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Business Plan Examples for Students

Ajay Jagtap

• December 29, 2023

26 Min Read

Do you know what’s the most common mistake students and rookie entrepreneurs make while preparing their first business plan?

Of course, it’s the first business plan we’re talking about; there’ll definitely be a few. However, overcomplicating things and failing to consider a business plan example still remains the most common one.

That’s why we decided to come up with a solution. We’ve curated this list of top business plan examples for students to help you get going.

So whether you need a business plan for a college project, start a side hustle, or win a business competition, these examples are just what you need to create business plans that stand out.

Ready to dive in? Let’s start by understanding the key elements of a business plan example:

Key Elements of a Business Plan Example

Business planning is not as complicated of a process as people think it is; they’re just overcomplicating things. (Don’t think so?)

Let’s simplify the key elements that make up a comprehensive business plan; you’ll understand it better that way.

Executive Summary:

Company overview:, market analysis:, products and services:, sales and marketing strategies:, operations plan:, management team:, financial plan:.

That’s pretty much it about the key elements of a business plan example. Next, let’s explore the best business plan examples for students.

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Top Business Plan Examples for Students

Now that you already know about the components of a business plan template, let’s review some of the best business plan examples for students.

1. Startup Business Plan Example

Upmetrics’ startup business plan example is the ideal solution for students planning to start up or participate in a business plan competition. This business plan template follows the SBA-approved business planning format used by thousands of successful entrepreneurs.

Whether your startup is about a new-age AI-based application, an online shopping site, or traditional IT consulting—this sample business plan is just what you need.

Unlike any traditional small business plan, this example of a startup business plan is lean and agile in approach, focuses on innovation, and emphasizes market validation.

2. Lean Business Plan Example

Since you’re transitioning from a student to an entrepreneur, you may not have enough time to spend on creating a detailed business plan. That’s where this lean business plan template can help.

It’s a condensed version of a traditional plan summarizing all its sections with a primary focus on covering only the critical aspects of the business.

This template is best for startups or businesses uncertain about business planning and student-turned-entrepreneurs with limited time and resources to prepare a business plan.

3. SBA Business Plan Example

Following an SBA-recommended business plan format is key to securing bank loans and business grants. Since it can be time-consuming to find a template that follows a similar outline as the SBA, this SBA-approved business plan example is the way to get started.

This SBA business plan template has nine primary sections, that include executive summary, company description, market analysis, organization, product description, marketing, funding request, and financial projections.

SBA business plan examples ensure you stay on track and don’t deviate from your funding needs.

4. One-Page Business Plan Example

As you may have already guessed, a one-page business plan is a one-page version of a traditional business plan. Since it’s a condensed version of a business plan, drafting it can be quite easy and quick compared to a lean or traditional plan.

Employees, partners, and vendors often use one-page business plans as a quick overview of your company and banks and investors as a summary of your operations.

While it may not be the ideal choice for entrepreneurs seeking investment or bank loans, students with side hustles and idea-stage startups can consider this option.

5. HBS Sample Business Plan

Harvard Business School’s new venture competition selected this sample business plan as a finalist in 2011.

This is a business plan of App Success, a collaborative web-based platform that connects low-income high school seniors with college students from top universities; this business will enable them to collaborate on college selection, college applications, and financial aid applications.

This example can be a great reference for those planning to start a mobile or web-based solution.

6. Kean University Sample Business Plan

Kean University organizes a business plan competition every year for its students where students prepare and present business plans to compete, and this is one of the sample business plans the University provides to participants to understand the format.

It’s a business plan of Blue Water Boatworks, Inc., a boat detailing and cleaning company specializing in servicing recreational fiberglass and aluminum watercraft.

This example can be a great reference for those planning to start a business related to housekeeping, cleaning, or maintenance.

7. UVM Sample Business Plan

If you are looking for a strategic business plan for a food business, the University of Vermont’s Fancy Foods Business Plan can be a guiding resource for you.

Despite the fact that it can be a good reference for detailed planning, it was written in 1998, so any statistics and numbers may not seem relevant to today’s market landscape. Make sure you keep that in mind.

You may closely follow this example as a reference if planning to start a food truck, restaurant, or any other business that serves food.

That was the list of best sample business plans for students. However, there’s more to talk about. You now have a business plan example, but what about pitching to investors? Let’s explore free pitch deck examples for students.

Free Pitch Deck Example for Students

Pitching to investors as a first-time founder can be exciting but also overwhelming at times. Worry not; we’ve got a solution—investor pitch templates. We’ve prepared a set of 8 investor pitch templates and examples for students and entrepreneurs to help create winning business pitches.

Whether you need a pitch to find an opportunity, ask for subject matter knowledge, or a problem-solving pitch, these investor pitch examples have got you covered. Download now.

How to write a winning plan for a business plan competition?

Creating a business plan is no different than creating one for a real business. Similar to how entrepreneurs prepare and present business plans to investors, Students in business plan competitions pitch to judges.

In short, the business planning process remains exactly the same. Let’s discuss how you can write a winning plan to help you win a business plan competition.

• Select a compelling business idea : everything starts with a compelling idea. Make sure you have a viable business idea to compete in the competition.
• Refer to winning business plan examples : Once you are sure about your business concept, refer to business plan examples from previous winners and how they planned the sections of their plan.
• Market Research & Industry Analysis : After referring to business plan examples, conduct industry research and market analysis to make your statistical and financial numbers accurate and realistic.
• Understand business model and revenue streams : Since you are preparing a business plan for a company that doesn’t exist, be sure about the business model and how the business will generate profit.
• Use AI business plan generator : Using an AI business plan generator like Upmetrics can be incredibly helpful in speeding up the business planning process. With industry-specific business plan templates and AI assistance to write your plan, you can write the first draft of your plan in literally no time.
• Presentation and visuals : Prepare visuals and graphs to make your business plan visually appealing and numbers digestible. You may not need to prepare these visuals if you use business plan software manually.
• Proofread and edit : Grammatical errors are the last thing judges want to see in a business plan. Make sure you proofread and edit your draft thoroughly before submitting it.

Easy as that, that’s the way to write a perfect business plan that can lead you to victory in any business plan competition on planet Earth. Let’s have a look at a real-life business and financial plan example.

Business and Financial Plan Example for Students

Having learned about business planning for students, let’s quickly discuss a coffee shop sample business plan and financial statements prepared using Upmetrics.

1. Executive Summary

The Cooper’s Cup will be a new cafe in Phoenix, Arizona. The 1,500 square foot café will be located in the newly constructed Market Square Plaza on the northeast corner of 135th Street and Mission Street. The anchor tenant, the Price Chopper grocery store, has already taken occupancy, and the excellent location brings more than 10,000 shoppers weekly.

The Cooper’s Cup, aptly named for the aromatic brown liquid that will fill the cup, fills the void of original cafes in the market and stands out from its corporate peers with its fast food concepts and prompt services. The Cooper’s Cup is the alternative to fast food/commercial/coffee shops and offers a much calmer, civilized gourmet coffee experience.

There are no televisions in the cafe, the background music is subtle, and work from local artists will hang on the walls. The restaurant is well-appointed, with overstuffed leather chairs and sofas in a library-like setting. The cafe is reminiscent of times gone by – yet is cutting edge technologically with WIFI and state-of-the-art espresso machines.

The Cooper’s Cup measures its financial success in terms of increased market share and earnings. This is a tremendous opportunity with a total local market of $54 million! The keys to success will be offering quality gourmet coffees, taking advantage of its small size, and relying on an outstanding barista staff.

To achieve these goals, the cafe will present some of the area’s finest gourmet beans from local distributors. Because of its small size, the restaurant can enjoy larger margins through lower overhead. The cafe will hand-select baristas and offer salaries comparable to the chains. The baristas will be trained to cross-sell and sell higher-margin products.

The primary objectives of the business plan for Cooper’s Cup are below:

• To increase revenues by $36,000 or 5% in Year 2 and $73,000 or 10% by Year 3
• Achieve a profit margin of 5.2% in Year 2 and 6.90% by Year 3
• Be the Cafe of Choice in the Phoenix area and the recipient of the Best Coffeehouse Award.

Guiding Principles

The Cooper’s Cup is committed to values such as excellence, passion, quality, integrity, and leadership, allowing them to navigate challenges and provide for future opportunities. These core beliefs start with their commitment to their products and their employees. Cooper’s Cup rewards excellence and cherishes loyalty. The cafe will work with its employees to build strong businesses and a secure future.

Mission statement

The Cooper’s Cup is committed to its products and employees, which they believe is the recipe for market success.

Key to success

The Cooper’s Cup stands out from the competition. Below are their Keys to Success:

• Great Products : providing exemplary products at market prices – will make customers want to return again and again.
• Hire Quality Baristas : Pay employees rates similar to the larger chains with opportunities for long-term careers and opportunities for advancement with long-term plans to open a second facility.
• Convert Customers to Connoisseurs : Only 40% of the nation’s coffee drinkers consume premium ground and whole bean coffee – this will aid in the continued growth.

Financial Summary

2. Business Overview

The Cooper’s Cup will be a coffee house/cafe located in Phoenix, Arizona. The cozy cafe will be located in the newly completed Market Square Plaza in the Arizona City area. The cafe will serve gourmet coffee, espresso, drip coffee, lattes, and smoothies. The simple pastry offerings may vary with seasonality, but the primary line will be muffins, bread, cookies, scones, and rolls. All pastries will be supplied daily by a local bakery.

The cafe will be owned and operated by Owen Jones, a veteran restaurateur with several years of experience running and managing chain restaurants. The cafe will be open for business Monday – Thursday 7-10, Fridays and Saturdays, 7-11, and closed Sundays.

The Cooper’s Cup will be formed as an S-Corporation owned by Mr. Doe.

Start-Up Summary

The Cooper’s Cup will have seating for 40 patrons. The rent is $2,075 a month, with a three-five-year lease available. The site comprises 1500 square feet of leased space consisting of a dining room, a coffee bar, two restrooms, and a storage room in the back.

This storefront needs to be plumbed and wired appropriately to be used as a restaurant. Painting, new floors, and countertops are also needed. A custom coffee bar needs to be built. With materials bought on sale and volunteer labor, the cost to renovate will be $71,725.

The coffeehouse equipment will consist of two commercial espresso machines, air pots and urns, a commercial blender, a commercial brewer, top-loading coffee bins, barista syrups, cold drink dispenser, frothing equipment, a commercial refrigerator, microwave, and stainless steel prep bar.

The cost of the equipment is $38,275. The furniture will consist of leather couches and chairs (purchased at auction), coffee tables, bookcases, and window treatments. The artwork will come from local artists and be sold on a consignment basis. The books were secured via donations. The total cost to furnish is $14,000. Other startup expenses will be dishes, furniture, rent deposit, and marketing.

Location and Facilities

The new coffeehouse is located in the highly desirable Phoenix, Arizona, area at the northeastern intersection of 135th Street and Mission Street in the Newmarket Square Plaza. The property is situated in an excellent location, with an easy 6-minute drive time to I-435 and 69 Highway. 

The property is 95% leased with Price Chopper as the Anchor Tenant. Other tenants include LifeSpring Med Spa, Jane’s Canines (Pet Store & Boarding), Pride Cleaners Kahn Dental, and Swim U. 

Price Chopper brings more than 10,000 shoppers per week to the center. The location comprises a population of 9,420 within a one-mile radius, 61,102 within a 2-mile radius, and 149,550 within a 5-mile radius – with a median household income of $120,856. Sprint / Nextel’s corporate office is within 2 miles of the site.

3. Market Analysis

Phoenix, Arizona, is an award-winning place to live and work and is considered the leading business community in the Midwest. National publications and organizations recognize Phoenix for its business environment and livability. Here’s a sampling: 6th Place, America’s Best Places to Live Money, Top 50 Cities to Live and Play, National Geographic Adventure, 3rd Hottest Town in the U.S., Money, Among 20 Best Places to Live & Work Employment Review, One of only 72 Sterling Tree Cities in the U.S., National Arbor Day Foundation, Top 10 best Locations to Raise a Family, Southern Business and Development, 1st Place, Kid Friendly Report Card, Population Connection, 2nd Best City in America to Live Business Development Outlook.

