Business Plans Made Easy: Building a Business Building Business Plans
I guess if we're getting real, I can tell you exactly why I started my business.
I had climbed the corporate ladder in my career in sales and had gotten engaged to my partner at the time. I was really proud of the work that I did with his companies, but we ended up splitting up. Because of that, I ended up starting a consulting company where I help small businesses improve their financial performance.
Early on, I had been networking in a BNI group, and our business banker in the group had asked me if I knew how to write a business plan. At the time I did not, but I figured it out very quickly. Her SBA officer actually loved it, came up, took me out to lunch. She said, "There's a gap in the industry. We need you to do this. If you could keep doing it, that would be great." That lender, they're both still in my life today, kind of like fairy godmothers that helped me along the way. We've been in business 10 years, we've been producing business plans in that time. We grew from just me to, I think I just hired our 41st employee today.
