)

With that as background, let me share a handful of thoughts.

Not All Business Plans Are Equal

So here’s a first thought. People often mean differ

I stumbled onto an online donnybrook at one of those entrepreneurs’ online discussion boards yesterday. And I just had to smile. People were going just nuts about whether a business plan is needed, what a business plan even is, who should write the plan, and other assorted topics.

But before I repeat the comments I shared, let me just say that as a CPA with many business clients in the Seattle area I've done a bunch of business planning, have covered the subjects in books I've written like the super-sized version of QuickBooks for Dummies, and also covered the subject rather extensively in my book MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel (which was used at several big business schools.)

With that as background, let me share a handful of thoughts.

Not All Business Plans Are Equal

So here’s a first thought. People often mean differe

business plan is needed, what a business plan even is, who should write the plan, and other assorted topics.

But before I repeat the comments I shared, let me just say that as a CPA with many business clients in the Seattle area I've done a bunch of business planning, have covered the subjects in books I've written like the super-sized version of QuickBooks for Dummies, and also covered the subject rather extensively in my book MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel (which was used at several big business schools.)

With that as background, let me share a handful of thoughts.

Not All Business Plans Are Equal

So here’s a first thought. People often mean differ

y that as a CPA with many business clients in the Seattle area I've done a bunch of business planning, have covered the subjects in books I've written like the super-sized version of QuickBooks for Dummies, and also covered the subject rather extensively in my book MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel (which was used at several big business schools.)

With that as background, let me share a handful of thoughts.

Not All Business Plans Are Equal

So here’s a first thought. People often mean differ

version of QuickBooks for Dummies, and also covered the subject rather extensively in my book MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel (which was used at several big business schools.)

With that as background, let me share a handful of thoughts.

Not All Business Plans Are Equal

So here’s a first thought. People often mean differ

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With that as background, let me share a handful of thoughts.

Not All Business Plans Are Equal

So here’s a first thought. People often mean different things when they use the phrase “business plan.” Sometimes they just mean a strategy (which could just as well be described in a sentence). Sometimes they mean a 20-25pp document that "sells" a business to new investors or lenders.

And sometimes they mean a long document--a sort of white paper--that describes in massive detail a new venture opportunity, an approach to exploiting that opportunity, and then detailed workplans for getting from “here” to “there”.

And that’s the first thing I told the people squabbling online. People use the phrase to mean different things—and that’s confusing. And part of the fight I witnessed stemmed from this miscommunication.

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