Phoenix is at the core of one of the most dynamic local markets in the U.S. It offers easy access to the Arizona City region’s amenities, and, as part of the Arizona City metropolitan area, it is within the most centrally located major market in the nation. I-35, I-435, I-635, and U.S. Highway 69 all pass through Phoenix, and no point in the city is more than 3.5 miles from a freeway. The city maintains an excellent arterial street network and plans to construct additional lane-miles as the area grows. Three airports serve the region. Arizona City International Airport (MCI) is just 25 interstate highway miles north of Phoenix. Johnson County Executive Airport—the second busiest in Arizona—provides complete services for private business jets and general aviation. New Century AirCenter, just 12 miles southwest of the city, offers available aviation services and accommodates cargo or passenger jets of any size.

Phoenix supplies some of the most highly educated workers in the nation, with 97% of Phoenix adults over age 25 holding at least a high school diploma. Johnson County, where Phoenix is located, ranks first among the country’s 231 counties with populations greater than 250,000. The county ranks sixth in the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree and 16th with a graduate or professional degree.

The Phoenix area has a population of 175,265, based on the 2010 census. The median household income is $77,881, and the median age is 37.9. (2010 U.S. Census)

Industry Analysis

The U.S. coffee shop industry includes about 20,000 stores with a combined annual revenue of about $10 billion. Major companies include Caribou Coffee, International Coffee & Tea (The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf), Peet’s Coffee, and Starbucks. The industry is concentrated: the top 50 companies generate more than 70 percent of sales. Coffee shops are part of the specialty eatery industry, including retail outlets specializing in bagels, donuts, frozen yogurt, and ice cream products. (First Research)

Competitive Landscape

Consumer taste and personal income drive demand. The profitability of individual companies depends on the ability to secure prime locations, drive store traffic, and deliver high-quality products. Large companies have advantages in purchasing, finance, and marketing. Small companies can compete effectively by offering specialized products, serving a local market, or providing superior customer service. Specialty eateries, which include coffee shops, are labor-intensive: average annual revenue per worker is about $50,000. Coffee shops compete with convenience stores, gas stations, quick service, fast food restaurants, gourmet food shops, and donut shops. (First Research)

Market Size

The U.S. coffee shop industry includes about 20,000 stores with a combined annual revenue of about $10 billion. Major companies include Caribou Coffee, International Coffee & Tea (The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf), Pet’s Coffee, and Starbucks. The industry is concentrated: the top 50 companies generate more than 70 percent of sales. (First Research)

Target Market and Segment Strategy

Most adult coffee drinkers said their lifelong habits began during their teenage years. 54% said they began drinking coffee between 13 and 19. Another 22% reported their coffee cravings started between 20 and 24. This means that 76% of adult coffee drinkers began drinking coffee by the time they were 24. So, despite a large amount of marketing and advertising directed at the younger age groups, savvy coffee shop owners will remember to cater some of their offerings to the adult and senior market. (National Coffee Drinking Study).

The Cooper’s Cup will offer a unique experience for coffee enthusiasts by providing a quiet, cozy, yet sophisticated cafe and a sense of refinement and peace in an otherwise hectic and fast-paced world. While other coffee shops cater to convenience with drive-throughs or loud music venues late into the night, the Cooper’s Cup will stand apart from its competitors with its quiet yet soothing ambiance, capturing a truly unique (and much-needed) market niche.

• Unique products (specialized roasts, local ingredients, locally-themed or named drinks, custom drinks by the star barista, etc.)
• Games, puzzles, mind benders, and other activities that encourage customers to linger over their coffee
• Hosting or sponsoring local events (entertainment, readings, book clubs, etc.)
• Using technology to creatively compete in marketing with big chains — services like FourSquare, Yelp, and Google Places can increase visibility in the local market.
• Delivering amazing service from knowledgeable baristas — spend lots of time training staff and utilizing online services like the American Coffee & Barista School.
• Selling coffee-related items (and tracking down any co-marketing opportunities with a local community college or another student-related group in the area)

4. Products and Services

Product/services descriptions.

The Cooper’s Cup’s primary offering is gourmet roasted coffees with mocha, carmelicious, white mocha, candy bar latte, and brewed coffee. Complementing the coffee will be a smoothie line including wild berry, strawberry, peach, mango, and lemonade. Rounding out the simple menu line will be pastries obtained from an outside supplier, freshly made and delivered daily. The pastry offerings may vary with seasonality, but the primary line will be muffins, bread, cookies, scones, and rolls.

Product/Service Sourcing

The Cooper’s Cup has negotiated supplier agreements with several local food-service wholesalers and coffee wholesalers in the Phoenix area that have a reputation for quality and reliability:

• Mean Beans Coffee Roasters
• Phoenix Brewers
• Healthy Harvest Bread Co.
• Mary’s Organics

If one of the abovementioned specialty suppliers cannot meet their needs, the following national suppliers can provide all the food-service products they require. In addition, the following wholesalers will supply the cafe with general restaurant supplies:

• Lawrence Food Products Corp.
• Gerry Food Supply Inc.

Future Products/Services

Young families, which comprise Phoenix’s third largest market share, are often overlooked in the coffee market. Coffeehouses traditionally have not been considered ‘kid’ friendly. To overcome this hurdle, Cooper’s Cup has long-term plans (5 years) to open a 2nd coffee shop: A combination indoor play area/coffee bar. This concept allows parents and caregivers to meet and relax with other adults while the children can enjoy the indoor playground amenities.

Additional future services will include in-store sales for home purchases and an online store.

The website will have the option to purchase a prepaid gift card program – Prepaid gift cards provide immediate cash, reduce credit card transaction charges, and draw new customers to the business.

5. Sales and Marketing Strategies

Swot analysis.

Unique Selling Proposition

The Cooper’s Cup stands out from a crowded sea of coffee chains and franchises. What sets it apart from the competition is primarily its smaller, cozier size combined with premium coffees served by knowledgeable baristas, providing so much energy and enthusiasm for its products.

Market Strategy and Positioning

The Cooper’s Cup utilizes a focus strategy on its Market. By specifically targeting three primary segments, they can cater specifically to their needs.

Senior Market (age 45+)

The Cooper’s Cup will target this Market simply by its well-selected location. Although this demographic group could readily drive downtown, they prefer a local cafe to unwind and relax and historically become some of the most loyal patrons.

Newly Hired Employees

The cafe will attract regular customers (weekly or more) – particularly the newly employed (first job) by providing free WIFI services and providing interesting games in the customer area.

Young Families

The third targeted Market, younger families, often find that coffeehouse is not ‘kid’ friendly. The company has long-term plans to create a combination coffee shop/play area so that parents and caregivers can meet with other adults while the children can enjoy the bounce houses, slides, and indoor playground equipment.

Pricing Strategy

The Cooper’s Cup primarily utilizes competition-based pricing. The cafe does not utilize coupons and discounts (other than opening promotions) because they believe that the most valuable customer demographic of daily coffee consumers is not influenced by discount programs or coupons.

Promotion and Advertising Strategy

• Online Advertising – The Cooper’s Cup will advertise regularly on popular social media sites like Facebook. Compared to traditional print advertising, this is a cost-effective tactic that will allow them to reach prospects in a highly targeted way (e.g., based on criteria such as age, gender, geography, etc.).
• Website – Cooper’s Cup will develop a simple Web site, which will provide basic information about the business, the menu, and links to their presence on the aforementioned social media channels.
• Radio Advertising – During the first six months of operation and the busy holiday shopping season, the business will advertise on local radio stations.

Sales Strategy

The Cooper’s Cup will use the following methods to increase sales revenue (as recommended by Andrew Hetzel on Better Coffee, Better Business):

• The menu will focus on the most profitable products sold. The cafe will always draw customer attention to the best products.
• As warranted, the cafe will raise prices to bolster its brand image. Prices communicate the perceived value of a product, so if set too low, the customers might assume that the beverages are inferior compared to the competition.
• Monitor flavoring inventory – Excess flavoring inventory ties up capital and valuable backroom space for storage. The cafe will utilize 4-6 varieties, including sugar-free offerings.
• Control waste and theft – audit sales and inventory reports to evaluate ingredient waste due to inefficient preparation, returned drinks, and employee consumption. Retail locations can easily waste 20% or more of their daily sales in these three key categories, which is a substantial and unnecessary loss.
• Monitor and evaluate hours of operation.
• Run employee sales contests – The baristas are the salespeople and have great influence over the customer ordering process. All baristas will have some form of sales and customer service training to make each transaction active rather than passive. Sales contests will emphasize high-margin items or cross-selling.

6. Operations Plan

Staffing and training.

An ongoing training and education program will ensure that each staff member learns and implements Cooper’s Cup’s exacting service and operational procedures standards. Staff meetings will reinforce service standards and principles. The Cafe will have detailed work descriptions and training programs for each position, from entry-level employees to the ongoing development of managers and owners. New employees will undergo an extensive training program. This ensures that each guest receives a quality experience from all employees, regardless of how long they have been employed. The Cafe embraces the concept of promoting from within. Excellence in one function typically leads to excellence in another. Regular staff evaluations and training will ensure motivation and address critical issues.

Inventory controls

The founder will be responsible for hiring and training managers who, in turn, will ensure that the day-to-day operations will comply with the standards set by Restaurant policy. Weekly management meetings will provide a forum to review and discuss financial and operational performance. Critical decisions related to purchasing, human resources, marketing, capital expenditures, and customer service will also be addressed.

Purchasing cost controls

Food preparation personnel will follow standardized recipes developed by the founders to control food costs and ensure consistency. The coffee shop will offer an innovative menu with nutritious food and beverages while achieving the most significant margin yield.

Customer Service

The hospitality business recognizes the client’s support experience is the critical driver to replicate business. The direction will Offer a superior degree of Professionalism by hiring individuals who deliver the ideal attitude to work and teaching them the skills required to accommodate guests. The restaurant will keep high levels of consumer satisfaction with talented, educated, and well-trained workers who understand and implement the fundamentals of fantastic service. Ongoing training will be provided to enable staff to perform their jobs with confidence and ability. Employees are well-spoken, well-versed, and trained to provide friendly, prompt, and professional service to each customer. This practice teaches employees who, by producing an exceptional customer experience, can optimize sales and raise their reimbursement. The team will have the knowledge and service required to create excellent daily service for every customer.

Technology & Software

While the quality of the cuisine and dining experience contributes significantly to a restaurant’s profitability, attention to business and financial details can transform small changes into significant returns. Critical sales, cost of sales, labor, inventory, marketing, and overhead metrics are monitored daily. Trends are evaluated, and constructive actions will be taken where improvement is needed. The management team will have access to the restaurant’s transactions and reports available in its real-time POS (point of sale) and accounting systems. Trends will be evaluated, and corrective action will be implemented as required.

7. Organization Structure

The Cooper’s Cup is formed as an S-Corporation wholly owned by John Doe.

Management Team

The Cooper’s Cup will be owned 100% by John Doe. Mr. Doe, a graduate of Arizona State University, has an undergraduate degree in business administration. During high school, he worked as a waiter in a local hospital coffee shop that purchased its beans from a local roaster. In addition to being an avid coffee drinker, this job allowed him to learn about the business first-hand. In college, Doe worked in a campus coffeehouse for four years, eventually becoming an assistant manager. Following graduation, Doe secured a business development position for a regional restaurant chain, which provided additional first-hand exposure to the food and beverage industry—especially the steps involved in establishing new locations.

Management Team Gaps

The Cooper’s Cup will rely on its POS (Point of Sale) system to generate daily accounting and cost activity reports. Mr. Doe will supply these to an outside bookkeeper for the preparation of annual income taxes.

Personnel Plan

Initially, the cafe will hire 1 manager, 5 baristas, and 2 part-time servers. In Year 2, the cafe plans to hire 1 additional full-time barista.

8. Financial Plan

Important assumptions.

