of equipment especially if you're buying the building with the loan that will collateralize the loan if you're not if you're renting a space you're probably going to be short on collateral if that's the case you're going to have to be prepared for them to ask for a second lean or second mortgage on your house a lean on a Free and Clear Car additional co-signers on the loan to help secure it okay those are uncomfortable things and nobody wants to do those and I'm not telling you you have to go into the lender and say here take everything you want all I'm telling you to do is be prepared to know what you're willing to offer when it comes to those conversations it will be a relief to your loan officer and it will speed things up that when it comes time to have those conversations you've already prepared for what you know your answer is to those and if you are open to doing some of that have your co-signer prepared say like I need one can I call this person can I ask my parents or my siblings or whatever um and or your assets so that kind of thing so just going to say that you don't have to put that in your business plan just be prepared to have that conversation have that good perspective when it comes in there so that you're not surprised when it comes up okay that being said let me grab that promo code if you're interested in getting the projection template um again we have a full video guide that shows you how to fill it out but ph20 BP will get you a 20% discount on the template get this free business plan template down in the description below go ahead and grab the projection template if you need it as well reach out if you have any questions at all support projection hub.com or comment on this video below we would be happy to help you that way too if you like the video give it a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel and uh we will see you in the next one [Music] [Applause] thanks