We give support and guidance to people who want to set up run and grow their own business. This starts with providing business ideas and goes all the way through to business planning and supporting your business to grow.

This involves some or all of the following:

• Business Ideas and opportunities
• Business Plan development
• Business Plan reviews
• Advice for growing businesses

Please note: we are not able to help you raise capital. This is a regulated activity and only licensed practitioners can make appropriate recommendations.

No. No one can make such a guarantee (and if anybody ever offers you that guarantee, you should absolutely not trust them with your money). A good business plan is essential, but a business plan by itself will not get funded. Although we will do our best to help you prepare, we have no control over how well you present yourself to investors, or how well you can answer their questions.

If you run a business, or are in the process of starting a business, then YES you do need a business Plan.

You may even need more than one business plan: a first one for raising capital and a second one for running your business. The first is a strategic document designed to convince potential investors to invite you for an initial meeting. It must be attractive enough to investors to persuade them to meet with you. This is the type of plan in which we specialise.

The second one is more detailed and serves as a day-to-day roadmap. It holds the tactics supporting your business strategy. So it can be much less formal, and even be simply a collection of: spreadsheets; financial projections; and research summaries filed in a ring-binder for your easy reference.

Unless you have a lot of experience of business plan writing you could easily spend 500 hours or more preparing a business plan.

This is time you can you can use more effectively on building your team, refining your product, distribution channels, and customer base. Beyond our expertise in preparing business plans, we offer an independent, third-party view into your business. We may ask questions or have ideas that you might not have considered.

Although every business is unique, there are some common steps including:

Business Plans

• Initial telephone discussion to learn your basic needs, and to agree the scope and fees for the project.
• Once you and we agree to prepare a business plan for your business, we ask you to provide a deposit to enable us to commit resources to the job.
• We will then send you a detailed questionnaire to complete.
• We may need further discussions to clarify the details, and agree all major elements of the business plan, and especially the financial model.
• Carry out additional research, as necessary.
• Prepare a draft the business plan for you to review.
• Draft the Executive Summary and review it with you so that you are completely familiar with it.

You will need to commit between 10-30 hours on the process over the course of a typical project.

Business Plan Reviews

• Telephone discussion to learn your basic needs, and to agree the fees for the project.
• We ask you to provide the full fee to enable us to commit resources to the job.
• Initial telephone discussion to learn your basic needs, and to agree the scope and fees for the project
• A review of your existing materials, such as: draft business plans, financial analysis, and market research.).
• Report to you on our findings and recommendations of improvements you can make to your plan.

Yes, but we may need to charge an “urgency” fee. We normally work on a number of projects at a time, and urgent projects can strain our schedules or inconvenience other clients.

If you urgently need a business plan. please email us as soon as possible, we will do our best to make sure your plan is ready in time.

We will be available, at no extra charge, to answer any follow-up questions, provide you with advice, and to make minor changes to the documents we have produced for you for a period of 7 days.

That is why we always stress the importance of reading through and making certain you understand and agree all of the content of your business plan as soon as you receive it from us.

For start-up and early-years growth businesses we charge a pre-agreed fixed fee (please see our Business Plan page for more information). If your business needs a more complex business plan, we will provide you with a quote based on the information that you provide to us. If the scope of the project becomes greater, then we will provide you with a revised quote for our costs.

The fee we charge depends on the following factors:

• The number of tasks and documents you need help with.
• The needs of your target audience.
• The quality of any existing materials you may already have, including: draft business plans, financial forecasts, market research, competition research, and so on.
• The complexity of your industry.
• How clearly you are able to explain your business, and your marketing and distribution strategy, financial plans, and so on.
• Your availability to contribute to the preparation of your business plan.
• The availability of research information relating to your business.
• The timescale we have to prepare your business plan.

Your initial deposit is non-refundable. This is because when we agree to work with you we have to set aside sufficient time, and we may have to turn away other business plan requests.

Subsequent payments are subject to a pro-rata refund based on the amount of work we have completed if you choose to terminate the project before we have fully completed the plan.

We are happy to sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement so that your and our confidential information and  trade secrets are protected. We have a suitable agreement we will prepare for use.

Sorry, we are not able to supply examples of our business plans as every plan is prepared for an individual client and is, therefore, confidential.

You will also need to put together all of the documents that investors normally review, such as: (where relevant) partnership agreements, certificate of incorporation, employment contracts, employee stock option plan, customer and supplier agreements, patent applications, and so on.