• The sales forecast is conservative and assumes a 5% increase in Year 2 and a 10% in Year 3.
• The analysis accounts for economic seasonality – wherein some month’s revenues peak (such as holidays ) and wane in slower months.
• The analysis assumes the owner will not withdraw any salary till the 3rd year; at any time it is assumed that the owner’s withdrawal is available at his discretion.
• Sales are cash basis – nonaccrual accounting
• Moderate ramp-up in staff over the 5 years forecast
• Barista’s salary in the forecast is $36,000 in 2023.
• In general, most cafes have an 85% gross profit margin
• In general, most cafes have a 3% net profit margin

Projected Balance Sheet

Projected Cash-Flow Statement

Projected Profit & Loss Statement

Break Even Analysis

Write Your Business Plan With Upmetrics

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do you write a business plan for a college project.

As mentioned earlier in the article, business planning for a college project or competition is no different than for a real business. You can write your business plan using these step-by-step instructions.

• Select a compelling business idea
• Refer to business plan examples
• Prepare a business plan outline
• Create a company description section
• Conduct market research and industry analysis
• Describe your product and services
• Outline sales and marketing strategies
• Create an operations plan
• Introduce management team
• Prepare financial projections
• Summarize your plan with an executive summary

What is a business plan for students?

A business plan is a necessary business document that highlights its purpose,  business goals, product/service offerings, go-to marketing strategies, operations and financial plan, key people involved in the business operations, and other necessary details.

As a student, consider a business plan example as a document that helps you better understand business and industry dynamics and learn how a business operates inside out.

What is a business plan competition for students?

Business plan competitions are competitions mostly organized by universities for students passionate about entrepreneurship and the business world. These competitions offer students a platform to showcase their entrepreneurial skills while also providing opportunities for mentorship and networking.

How can I increase my chances of winning a business plan competition?

There cannot be a straightforward answer to this question, but there’s surely a method that can increase your chances of winning a competition—Using AI-powered business plan software.

Why? An AI tool will make you 10X more productive while writing a business plan and preparing financial forecasts. So you can spend more time researching the market and brainstorming business ideas.

Where can I find more business plan examples for students?

Upmetrics’ library of 400+ business plan examples could be an incredible source for students to find more industry-specific business plan examples. There are examples for almost every small business category, including real estate, retail, entertainment and media, food & beverages, and more.

About the Author

Ajay is a SaaS writer and personal finance blogger who has been active in the space for over three years, writing about startups, business planning, budgeting, credit cards, and other topics related to personal finance. If not writing, he’s probably having a power nap. Read more

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Works seamlessly with your classroom setup

With LivePlan you can simplify syllabus creation. LivePlan can also be used alongside classroom tools such as Blackboard and Canvas. LivePlan's optional instructional resources can enhance your syllabus with materials that introduce lean planning principles, growth metrics, financial forecasting, and more.

Instructors looking for a great tool to help students develop business plans need to look at Live Plan. The step–by–step process walks students through the entire process from Pitch to Financials. As the Instructor you can also have online access to their plan and provide feedback and comments as the plan develops.

Mike Allen Business Instructor, North Idaho College, Coeur d'Alene, ID

Bring out the best in every student

LivePlan's business plan examples help students turn ideas into top–notch business plans for class projects and startups. The tools, features, and instructional content allow you to focus on bringing out the best in your students for every plan and project.

Before using LivePlan, my students were intimidated by the business planning process. LivePlan breaks it down into manageable steps and takes the mystery out of developing a business plan.

Amy Schulz NACCE Vice President of Education, Membership and Associate Faculty, Feather River College, Quincy, CA

I used LivePlan to develop a business plan for a class project. Turns out, the project became part of a business plan competition where I placed second out of over 200 entries.

Sheila Austin Student

LivePlan provides your students with the tools to

Know the competition

No business operates in a vacuum. LivePlan incorporates real–world industry data, so students can better understand competitors, plan businesses around industry realities, and confidently execute data–driven strategies.

Build business dreams together

From sharing feedback and engaging in discussions, to simultaneously working on different parts of the plan, students can easily collaborate in groups using LivePlan.

Create a plan that fits their needs

Whether small or big, LivePlan can build out the right–sized business plan for your classroom projects. In LivePlan, students can develop a simple lean plan that focuses their ideas, or create a full business plan with all the details and steps necessary to persuade investors, attract partners, and turn their idea into a profitable reality.

With so much happening in the classroom, you need a tool that works with you, not one that makes you do extra work. Used by educators, consultants, entrepreneurs, and students all around the world, LivePlan has been regularly improved and streamlined so it's easy to use.

Develop confidence in their plan and themselves

It's one thing to plan a business. It's another thing to know how to talk about a business plan. Students can develop talking points and practice their pitch in LivePlan so they can discuss their enterprise with confidence and authority.

With LivePlan your students exceed expectations

With LivePlan, students create business plans that:

• Guide them from concept to actionable plan
• Build the confidence necessary to be entrepreneurs
• Combine pitching, forecasting, and collaboration

LivePlan streamlines projects for educators

LivePlan eases project management in the classroom, so instructors can:

• Pinpoint feedback and suggest improvements
• Monitor project progress
• Teach business planning instead of managing multiple apps

Go beyond business plan examples

LivePlan easily integrates into business courses, includes all materials and curriculum to support classroom business projects, and comes with free phone, email, and chat technical support.

The students very much appreciate the guidance the LivePlan program offers. I love the ability to act as a contributor to their plans. The help resources are phenomenal and easy to navigate.

John Shaw Assistant Professor of Management, Davis College of Business – Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL

See how LivePlan can upgrade your student's education

Fill out the form below and our LivePlan Partnership Team will be in touch shortly.

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Teachers and students love LivePlan

LivePlan really facilitated communication between students who were in a team on the business plan project. Students could comment on sections of their business plan and collaborate on what to change in their plan without having to meet face–to–face.

Amy Valente Assistant Professor of Business, Cayuga Community College, Auburn, New York

LivePlan helped us easily set up the business plan for our startup during our MBA. As soon as the other students saw it, they also wanted LivePlan. The time we saved on planning we could use for operational tasks. It was the ideal solution for us.

The product we produced by using Live Plan was exceptional, far exceeded our expectations, and came out so much better than we could have ever done on our own.

This product is a game-changer. It allows the non–MBA founder to unleash their potential through strategic planning and beautiful design. Highly recommended.

Answers Neuroscience

LivePlan is simply awesome.

Amit Agrawal

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How to write a simple business plan for students.

A business plan always has the same structure. Of course, if you plan to sell coffee, not to produce it, you will skip the “production” part, but other than that – you can’t skip anything.

Writing a business plan as a student , as a part of your college or university project, the best thing you can do is just to go into too many details. You have to save the structure, but you can describe your competitors in one abstract, not in five pages, with numbers and poll data.

Basic Business Plan Structure

Mostly, students are asked to make a marketing analysis and marketing plan more professionally than other parts, so we give more details about them.

Description of your business

Here is a brief overview of the experience of the entrepreneur, the date of creation of the company, the field of business, goals, and objectives of the work, available base, and resources.

Market analysis

List of competitors and their offers, estimation of demand, options of promotion and sale.

• Evaluation of the market. It is necessary to estimate the capacity of the market, the population, the number of potential customers. It is difficult to do this without complete marketing research. Therefore, you should look for the results of this assessment for your region. As a last resort, you can predict the estimated demand.
• Competitors. Make a list of your competitors who are already working in this market. Not only direct competitors that offer similar products and services but also those companies that produce alternative services should be considered. If you do not have a specialized tea boutique in your city, this does not mean that the market is free from competitors: you have to fight for customers with those department stores and supermarkets that also sell different types of tea.

Production plan

List of products (services provided) and their volumes, technological processes, necessary equipment and materials, cost calculation.

• Business processes. Write down the list of equipment, tools, raw materials, and materials needed to create your chosen range of products and services. Calculate the optimum production volumes your equipment can handle. Specify which employees and what kind of downloads you will need.
• Products. List the products, services, and work that you will offer your customers. Costs for the organization of business processes will allow you to find out the cost and to make a price list.
• Start-up investment. Calculate how much money it will take to start a project. Sum up the cost of all assets, fixed assets, repairs, materials, and other expenses that will be required to start production.

Organizational plan

List of necessary staff, organization of work, distribution of functions and tasks in the team, involvement of third-party organizations and specialists, personnel costs — calendar of activities for launching the project.

Marketing plan

Advertising channels and costs, ways to promote a company and its products (services), estimated marketing impact – sales volume, number of customers, and transactions.

• Promotion channels. Newspaper ads, radio and TV commercials, online advertising, creating your own site and group on social networks, advertising in local publics and forums, participating in trade shows .
• Target audience. Who to focus on when organizing sales. Who your client is by age, gender, occupation, income level. Where to find them and how to reach.
• Promotion cost. How much will it cost to find and engage? How often you will have to run ads, what are the appropriate options to choose?

Financial indicators

This is where the financial side of your business is reflected, namely: future costs (product purchases, rentals, hiring, etc.), revenue, net profit, profitability, and return on the project.

Risk assessment

A list of major issues that a company may face, their potential consequences, and a plan of measures to minimize them.

Project summary

The most important part is a compact presentation of the contents of the entire document on several pages, it is important here to place the accents correctly, taking into account the addressee and the purpose of preparing the business plan.

Even though it is only a business plan for students, not the one you would present to a real investor, try to make it look realistic.

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Business Plan Template for College Students

• Great for beginners
• Ready-to-use, fully customizable Subcategory
• Get started in seconds

Starting a business as a college student can be both exciting and challenging. You have big dreams and innovative ideas, but how do you turn them into a successful reality? ClickUp's Business Plan Template for College Students is here to guide you every step of the way!

With this template, you can:

• Clearly define your business goals and strategies for success
• Create a comprehensive financial plan and projections to attract investors
• Identify potential obstacles and develop contingency plans
• Effectively communicate your business ideas to stakeholders and secure funding or resources

Don't let your entrepreneurial dreams fade away. Use ClickUp's Business Plan Template for College Students to bring your vision to life and make a lasting impact in the business world. Start planning and building your future today!

Business Plan Template for College Students Benefits

Starting a business as a college student is an exciting and challenging endeavor. With a Business Plan Template for College Students, you can:

• Clearly articulate your business goals and strategies, giving potential investors and partners a comprehensive understanding of your vision
• Create a solid financial forecast that demonstrates the potential profitability of your venture, increasing your chances of securing funding or resources
• Identify potential obstacles and develop contingency plans to mitigate risks, ensuring your business is well-prepared for any challenges that may arise
• Effectively communicate your business idea to others, including professors, mentors, and potential customers, gaining valuable feedback and support for your startup.

Main Elements of College Students Business Plan Template

ClickUp's Business Plan Template for College Students provides a comprehensive framework for college students to develop and present their business ideas effectively:

• Custom Statuses: Easily track the progress of each section of your business plan with statuses such as Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do.
• Custom Fields: Use custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section to add important details to your business plan, such as references, approval status, and specific sections.
• Custom Views: Access different views like Topics, Status, Timeline, Business Plan, and Getting Started Guide to organize your business plan information, track progress, create a timeline, and refer to a guide to get started.
• Collaboration Tools: Collaborate with team members, mentors, or advisors by assigning tasks, adding comments, and attaching files directly within the template.
• Goal Tracking: Set goals within your business plan and use ClickUp's Goals feature to track their progress and measure success.
• Document Management: Store important documents, financial projections, and market research within ClickUp's Docs feature for easy access and reference.

How To Use Business Plan Template for College Students

If you're a college student looking to start your own business, using ClickUp's Business Plan Template can help you get organized and create a solid plan for success. Just follow these six steps:

1. Define your business idea and goals

Start by clearly defining your business idea and the goals you want to achieve. What problem does your business solve? Who is your target audience? What are your short-term and long-term goals? Take the time to brainstorm and outline these key details.

Use a Doc in ClickUp to document your business idea and goals.

2. Conduct market research

Next, conduct thorough market research to understand your industry, competition, and target market. Identify trends, customer needs, and potential challenges. This research will help you refine your business idea, identify opportunities, and develop strategies to stand out in the market.

Use the Table view in ClickUp to organize and analyze your market research data.

3. Plan your products or services

Based on your market research, plan out the products or services you will offer. Determine their unique selling points, pricing strategy, and how they will meet the needs of your target market. Consider any additional features or benefits that will set you apart from competitors.

Create tasks in ClickUp to outline and organize your product or service plans.

4. Develop a marketing strategy

Now it's time to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy to promote your business and attract customers. Identify the most effective channels to reach your target audience, such as social media, content marketing, or email campaigns. Outline your branding, messaging, and promotional tactics.

Use the Board view in ClickUp to visually plan and track your marketing initiatives.

5. Create a financial plan

A solid financial plan is crucial for any business. Determine your startup costs, revenue projections, and expenses. Create a budget that includes marketing, operations, and any other necessary expenses. Consider different funding options and outline your financial goals for the first year and beyond.

Use custom fields in ClickUp to track and analyze your financial projections.

6. Review and revise

Once you have completed your business plan using ClickUp's template, review it thoroughly and make any necessary revisions. Share it with trusted mentors, advisors, or teammates for feedback. Continuously update and refine your plan as your business evolves.

Set recurring tasks in ClickUp to regularly review and update your business plan.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for College Students

College students who are starting their own businesses or pursuing entrepreneurial ventures can use the ClickUp Business Plan Template to effectively communicate their business ideas and secure funding or resources for their startups.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a comprehensive business plan:

• Use the Topics View to outline and organize different sections of your business plan, such as Executive Summary, Market Analysis, Marketing Strategy, Financial Projections, etc.
• The Status View will help you track the progress of each section, with statuses like Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do
• The Timeline View will allow you to set deadlines and visualize the timeline for completing each section of your business plan
• The Business Plan View will provide a holistic overview of your entire business plan, allowing you to see how different sections fit together
• The Getting Started Guide View will provide step-by-step instructions and resources to help you navigate through the business planning process
• Utilize custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section to add additional information and categorize different aspects of your business plan
• Regularly update and revise your business plan as you progress, ensuring that it reflects the most accurate and up-to-date information.
• Business Plan Template for Lululemon
• Business Plan Template for Hotel Industry
• Business Plan Template for Packaging Manufacturers
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• Business Plan Template for Photography Business

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550+ Business Plan Examples to Launch Your Business

Need help writing your business plan? Explore over 550 industry-specific business plan examples for inspiration.

Find your business plan example

Accounting, Insurance & Compliance Business Plans

• View All 25

Children & Pets Business Plans

• Children's Education & Recreation
• View All 33

Cleaning, Repairs & Maintenance Business Plans

• Auto Detail & Repair
• Cleaning Products
• View All 39

Clothing & Fashion Brand Business Plans

• Clothing & Fashion Design
• View All 26

Construction, Architecture & Engineering Business Plans

• Architecture
• Construction
• View All 46

Consulting, Advertising & Marketing Business Plans

• Advertising
• View All 54

Education Business Plans

• Education Consulting
• Education Products

Business plan template: There's an easier way to get your business plan done.

Entertainment & Recreation Business Plans

• Entertainment
• Film & Television
• View All 60

Events Business Plans

• Event Planning
• View All 17

Farm & Agriculture Business Plans

• Agri-tourism
• Agriculture Consulting
• View All 16

Finance & Investing Business Plans

• Financial Planning
• View All 10

Fine Art & Crafts Business Plans

Fitness & Beauty Business Plans

• Salon & Spa
• View All 36

Food and Beverage Business Plans

• Bar & Brewery
• View All 77

Hotel & Lodging Business Plans

• Bed and Breakfast

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IT, Staffing & Customer Service Business Plans

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Nonprofit Business Plans

• Co-op Nonprofit
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Retail & Ecommerce Business Plans

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Transportation, Travel & Logistics Business Plans

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View all sample business plans

Example business plan format

Before you start exploring our library of business plan examples, it's worth taking the time to understand the traditional business plan format . You'll find that the plans in this library and most investor-approved business plans will include the following sections:

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally only one to two pages. You should also plan to write this section last after you've written your full business plan.

Your executive summary should include a summary of the problem you are solving, a description of your product or service, an overview of your target market, a brief description of your team, a summary of your financials, and your funding requirements (if you are raising money).

Products & services

The products & services chapter of your business plan is where the real meat of your plan lives. It includes information about the problem that you're solving, your solution, and any traction that proves that it truly meets the need you identified.

This is your chance to explain why you're in business and that people care about what you offer. It needs to go beyond a simple product or service description and get to the heart of why your business works and benefits your customers.

Market analysis

Conducting a market analysis ensures that you fully understand the market that you're entering and who you'll be selling to. This section is where you will showcase all of the information about your potential customers. You'll cover your target market as well as information about the growth of your market and your industry. Focus on outlining why the market you're entering is viable and creating a realistic persona for your ideal customer base.

Competition

Part of defining your opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage may be. To do this effectively you need to get to know your competitors just as well as your target customers. Every business will have competition, if you don't then you're either in a very young industry or there's a good reason no one is pursuing this specific venture.

To succeed, you want to be sure you know who your competitors are, how they operate, necessary financial benchmarks, and how you're business will be positioned. Start by identifying who your competitors are or will be during your market research. Then leverage competitive analysis tools like the competitive matrix and positioning map to solidify where your business stands in relation to the competition.

Marketing & sales

The marketing and sales plan section of your business plan details how you plan to reach your target market segments. You'll address how you plan on selling to those target markets, what your pricing plan is, and what types of activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success.

The operations section covers the day-to-day workflows for your business to deliver your product or service. What's included here fully depends on the type of business. Typically you can expect to add details on your business location, sourcing and fulfillment, use of technology, and any partnerships or agreements that are in place.

Milestones & metrics

The milestones section is where you lay out strategic milestones to reach your business goals.

A good milestone clearly lays out the parameters of the task at hand and sets expectations for its execution. You'll want to include a description of the task, a proposed due date, who is responsible, and eventually a budget that's attached. You don't need extensive project planning in this section, just key milestones that you want to hit and when you plan to hit them.

You should also discuss key metrics, which are the numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common data points worth tracking include conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, profit, etc.

Company & team

Use this section to describe your current team and who you need to hire. If you intend to pursue funding, you'll need to highlight the relevant experience of your team members. Basically, this is where you prove that this is the right team to successfully start and grow the business. You will also need to provide a quick overview of your legal structure and history if you're already up and running.

Financial projections

Your financial plan should include a sales and revenue forecast, profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, and a balance sheet. You may not have established financials of any kind at this stage. Not to worry, rather than getting all of the details ironed out, focus on making projections and strategic forecasts for your business. You can always update your financial statements as you begin operations and start bringing in actual accounting data.

Now, if you intend to pitch to investors or submit a loan application, you'll also need a "use of funds" report in this section. This outlines how you intend to leverage any funding for your business and how much you're looking to acquire. Like the rest of your financials, this can always be updated later on.

The appendix isn't a required element of your business plan. However, it is a useful place to add any charts, tables, definitions, legal notes, or other critical information that supports your plan. These are often lengthier or out-of-place information that simply didn't work naturally into the structure of your plan. You'll notice that in these business plan examples, the appendix mainly includes extended financial statements.

Types of business plans explained

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. To get the most out of your plan, it's best to find a format that suits your needs. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan

The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used for external purposes. Typically this is the type of plan you'll need when applying for funding or pitching to investors. It can also be used when training or hiring employees, working with vendors, or in any other situation where the full details of your business must be understood by another individual.

Business model canvas

The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

The structure ditches a linear format in favor of a cell-based template. It encourages you to build connections between every element of your business. It's faster to write out and update, and much easier for you, your team, and anyone else to visualize your business operations.

One-page business plan

The true middle ground between the business model canvas and a traditional business plan is the one-page business plan . This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business.

By starting with a one-page plan , you give yourself a minimal document to build from. You'll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer-form business plan.

Growth planning

Growth planning is more than a specific type of business plan. It's a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, forecast, review, and refine based on your performance.

It holds all of the benefits of the single-page plan, including the potential to complete it in as little as 27 minutes . However, it's even easier to convert into a more detailed plan thanks to how heavily it's tied to your financials. The overall goal of growth planning isn't to just produce documents that you use once and shelve. Instead, the growth planning process helps you build a healthier company that thrives in times of growth and remain stable through times of crisis.

It's faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

Download a free sample business plan template

Ready to start writing your own plan but aren't sure where to start? Download our free business plan template that's been updated for 2024.

This simple, modern, investor-approved business plan template is designed to make planning easy. It's a proven format that has helped over 1 million businesses write business plans for bank loans, funding pitches, business expansion, and even business sales. It includes additional instructions for how to write each section and is formatted to be SBA-lender approved. All you need to do is fill in the blanks.

How to use an example business plan to help you write your own

How do you know what elements need to be included in your business plan, especially if you've never written one before? Looking at examples can help you visualize what a full, traditional plan looks like, so you know what you're aiming for before you get started. Here's how to get the most out of a sample business plan.

Choose a business plan example from a similar type of company

You don't need to find an example business plan that's an exact fit for your business. Your business location, target market, and even your particular product or service may not match up exactly with the plans in our gallery. But, you don't need an exact match for it to be helpful. Instead, look for a plan that's related to the type of business you're starting.

For example, if you want to start a vegetarian restaurant, a plan for a steakhouse can be a great match. While the specifics of your actual startup will differ, the elements you'd want to include in your restaurant's business plan are likely to be very similar.

Use a business plan example as a guide

Every startup and small business is unique, so you'll want to avoid copying an example business plan word for word. It just won't be as helpful, since each business is unique. You want your plan to be a useful tool for starting a business —and getting funding if you need it.

One of the key benefits of writing a business plan is simply going through the process. When you sit down to write, you'll naturally think through important pieces, like your startup costs, your target market , and any market analysis or research you'll need to do to be successful.

You'll also look at where you stand among your competition (and everyone has competition), and lay out your goals and the milestones you'll need to meet. Looking at an example business plan's financials section can be helpful because you can see what should be included, but take them with a grain of salt. Don't assume that financial projections for a sample company will fit your own small business.

If you're looking for more resources to help you get started, our business planning guide is a good place to start. You can also download our free business plan template .

Think of business planning as a process, instead of a document

Think about business planning as something you do often , rather than a document you create once and never look at again. If you take the time to write a plan that really fits your own company, it will be a better, more useful tool to grow your business. It should also make it easier to share your vision and strategy so everyone on your team is on the same page.

Adjust your plan regularly to use it as a business management tool

Keep in mind that businesses that use their plan as a management tool to help run their business grow 30 percent faster than those businesses that don't. For that to be true for your company, you'll think of a part of your business planning process as tracking your actual results against your financial forecast on a regular basis.

If things are going well, your plan will help you think about how you can re-invest in your business. If you find that you're not meeting goals, you might need to adjust your budgets or your sales forecast. Either way, tracking your progress compared to your plan can help you adjust quickly when you identify challenges and opportunities—it's one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business.

Prepare to pitch your business

If you're planning to pitch your business to investors or seek out any funding, you'll need a pitch deck to accompany your business plan. A pitch deck is designed to inform people about your business. You want your pitch deck to be short and easy to follow, so it's best to keep your presentation under 20 slides.

Your pitch deck and pitch presentation are likely some of the first things that an investor will see to learn more about your company. So, you need to be informative and pique their interest. Luckily we have a round-up of real-world pitch deck examples used by successful startups that you can review and reference as you build your pitch.

For more resources, check out our full Business Pitch Guide .

Ready to get started?

Now that you know how to use an example business plan to help you write a plan for your business, it's time to find the right one.

Use the search bar below to get started and find the right match for your business idea.

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Business Plans for Kids

Download the Sample Business Plan for Kids

Business Plan for Kids

Teach your students how to write their own business plan and create a successful business.

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Learn how to market your business with product, pricing, promoting and placement.

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Are you Making a Profit?

We’ll help you find out! Use this worksheet to do the math and put your business on the right track.

24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

Published: February 06, 2024

I believe that reading sample business plans is essential when writing your own.

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As you explore business plan examples from real companies and brands, it’s easier for you to learn how to write a good one.

But what does a good business plan look like? And how do you write one that’s both viable and convincing. I’ll walk you through the ideal business plan format along with some examples to help you get started.

Table of Contents

Business Plan Format

Business plan types, sample business plan templates, top business plan examples.

Ask any successful sports coach how they win so many games, and they’ll tell you they have a unique plan for every single game. To me, the same logic applies to business.

If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare for battle before breaking into a market.

Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. And if your business plan is compelling enough, it can also convince investors to give you funding.

With so much at stake, I’m sure you’re wondering where to begin.

Free Business Plan Template

The essential document for starting a business -- custom built for your needs.

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First, you’ll want to nail down your formatting. Most business plans include the following sections.

1. Executive Summary

I’d say the executive summary is the most important section of the entire business plan. 

Why? Essentially, it's the overview or introduction, written in a way to grab readers' attention and guide them through the rest of the business plan. This is important, because a business plan can be dozens or hundreds of pages long.

There are two main elements I’d recommend including in your executive summary:

Company Description

This is the perfect space to highlight your company’s mission statement and goals, a brief overview of your history and leadership, and your top accomplishments as a business.

Tell potential investors who you are and why what you do matters. Naturally, they’re going to want to know who they’re getting into business with up front, and this is a great opportunity to showcase your impact.

Need some extra help firming up those business goals? Check out HubSpot Academy’s free course to help you set goals that matter — I’d highly recommend it

Products and Services

To piggyback off of the company description, be sure to incorporate an overview of your offerings. This doesn’t have to be extensive — just another chance to introduce your industry and overall purpose as a business.

In addition to the items above, I recommend including some information about your financial projections and competitive advantage here too.:

Keep in mind you'll cover many of these topics in more detail later on in the business plan. So, keep the executive summary clear and brief, and only include the most important takeaways.

Executive Summary Business Plan Examples

This example was created with HubSpot’s business plan template:

This executive summary is so good to me because it tells potential investors a short story while still covering all of the most important details.

Image Source

Tips for Writing Your Executive Summary

• Start with a strong introduction of your company, showcase your mission and impact, and outline the products and services you provide.
• Clearly define a problem, and explain how your product solves that problem, and show why the market needs your business.
• Be sure to highlight your value proposition, market opportunity, and growth potential.
• Keep it concise and support ideas with data.
• Customize your summary to your audience. For example, emphasize finances and return on investment for venture capitalists.

Check out our tips for writing an effective executive summary for more guidance.

2. Market Opportunity

This is where you'll detail the opportunity in the market.

The main question I’d ask myself here is this: Where is the gap in the current industry, and how will my product fill that gap?

More specifically, here’s what I’d include in this section:

• The size of the market
• Current or potential market share
• Trends in the industry and consumer behavior
• Where the gap is
• What caused the gap
• How you intend to fill it

To get a thorough understanding of the market opportunity, you'll want to conduct a TAM, SAM, and SOM analysis and perform market research on your industry.

You may also benefit from creating a SWOT analysis to get some of the insights for this section.

Market Opportunity Business Plan Example

I like this example because it uses critical data to underline the size of the potential market and what part of that market this service hopes to capture.

Tips for Writing Your Market Opportunity Section

• Focus on demand and potential for growth.
• Use market research, surveys, and industry trend data to support your market forecast and projections.
• Add a review of regulation shifts, tech advances, and consumer behavior changes.
• Refer to reliable sources.
• Showcase how your business can make the most of this opportunity.

3. Competitive Landscape

Since we’re already speaking of market share, you'll also need to create a section that shares details on who the top competitors are.

After all, your customers likely have more than one brand to choose from, and you'll want to understand exactly why they might choose one over another.

My favorite part of performing a competitive analysis is that it can help you uncover:

• Industry trends that other brands may not be utilizing
• Strengths in your competition that may be obstacles to handle
• Weaknesses in your competition that may help you develop selling points
• The unique proposition you bring to the market that may resonate with customers

Competitive Landscape Business Plan Example

I like how the competitive landscape section of this business plan below shows a clear outline of who the top competitors are.

It also highlights specific industry knowledge and the importance of location, which shows useful experience in this specific industry. 

This can help build trust in your ability to execute your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Competitive Landscape

• Complete in-depth research, then emphasize your most important findings.
• Compare your unique selling proposition (USP) to your direct and indirect competitors.
• Show a clear and realistic plan for product and brand differentiation.
• Look for specific advantages and barriers in the competitive landscape. Then, highlight how that information could impact your business.
• Outline growth opportunities from a competitive perspective.
• Add customer feedback and insights to support your competitive analysis.

4. Target Audience

Use this section to describe who your customer segments are in detail. What is the demographic and psychographic information of your audience?

If your immediate answer is "everyone," you'll need to dig deeper. Here are some questions I’d ask myself here:

• What demographics will most likely need/buy your product or service?
• What are the psychographics of this audience? (Desires, triggering events, etc.)
• Why are your offerings valuable to them?

I’d also recommend building a buyer persona to get in the mindset of your ideal customers and be clear on why you're targeting them.

Target Audience Business Plan Example

I like the example below because it uses in-depth research to draw conclusions about audience priorities. It also analyzes how to create the right content for this audience.

Tips for Writing Your Target Audience Section

• Include details on the size and growth potential of your target audience.
• Figure out and refine the pain points for your target audience , then show why your product is a useful solution.
• Describe your targeted customer acquisition strategy in detail.
• Share anticipated challenges your business may face in acquiring customers and how you plan to address them.
• Add case studies, testimonials, and other data to support your target audience ideas.
• Remember to consider niche audiences and segments of your target audience in your business plan.

5. Marketing Strategy

Here, you'll discuss how you'll acquire new customers with your marketing strategy. I’d suggest including information:

• Your brand positioning vision and how you'll cultivate it
• The goal targets you aim to achieve
• The metrics you'll use to measure success
• The channels and distribution tactics you'll use

I think it’s helpful to have a marketing plan built out in advance to make this part of your business plan easier.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan Example

This business plan example includes the marketing strategy for the town of Gawler.

In my opinion, it really works because it offers a comprehensive picture of how they plan to use digital marketing to promote the community.

Tips for Writing Your Marketing Strategy

• Include a section about how you believe your brand vision will appeal to customers.
• Add the budget and resources you'll need to put your plan in place.
• Outline strategies for specific marketing segments.
• Connect strategies to earlier sections like target audience and competitive analysis.
• Review how your marketing strategy will scale with the growth of your business.
• Cover a range of channels and tactics to highlight your ability to adapt your plan in the face of change.

6. Key Features and Benefits

At some point in your business plan, you'll need to review the key features and benefits of your products and/or services.

Laying these out can give readers an idea of how you're positioning yourself in the market and the messaging you're likely to use. It can even help them gain better insight into your business model.

Key Features and Benefits Business Plan Example

In my opinion, the example below does a great job outlining products and services for this business, along with why these qualities will attract the audience.

Tips for Writing Your Key Features and Benefits

• Emphasize why and how your product or service offers value to customers.
• Use metrics and testimonials to support the ideas in this section.
• Talk about how your products and services have the potential to scale.
• Think about including a product roadmap.
• Focus on customer needs, and how the features and benefits you are sharing meet those needs.
• Offer proof of concept for your ideas, like case studies or pilot program feedback.
• Proofread this section carefully, and remove any jargon or complex language.

7. Pricing and Revenue

This is where you'll discuss your cost structure and various revenue streams. Your pricing strategy must be solid enough to turn a profit while staying competitive in the industry. 

For this reason, here’s what I’d might outline in this section:

• The specific pricing breakdowns per product or service
• Why your pricing is higher or lower than your competition's
• (If higher) Why customers would be willing to pay more
• (If lower) How you're able to offer your products or services at a lower cost
• When you expect to break even, what margins do you expect, etc?

Pricing and Revenue Business Plan Example

I like how this business plan example begins with an overview of the business revenue model, then shows proposed pricing for key products.

Tips for Writing Your Pricing and Revenue Section

• Get specific about your pricing strategy. Specifically, how you connect that strategy to customer needs and product value.
• If you are asking a premium price, share unique features or innovations that justify that price point.
• Show how you plan to communicate pricing to customers.
• Create an overview of every revenue stream for your business and how each stream adds to your business model as a whole.
• Share plans to develop new revenue streams in the future.
• Show how and whether pricing will vary by customer segment and how pricing aligns with marketing strategies.
• Restate your value proposition and explain how it aligns with your revenue model.

8. Financials

To me, this section is particularly informative for investors and leadership teams to figure out funding strategies, investment opportunities, and more.

 According to Forbes , you'll want to include three main things:

• Profit/Loss Statement - This answers the question of whether your business is currently profitable.
• Cash Flow Statement - This details exactly how much cash is incoming and outgoing to give insight into how much cash a business has on hand.
• Balance Sheet - This outlines assets, liabilities, and equity, which gives insight into how much a business is worth.

While some business plans might include more or less information, these are the key details I’d include in this section.

Financials Business Plan Example

This balance sheet is a great example of level of detail you’ll need to include in the financials section of your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Financials Section

• Growth potential is important in this section too. Using your data, create a forecast of financial performance in the next three to five years.
• Include any data that supports your projections to assure investors of the credibility of your proposal.
• Add a break-even analysis to show that your business plan is financially practical. This information can also help you pivot quickly as your business grows.
• Consider adding a section that reviews potential risks and how sensitive your plan is to changes in the market.
• Triple-check all financial information in your plan for accuracy.
• Show how any proposed funding needs align with your plans for growth.

As you create your business plan, keep in mind that each of these sections will be formatted differently. Some may be in paragraph format, while others could be charts or graphs.

The formats above apply to most types of business plans. That said, the format and structure of your plan will vary by your goals for that plan. 

So, I’ve added a quick review of different business plan types. For a more detailed overview, check out this post .

1. Startups

Startup business plans are for proposing new business ideas.

If you’re planning to start a small business, preparing a business plan is crucial. The plan should include all the major factors of your business.

You can check out this guide for more detailed business plan inspiration .

2. Feasibility Studies

Feasibility business plans focus on that business's product or service. Feasibility plans are sometimes added to startup business plans. They can also be a new business plan for an already thriving organization.

3. Internal Use

You can use internal business plans to share goals, strategies, or performance updates with stakeholders. In my opinion, internal business plans are useful for alignment and building support for ambitious goals.

4. Strategic Initiatives

Another business plan that's often for sharing internally is a strategic business plan. This plan covers long-term business objectives that might not have been included in the startup business plan.

5. Business Acquisition or Repositioning

When a business is moving forward with an acquisition or repositioning, it may need extra structure and support. These types of business plans expand on a company's acquisition or repositioning strategy.

Growth sometimes just happens as a business continues operations. But more often, a business needs to create a structure with specific targets to meet set goals for expansion. This business plan type can help a business focus on short-term growth goals and align resources with those goals.

Now that you know what's included and how to format a business plan, let's review some of my favorite templates.

1. HubSpot's One-Page Business Plan

Download a free, editable one-page business plan template..

The business plan linked above was created here at HubSpot and is perfect for businesses of any size — no matter how many strategies we still have to develop.

Fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline give this one-page business plan a framework for how to build your brand and what tasks to keep track of as you grow.

Then, as the business matures, you can expand on your original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.

Why I Like It

This one-page business plan is a fantastic choice for the new business owner who doesn’t have the time or resources to draft a full-blown business plan. It includes all the essential sections in an accessible, bullet-point-friendly format. That way, you can get the broad strokes down before honing in on the details.

2. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

We also created a business plan template for entrepreneurs.

The template is designed as a guide and checklist for starting your own business. You’ll learn what to include in each section of your business plan and how to do it.

There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan.

Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a workable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.

This business plan kit is essential for the budding entrepreneur who needs a more extensive document to share with investors and other stakeholders.

It not only includes sections for your executive summary, product line, market analysis, marketing plan, and sales plan, but it also offers hands-on guidance for filling out those sections.

3. LiveFlow’s Financial Planning Template with built-in automation

This free template from LiveFlow aims to make it easy for businesses to create a financial plan and track their progress on a monthly basis.

The P&L Budget versus Actual format allows users to track their revenue, cost of sales, operating expenses, operating profit margin, net profit, and more.

The summary dashboard aggregates all of the data put into the financial plan sheet and will automatically update when changes are made.

Instead of wasting hours manually importing your data to your spreadsheet, LiveFlow can also help you to automatically connect your accounting and banking data directly to your spreadsheet, so your numbers are always up-to-date.

With the dashboard, you can view your runway, cash balance, burn rate, gross margins, and other metrics. Having a simple way to track everything in one place will make it easier to complete the financials section of your business plan.

This is a fantastic template to track performance and alignment internally and to create a dependable process for documenting financial information across the business. It’s highly versatile and beginner-friendly.

It’s especially useful if you don’t have an accountant on the team. (I always recommend you do, but for new businesses, having one might not be possible.)

4. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan

One of the more financially oriented sample business plans in this list, BPlan’s free business plan template dedicates many of its pages to your business’s financial plan and financial statements.

After filling this business plan out, your company will truly understand its financial health and the steps you need to take to maintain or improve it.

I absolutely love this business plan template because of its ease-of-use and hands-on instructions (in addition to its finance-centric components). If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of writing an entire business plan, consider using this template to help you with the process.

6. Harvard Business Review’s "How to Write a Winning Business Plan"

Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level — it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.

With the guidance of Stanley Rich and Richard Gumpert, co-authors of " Business Plans That Win: Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum ", you'll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasizes the market demand for your product or service.

You’ll also learn the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

This business plan guide focuses less on the individual parts of a business plan, and more on the overarching goal of writing one. For that reason, it’s one of my favorites to supplement any template you choose to use. Harvard Business Review’s guide is instrumental for both new and seasoned business owners.

7. HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know writing a business plan is one of the most challenging first steps to starting a business.

Fortunately, with HubSpot's comprehensive guide to starting a business, you'll learn how to map out all the details by understanding what to include in your business plan and why it’s important to include them. The guide also fleshes out an entire sample business plan for you.

If you need further guidance on starting a business, HubSpot's guide can teach you how to make your business legal, choose and register your business name, and fund your business. It will also give small business tax information and includes marketing, sales, and service tips.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of starting a business, in addition to writing your business plan, with a high level of exactitude and detail. So if you’re in the midst of starting your business, this is an excellent guide for you.

It also offers other resources you might need, such as market analysis templates.

8. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty-gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to its success.

This template has two things I love: comprehensiveness and in-depth instructions. Plus, it’s synced with PandaDoc’s e-signature software so that you and other stakeholders can sign it with ease. For that reason, I especially love it for those starting a business with a partner or with a board of directors.

9. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers several free business plan templates that can be used to inspire your own plan.

Before you get started, you can decide what type of business plan you need — a traditional or lean start-up plan.

Then, you can review the format for both of those plans and view examples of what they might look like.

We love both of the SBA’s templates because of their versatility. You can choose between two options and use the existing content in the templates to flesh out your own plan. Plus, if needed, you can get a free business counselor to help you along the way.

I’ve compiled some completed business plan samples to help you get an idea of how to customize a plan for your business.

I chose different types of business plan ideas to expand your imagination. Some are extensive, while others are fairly simple.

Let’s take a look.

1. LiveFlow

One of the major business expenses is marketing. How you handle your marketing reflects your company’s revenue.

I included this business plan to show you how you can ensure your marketing team is aligned with your overall business plan to get results. The plan also shows you how to track even the smallest metrics of your campaigns, like ROI and payback periods instead of just focusing on big metrics like gross and revenue.

Fintech startup, LiveFlow, allows users to sync real-time data from its accounting services, payment platforms, and banks into custom reports. This eliminates the task of pulling reports together manually, saving teams time and helping automate workflows.

"Using this framework over a traditional marketing plan will help you set a profitable marketing strategy taking things like CAC, LTV, Payback period, and P&L into consideration," explains LiveFlow co-founder, Lasse Kalkar .

When it came to including marketing strategy in its business plan, LiveFlow created a separate marketing profit and loss statement (P&L) to track how well the company was doing with its marketing initiatives.

This is a great approach, allowing businesses to focus on where their marketing dollars are making the most impact. Having this information handy will enable you to build out your business plan’s marketing section with confidence. LiveFlow has shared the template here . You can test it for yourself.

2. Lula Body

Sometimes all you need is a solid mission statement and core values to guide you on how to go about everything. You do this by creating a business plan revolving around how to fulfill your statement best.

For example, Patagonia is an eco-friendly company, so their plan discusses how to make the best environmentally friendly products without causing harm.

A good mission statement  should not only resonate with consumers but should also serve as a core value compass for employees as well.

Patagonia has one of the most compelling mission statements I’ve seen:

"Together, let’s prioritise purpose over profit and protect this wondrous planet, our only home."

It reels you in from the start, and the environmentally friendly theme continues throughout the rest of the statement.

This mission goes on to explain that they are out to "Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to protect nature."

Their mission statement is compelling and detailed, with each section outlining how they will accomplish their goal.

4. Vesta Home Automation

This executive summary for a smart home device startup is part of a business plan created by students at Mount Royal University .

While it lacks some of the sleek visuals of the templates above, its executive summary does a great job of demonstrating how invested they are in the business.

Right away, they mention they’ve invested $200,000 into the company already, which shows investors they have skin in the game and aren’t just looking for someone else to foot the bill.

This is the kind of business plan you need when applying for business funds. It clearly illustrates the expected future of the company and how the business has been coming along over the years.

5. NALB Creative Center

This fictional business plan for an art supply store includes everything one might need in a business plan: an executive summary, a company summary, a list of services, a market analysis summary, and more.

One of its most notable sections is its market analysis summary, which includes an overview of the population growth in the business’ target geographical area, as well as a breakdown of the types of potential customers they expect to welcome at the store. 

This sort of granular insight is essential for understanding and communicating your business’s growth potential. Plus, it lays a strong foundation for creating relevant and useful buyer personas .

It’s essential to keep this information up-to-date as your market and target buyer changes. For that reason, you should carry out market research as often as possible to ensure that you’re targeting the correct audience and sharing accurate information with your investors.

Due to its comprehensiveness, it’s an excellent example to follow if you’re opening a brick-and-mortar store and need to get external funding to start your business .

6. Curriculum Companion Suites (CSS)

If you’re looking for a SaaS business plan example, look no further than this business plan for a fictional educational software company called Curriculum Companion Suites. 

Like the business plan for the NALB Creative Center, it includes plenty of information for prospective investors and other key stakeholders in the business.

One of the most notable features of this business plan is the executive summary, which includes an overview of the product, market, and mission.

The first two are essential for software companies because the product offering is so often at the forefront of the company’s strategy. Without that information being immediately available to investors and executives, then you risk writing an unfocused business plan.

It’s essential to front-load your company’s mission if it explains your "Why?" and this example does just that. In other words, why do you do what you do, and why should stakeholders care? This is an important section to include if you feel that your mission will drive interest in the business and its offerings.

7. Culina Sample Business Plan

Culina's sample business plan is an excellent example of how to lay out your business plan so that it flows naturally, engages readers, and provides the critical information investors and stakeholders need. 

You can use this template as a guide while you're gathering important information for your own business plan. You'll have a better understanding of the data and research you need to do since Culina’s plan outlines these details so flawlessly for inspiration.

8. Plum Sample Business Plan

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How to Write a Business Plan (Plus Examples & Templates)

May 24, 2021

Have you ever wondered how to write a business plan step by step? Mike Andes, told us: 

This guide will help you write a business plan to impress investors.

Throughout this process, we’ll get information from Mike Andes, who started Augusta Lawn Care Services when he was 12 and turned it into a franchise with over 90 locations. He has gone on to help others learn how to write business plans and start businesses.  He knows a thing or two about writing  business plans!

We’ll start by discussing the definition of a business plan. Then we’ll discuss how to come up with the idea, how to do the market research, and then the important elements in the business plan format. Keep reading to start your journey!

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is simply a road map of what you are trying to achieve with your business and how you will go about achieving it. It should cover all elements of your business including: 

• Finding customers
• Plans for developing a team
•  Competition
• Legal structures
• Key milestones you are pursuing

If you aren’t quite ready to create a business plan, consider starting by reading our business startup guide .

Get a Business Idea

Before you can write a business plan, you have to have a business idea. You may see a problem that needs to be solved and have an idea how to solve it, or you might start by evaluating your interests and skills. 

Mike told us, “The three things I suggest asking yourself when thinking about starting a business are:

• What am I good at?
• What would I enjoy doing?
• What can I get paid for?”

If all three of these questions don’t lead to at least one common answer, it will probably be a much harder road to success. Either there is not much market for it, you won’t be good at it, or you won’t enjoy doing it. 

As Mike told us, “There’s enough stress starting and running a business that if you don’t like it or aren’t good at it, it’s hard to succeed.”

If you’d like to hear more about Mike’s approach to starting a business, check out our YouTube video

Conduct Market Analysis

Market analysis is focused on establishing if there is a target market for your products and services, how large the target market is, and identifying the demographics of people or businesses that would be interested in the product or service. The goal here is to establish how much money your business concept can make.

Product and Service Demand

A search engine is your best friend when trying to figure out if there is demand for your products and services. Personally, I love using presearch.org because it lets you directly search on a ton of different platforms including Google, Youtube, Twitter, and more. Check out the screenshot for the full list of search options.

With quick web searches, you can find out how many competitors you have, look through their reviews, and see if there are common complaints about the competitors. Bad reviews are a great place to find opportunities to offer better products or services. 

If there are no similar products or services, you may have stumbled upon something new, or there may just be no demand for it. To find out, go talk to your most honest friend about the idea and see what they think. If they tell you it’s dumb or stare at you vacantly, there’s probably no market for it.

You can also conduct a survey through social media to get public opinion on your idea. Using Facebook Business Manager , you could get a feel for who would be interested in your product or service.

 I ran a quick test of how many people between 18-65  you could reach in the U.S. during a week. It returned an estimated 700-2,000 for the total number of leads, which is enough to do a fairly accurate statistical analysis.

Identify Demographics of Target Market

Depending on what type of business you want to run, your target market will be different. The narrower the demographic, the fewer potential customers you’ll have. If you did a survey, you’ll be able to use that data to help define your target audience. Some considerations you’ll want to consider are:

• Other Interests
• Marital Status
• Do they have kids?

Once you have this information, it can help you narrow down your options for location and help define your marketing further. One resource that Mike recommended using is the Census Bureau’s Quick Facts Map . He told us,  

“It helps you quickly evaluate what the best areas are for your business to be located.”

• How to Write a Business Plan

Now that you’ve developed your idea a little and established there is a market for it, you can begin writing a business plan. Getting started is easier with the business plan template we created for you to download. I strongly recommend using it as it is updated to make it easier to create an action plan. 

Each of the following should be a section of your business plan:

• Business Plan Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Description of Products and Services

SWOT Analysis

• Competitor Data
• Competitive Analysis
• Marketing Expenses Strategy 

Pricing Strategy

• Distribution Channel Assessment
• Operational Plan
• Management and Organizational Strategy
• Financial Statements and/or Financial Projections

We’ll look into each of these. Don’t forget to download our free business plan template (mentioned just above) so you can follow along as we go. 

How to Write a Business Plan Step 1. Create a Cover Page

The first thing investors will see is the cover page for your business plan. Make sure it looks professional. A great cover page shows that you think about first impressions.

A good business plan should have the following elements on a cover page:

• Professionally designed logo
• Company name
• Mission or Vision Statement
• Contact Info

Basically, think of a cover page for your business plan like a giant business card. It is meant to capture people’s attention but be quickly processed.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 2. Create a Table of Contents

Most people are busy enough that they don’t have a lot of time. Providing a table of contents makes it easy for them to find the pages of your plan that are meaningful to them.

A table of contents will be immediately after the cover page, but you can include it after the executive summary. Including the table of contents immediately after the executive summary will help investors know what section of your business plan they want to review more thoroughly.

Check out Canva’s article about creating a  table of contents . It has a ton of great information about creating easy access to each section of your business plan. Just remember that you’ll want to use different strategies for digital and hard copy business plans.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 3. Write an Executive Summary

An executive summary is where your business plan should catch the readers interest.  It doesn’t need to be long, but should be quick and easy to read.

Mike told us,

How long should an executive summary bein an informal business plan?

For casual use, an executive summary should be similar to an elevator pitch, no more than 150-160 words, just enough to get them interested and wanting more. Indeed has a great article on elevator pitches .  This can also be used for the content of emails to get readers’ attention.

It consists of three basic parts:

• An introduction to you and your business.
• What your business is about.
• A call to action

Example of an informal executive summary 

One of the best elevator pitches I’ve used is:

So far that pitch has achieved a 100% success rate in getting partnerships for the business.

What should I include in an executive summary for investors?

Investors are going to need a more detailed executive summary if you want to secure financing or sell equity. The executive summary should be a brief overview of your entire business plan and include:

• Introduction of yourself and company.
• An origin story (Recognition of a problem and how you came to solution)
• An introduction to your products or services.
• Your unique value proposition. Make sure to include intellectual property.
• Where you are in the business life cycle
• Request and why you need it.

Successful business plan examples

The owner of Urbanity told us he spent 2 months writing a 75-page business plan and received a $250,000 loan from the bank when he was 23. Make your business plan as detailed as possible when looking for financing. We’ve provided a template to help you prepare the portions of a business plan that banks expect.

Here’s the interview with the owner of Urbanity:

When to write an executive summary?

Even though the summary is near the beginning of a business plan, you should write it after you complete the rest of a business plan. You can’t talk about revenue, profits, and expected expenditures if you haven’t done the market research and created a financial plan.

What mistakes do people make when writing an executive summary?

Business owners commonly go into too much detail about the following items in an executive summary:

• Marketing and sales processes
• Financial statements
• Organizational structure
• Market analysis

These are things that people will want to know later, but they don’t hook the reader. They won’t spark interest in your small business, but they’ll close the deal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 4. Company Description

Every business plan should include a company description. A great business plan will include the following elements while describing the company:

• Mission statement
• Philosophy and vision
• Company goals

Target market

• Legal structure

Let’s take a look at what each section includes in a good business plan.

Mission Statement

A mission statement is a brief explanation of why you started the company and what the company’s main focus is. It should be no more than one or two sentences. Check out HubSpot’s article 27 Inspiring Mission Statement for a great read on informative and inspiring mission and vision statements. 

Company Philosophy and Vision

The company philosophy is what drives your company. You’ll normally hear them called core values.  These are the building blocks that make your company different. You want to communicate your values to customers, business owners, and investors as often as possible to build a company culture, but make sure to back them up.

What makes your company different?

Each company is different. Your new business should rise above the standard company lines of honesty, integrity, fun, innovation, and community when communicating your business values. The standard answers are corporate jargon and lack authenticity. 

Examples of core values

One of my clients decided to add a core values page to their website. As a tech company they emphasized the values:

•  Prioritize communication.
•  Never stop learning.
•  Be transparent.
•  Start small and grow incrementally.

These values communicate how the owner and the rest of the company operate. They also show a value proposition and competitive advantage because they specifically focus on delivering business value from the start. These values also genuinely show what the company is about and customers recognize the sincerity. Indeed has a great blog about how to identify your core values .

What is a vision statement?

A vision statement communicate the long lasting change a business pursues. The vision helps investors and customers understand what your company is trying to accomplish. The vision statement goes beyond a mission statement to provide something meaningful to the community, customer’s lives, or even the world.

Example vision statements

The Alzheimer’s Association is a great example of a vision statement:

A world without Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia.

It clearly tells how they want to change the world. A world without Alzheimers might be unachievable, but that means they always have room for improvement.

Business Goals

You have to measure success against goals for a business plan to be meaningful. A business plan helps guide a company similar to how your GPS provides a road map to your favorite travel destination. A goal to make as much money as possible is not inspirational and sounds greedy.

Sure, business owners want to increase their profits and improve customer service, but they need to present an overview of what they consider success. The goals should help everyone prioritize their work.

How far in advance should a business plan?

Business planning should be done at least one year in advance, but many banks and investors prefer three to five year business plans. Longer plans show investors that the management team  understands the market and knows the business is operating in a constantly shifting market. In addition, a plan helps businesses to adjust to changes because they have already considered how to handle them.

Example of great business goals

My all time-favorite long-term company goals are included in Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux . These goals were written in 2016 and drive the company’s decisions through 2026. They are the reason that investors are so forgiving when Elon Musk continually fails to meet his quarterly and annual goals.

If the progress aligns with the business plan investors are likely to continue to believe in the company. Just make sure the goals are reasonable or you’ll be discredited (unless you’re Elon Musk).

You did target market research before creating a business plan. Now it’s time to add it to the plan so others understand what your ideal customer looks like. As a new business owner, you may not be considered an expert in your field yet, so document everything. Make sure the references you use are from respectable sources. 

Use information from the specific lender when you are applying for lending. Most lenders provide industry research reports and using their data can strengthen the position of your business plan.

A small business plan should include a section on the external environment. Understanding the industry is crucial because we don’t plan a business in a vacuum. Make sure to research the industry trends, competitors, and forecasts. I personally prefer IBIS World for my business research. Make sure to answer questions like:

• What is the industry outlook long-term and short-term?
• How will your business take advantage of projected industry changes and trends?
• What might happen to your competitors and how will your business successfully compete?

Industry resources

Some helpful resources to help you establish more about your industry are:

• Trade Associations
• Federal Reserve
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

Legal Structure

There are five basic types of legal structures that most people will utilize:

• Sole proprietorships
• Limited Liability Companies (LLC)

Partnerships

Corporations.

• Franchises.

Each business structure has their pros and cons. An LLC is the most common legal structure due to its protection of personal assets and ease of setting up. Make sure to specify how ownership is divided and what roles each owner plays when you have more than one business owner.

You’ll have to decide which structure is best for you, but we’ve gathered information on each to make it easier.

Sole Proprietorship

A sole proprietorship is the easiest legal structure to set up but doesn’t protect the owner’s personal assets from legal issues. That means if something goes wrong, you could lose both your company and your home.

To start a sole proprietorship, fill out a special tax form called a  Schedule C . Sole proprietors can also join the American Independent Business Alliance .

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

An LLC is the most common business structure used in the United States because an LLC protects the owner’s personal assets. It’s similar to partnerships and corporations, but can be a single-member LLC in most states. An LLC requires a document called an operating agreement.

Each state has different requirements. Here’s a link to find your state’s requirements . Delaware and Nevada are common states to file an LLC because they are really business-friendly. Here’s a blog on the top 10 states to get an LLC.

Partnerships are typically for legal firms. If you choose to use a partnership choose a Limited Liability Partnership. Alternatively, you can just use an LLC.

Corporations are typically for massive organizations. Corporations have taxes on both corporate and income tax so unless you plan on selling stock, you are better off considering an LLC with S-Corp status . Investopedia has good information corporations here .

There are several opportunities to purchase successful franchises. TopFranchise.com has a list of companies in a variety of industries that offer franchise opportunities. This makes it where an entrepreneur can benefit from the reputation of an established business that has already worked out many of the kinks of starting from scratch.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 5. Products and Services

This section of the business plan should focus on what you sell, how you source it, and how you sell it. You should include:

• Unique features that differentiate your business products from competitors
• Intellectual property
• Your supply chain
• Cost and pricing structure 

Questions to answer about your products and services

Mike gave us a list  of the most important questions to answer about your product and services:

• How will you be selling the product? (in person, ecommerce, wholesale, direct to consumer)?
• How do you let them know they need a product?
• How do you communicate the message?
• How will you do transactions?
• How much will you be selling it for?
• How many do you think you’ll sell and why?

Make sure to use the worksheet on our business plan template .

How to Write a Business Plan Step 6. Sales and Marketing Plan

The marketing and sales plan is focused on the strategy to bring awareness to your company and guides how you will get the product to the consumer.  It should contain the following sections:

SWOT Analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Not only do you want to identify them, but you also want to document how the business plans to deal with them.

Business owners need to do a thorough job documenting how their service or product stacks up against the competition.

If proper research isn’t done, investors will be able to tell that the owner hasn’t researched the competition and is less likely to believe that the team can protect its service from threats by the more well-established competition. This is one of the most common parts of a presentation that trips up business owners presenting on Shark Tank .

SWOT Examples

Examples of strengths and weaknesses could be things like the lack of cash flow, intellectual property ownership, high costs of suppliers, and customers’ expectations on shipping times.

Opportunities could be ways to capitalize on your strengths or improve your weaknesses, but may also be gaps in the industry. This includes:

• Adding offerings that fit with your current small business
• Increase sales to current customers
• Reducing costs through bulk ordering
• Finding ways to reduce inventory
•  And other areas you can improve

Threats will normally come from outside of the company but could also be things like losing a key member of the team. Threats normally come from competition, regulations, taxes, and unforeseen events.

The management team should use the SWOT analysis to guide other areas of business planning, but it absolutely has to be done before a business owner starts marketing. 

Include Competitor Data in Your Business Plan

When you plan a business, taking into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is key to navigating the field. Providing an overview of your competition and where they are headed shows that you are invested in understanding the industry.

For smaller businesses, you’ll want to search both the company and the owners names to see what they are working on. For publicly held corporations, you can find their quarterly and annual reports on the SEC website .

What another business plans to do can impact your business. Make sure to include things that might make it attractive for bigger companies to outsource to a small business.

Marketing Strategy

The marketing and sales part of business plans should be focused on how you are going to make potential customers aware of your business and then sell to them.

If you haven’t already included it, Mike recommends:

“They’ll want to know about Demographics, ages, and wealth of your target market.”

Make sure to include the Total addressable market .  The term refers to the value if you captured 100% of the market.

Advertising Strategy

You’ll explain what formats of advertising you’ll be using. Some possibilities are:

• Online: Facebook and Google are the big names to work with here.
• Print : Print can be used to reach broad groups or targeted markets. Check out this for tips .
• Radio : iHeartMedia is one of the best ways to advertise on the radio
• Cable television : High priced, hard to measure ROI, but here’s an explanation of the process
• Billboards: Attracting customers with billboards can be beneficial in high traffic areas.

You’ll want to define how you’ll be using each including frequency, duration, and cost. If you have the materials already created, including pictures or links to the marketing to show creative assets.

Mike told us “Most businesses are marketing digitally now due to Covid, but that’s not always the right answer.”

Make sure the marketing strategy will help team members or external marketing agencies stay within the brand guidelines .

This section of a business plan should be focused on pricing. There are a ton of pricing strategies that may work for different business plans. Which one will work for you depends on what kind of a business you run.

Some common pricing strategies are:

• Value-based pricing – Commonly used with home buying and selling or other products that are status symbols.
• Skimming pricing – Commonly seen in video game consoles, price starts off high to recoup expenses quickly, then reduces over time.
• Competition-based pricing – Pricing based on competitors’ pricing is commonly seen at gas stations.
• Freemium services –  Commonly used for software, where there is a free plan, then purchase options for more functionality.

HubSpot has a great calculator and blog on pricing strategies.

Beyond explaining what strategy your business plans to use, you should include references for how you came to this pricing strategy and how it will impact your cash flow.

Distribution Plan

This part of a business plan is focused on how the product or service is going to go through the supply chain. These may include multiple divisions or multiple companies. Make sure to include any parts of the workflow that are automated so investors can see where cost savings are expected and when.

Supply Chain Examples

For instance, lawn care companies  would need to cover aspects such as:

• Suppliers for lawn care equipment and tools
• Any chemicals or treatments needed
• Repair parts for sprinkler systems
• Vehicles to transport equipment and employees
• Insurance to protect the company vehicles and people.

Examples of Supply Chains

These are fairly flat supply chains compared to something like a clothing designer where the clothes would go through multiple vendors. A clothing company might have the following supply chain:

• Raw materials
• Shipping of raw materials
• Converting of raw materials to thread
• Shipping thread to produce garments
• Garment producer
• Shipping to company
• Company storage
• Shipping to retail stores

There have been advances such as print on demand that eliminate many of these steps. If you are designing completely custom clothing, all of this would need to be planned to keep from having business disruptions.

The main thing to include in the business plan is the list of suppliers, the path the supply chain follows, the time from order to the customer’s home, and the costs associated with each step of the process.

According to BizPlanReview , a business plan without this information is likely to get rejected because they have failed to research the key elements necessary to make sales to the customer.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 7. Company Organization and Operational Plan

This part of the business plan is focused on how the business model will function while serving customers.  The business plan should provide an overview of  how the team will manage the following aspects:

Quality Control

• Legal environment

Let’s look at each for some insight.

Production has already been discussed in previous sections so I won’t go into it much. When writing a business plan for investors, try to avoid repetition as it creates a more simple business plan.

If the organizational plan will be used by the team as an overview of how to perform the best services for the customer, then redundancy makes more sense as it communicates what is important to the business.

Quality control policies help to keep the team focused on how to verify that the company adheres to the business plan and meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Quality control can be anything from a standard that says “all labels on shirts can be no more than 1/16″ off center” to a defined checklist of steps that should be performed and filled out for every customer.

There are a variety of organizations that help define quality control including:

• International Organization for Standardization – Quality standards for energy, technology, food, production environments, and cybersecurity
• AICPA – Standard defined for accounting.
• The Joint Commission – Healthcare
• ASHRAE – HVAC best practices

You can find lists of the organizations that contribute most to the government regulation of industries on Open Secrets . Research what the leaders in your field are doing. Follow their example and implement it in your quality control plan.

For location, you should use information from the market research to establish where the location will be. Make sure to include the following in the location documentation.

• The size of your location
• The type of building (retail, industrial, commercial, etc.)
• Zoning restrictions – Urban Wire has a good map on how zoning works in each state
• Accessibility – Does it meet ADA requirements?
• Costs including rent, maintenance, utilities, insurance and any buildout or remodeling costs
• Utilities – b.e.f. has a good energy calculator .

Legal Environment

The legal requirement section is focused on defining how to meet the legal requirements for your industry. A good business plan should include all of the following:

• Any licenses and/or permits that are needed and whether you’ve obtained them
• Any trademarks, copyrights, or patents that you have or are in the process of applying for
• The insurance coverage your business requires and how much it costs
• Any environmental, health, or workplace regulations affecting your business
• Any special regulations affecting your industry
• Bonding requirements, if applicable

Your local SBA office can help you establish requirements in your area. I strongly recommend using them. They are a great resource.

Your business plan should include a plan for company organization and hiring. While you may be the only person with the company right now, down the road you’ll need more people. Make sure to consider and document the answers to the following questions:

• What is the current leadership structure and what will it look like in the future?
• What types of employees will you have? Are there any licensing or educational requirements?
• How many employees will you need?
• Will you ever hire freelancers or independent contractors?
• What is each position’s job description?
• What is the pay structure (hourly, salaried, base plus commission, etc.)?
• How do you plan to find qualified employees and contractors?

One of the most crucial parts of a business plan is the organizational chart. This simply shows the positions the company will need, who is in charge of them and the relationship of each of them. It will look similar to this:

Our small business plan template has a much more in-depth organizational chart you can edit to include when you include the organizational chart in your business plan.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 8. Financial Statements 

No business plan is complete without financial statements or financial projections. The business plan format will be different based on whether you are writing a business plan to expand a business or a startup business plan. Let’s dig deeper into each.

Provide All Financial Income from an Existing Business

An existing business should use their past financial documents including the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement to find trends to estimate the next 3-5 years.

You can create easy trendlines in excel to predict future revenue, profit and loss, cash flow, and other changes in year-over-year performance. This will show your expected performance assuming business continues as normal.

If you are seeking an investment, then the business is probably not going to continue as normal. Depending on the financial plan and the purpose of getting financing, adjustments may be needed to the following:

• Higher Revenue if expanding business
• Lower Cost of Goods Sold if purchasing inventory with bulk discounts
• Adding interest if utilizing financing (not equity deal)
• Changes in expenses
• Addition of financing information to the cash flow statement
• Changes in Earnings per Share on the balance sheet

Financial modeling is a challenging subject, but there are plenty of low-cost courses on the subject. If you need help planning your business financial documentation take some time to watch some of them.

Make it a point to document how you calculated all the changes to the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in your business plan so that key team members or investors can verify your research.

Financial Projections For A Startup Business Plan

Unlike an existing business, a startup doesn’t have previous success to model its future performance. In this scenario, you need to focus on how to make a business plan realistic through the use of industry research and averages.

Mike gave the following advice in his interview:

Financial Forecasting Mistakes

One of the things a lot of inexperienced people use is the argument, “If I get one percent of the market, it is worth $100 million.” If you use this, investors are likely to file the document under bad business plan examples.

Let’s use custom t-shirts as an example.

Credence Research estimated in 2018 there were 11,334,800,000 custom t-shirts sold for a total of $206.12 Billion, with a 6% compound annual growth rate.

With that data,  you can calculate that the industry will grow to $270 Billion in 2023 and that the average shirt sold creates $18.18 in revenue.

Combine that with an IBIS World estimate of 11,094 custom screen printers and that means even if you become an average seller, you’ll get .009% of the market.

Here’s a table for easier viewing of that information.

The point here is to make sure your business proposal examples make sense.

You’ll need to know industry averages such as cost of customer acquisition, revenue per customer, the average cost of goods sold, and admin costs to be able to create accurate estimates.

Our simple business plan templates walk you through most of these processes. If you follow them you’ll have a good idea of how to write a business proposal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 9. Business Plan Example of Funding Requests

What is a business plan without a plan on how to obtain funding?

The Small Business Administration has an example for a pizza restaurant that theoretically needed nearly $20k to make it through their first month.

In our video, How to Start a $500K/Year T-Shirt Business (Pt. 1 ), Sanford Booth told us he needed about $200,000 to start his franchise and broke even after 4 months.

Freshbooks estimates it takes on average 2-3 years for a business to be profitable, which means the fictitious pizza company from the SBA could need up to $330k to make it through that time and still pay their bills for their home and pizza shop.

Not every business needs that much to start, but realistically it’s a good idea to assume that you need a fairly large cushion.

Ways to get funding for a small business

There are a variety of ways to cover this. the most common are:

• Bootstrapping – Using your savings without external funding.
• Taking out debt – loans, credit cards
• Equity, Seed Funding – Ownership of a percentage of the company in exchange for current funds
• Crowdsourcing – Promising a good for funding to create the product

Keep reading for more tips on how to write a business plan.

How funding will be used

When asking for business financing make sure to include:

• How much to get started?
• What is the minimum viable product and how soon can you make money?
• How will the money be spent?

Mike emphasized two aspects that should be included in every plan, 

How to Write a Business Plan Resources

Here are some links to a business plan sample and business plan outline. 

• Sample plan

It’s also helpful to follow some of the leading influencers in the business plan writing community. Here’s a list:

• Wise Plans –  Shares a lot of information on starting businesses and is a business plan writing company.
• Optimus Business Plans –  Another business plan writing company.
• Venture Capital – A venture capital thread that can help give you ideas.

How to Write a Business Plan: What’s Next?

We hope this guide about how to write a simple business plan step by step has been helpful. We’ve covered:

• The definition of a business plan
• Coming up with a business idea
• Performing market research
• The critical components of a business plan
• An example business plan

In addition, we provided you with a simple business plan template to assist you in the process of writing your startup business plan. The startup business plan template also includes a business model template that will be the key to your success.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our business hub .

Have you written a business plan before? How did it impact your ability to achieve your goals?

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How to Start a $41K/Month T-Shirt Business (2024)

• Which Business Model Is Easiest
• Skills You Need to Create Your Own T-shirt Designs and Sell Online
• What Makes a Great Business Name
• Elements of a Good Business Plan for an Online T-shirt Business
• Where to Go to Establish Your Business Structure
• Steps to Take Before You Start Selling T-shirts Online
• Choosing a Location to Sell Your T-shirts
• What You Need to Know About Equipment
• Resources for Team Building
• How to Manage Your Small Business Finances
• Paying Taxes
• Marketing Your Business

Step 1. What's the Best Way to Start a T-Shirt Business?

• Focusing on a specific target market, such as small business t-shirts.
• Performing graphic tee design work and printing them yourself.
• Starting an ecommerce store using Print-on-Demand companies.

How to Start a T-Shirts Franchise

How to start a t-shirt printing business with big frog.

• Request information .
• Get to know the franchisor on a business call.
• Attend a webinar that goes into more detail about the responsibilities of an owner.
• Fill out disclosure documents to prove you have the resources necessary to start a t-shirt business franchise.
• Meet other franchise business owners.
• Get to know the corporate team.
• Learn to press T-shirts.
• Learn about their customer support.
• Start the franchise.
• No less than $50K liquid assets
• At least $40K working capital
• $300K net worth (varies based on regional construction costs)
• $39,500 initial franchise fee
• Initial investment of $188,344 to $247,944
• A 6% royalty paid monthly on revenue
• 1.5% of revenue for marketing costs

How to Start a Brick and Mortar T-Shirt Business

Sell custom t-shirts, sell t-shirts online.

• Amazon is the largest online marketplace on the planet. You have to be listed there.
• Facebook and Instagram Marketplaces are also massive. Some functions can be done through one platform and then work on both, but others have to be done separately. 
• eBay is another great place to sell t-shirts online. Learn about selling on eBay .
• Shopify offers an easy experience to set up your own clothing store and connects with most of the bigger marketplaces directly from your shop.
• WordPress and WooCommerce work great together for super fast ecommerce stores.
• Etsy is another great marketplace for an online t-shirt business. Check out our guide on creating an Etsy shop .

How to Sell Shirts Online with Print on Demand

Fashion Designers

Manufacturing

Step 2. learning the skills.

• Production and printing
• Business skills

Design Skills

• Draw t-shirt designs using digital software, like Photoshop , Canva , or Illustrator .
• Have a pattern maker cut the patterns for the design.
• Build a prototype.
• Make alterations.
• Create a tech pack . A tech pack is just the design specifications you give to a clothing manufacturer.
• Source the materials and begin manufacturing.
• Embroidery machines
• Sublimation
• Screen printing

• Best Fashion Design Schools
• Best Free Online Classes
• Best Fashion Design Software
• Best Print-on-Demand Companies
• An ecommerce platform (Find Investopedia's review of the best ones here .)
• Payment processors
• Editing software
• Marketing software

• Facebook and Instagram

Production and Printing Skills

• Direct to garment
• Transfer printing
• Cad cut vinyl

Business Skills

• Accounting : Udemy , edX
• Pricing : Coursera , Udemy
• Shipping : Shopify , BigCommerce
• Inventory Management : Quickbooks , Unleashed

Step 3. T-Shirt Business Name

• Will the name indicate your business sells shirts?
• Is it easy to spell?
• Will you focus on local sales? If you do, consider including the name of the location.
• Is the .com domain available ?
• Is the business name unique?
• Does your name fit your branding? Check out Big Frog's logo:

Step 4. Write a T-Shirt Business Plan

• Guiding decisions
• Securing financing
• Developing partnerships with other businesses 
• Location selection and lease negotiation
• Design and layout of the store
• Recruitment
• One-page business plan
• U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) business guide
• State-specific templates
• Business plan template for a startup business
• SCORE's free plans and startup assistance resources
• The Complete Business Plan Course (includes 50 templates)

Step 5. Establish a Legal Structure

• Sole Proprietorship : Most franchises will not allow you to run a sole proprietorship because there is no liability protection, but it's the least expensive way to start a business. Fill out a Schedule C to get started. Consider joining the American Independent Business Alliance .
• Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) : Each state has different requirements. Check your state's requirements . You might choose to register in a different state than where you live to reduce the cost of doing business. Check out the top 10 states to get an LLC.
• Corporation : If you intend to sell stock or raise funds by selling equity, you might want to become a corporation. Otherwise, stick to an LLC.
• Partnership : Normally, legal firms operate as partnerships. Unless there is a specific reason you need a partnership, it is better to do a multi-person LLC. Investopedia has good information about partnerships and corporations here .
• Franchise: Buying the right to use a company's processes and intellectual property to run one of its locations. Franchising.com has two franchise opportunities to start a t-shirt business in the United States. Big Frog is the only Direct to Garment (DTG) t-shirt franchise.

Get an Employer Identification Number (EIN)

Licenses, permits, and tax forms.

Step 6. Getting Ready for Customers

• Location: Where will you be working?
• Inventory: What will you sell, and how will you pay for it?
• Employees: Will you have employees, and how will you make sure it is a safe environment?
• Finances : How will you keep track of transactions and financial records?
• Insurance : How can you protect what you are building?
• Marketing : How will you find customers?

Step 7. T-Shirt Business Location

• Do you need space for screen printing equipment and inventory?
• Are you running an online t-shirt business? If so, you can run it from home.
• Will customers be coming to your small business?
• Does your t-shirt store have inventory?
• How will you display your t-shirt designs?
• How much space is needed to store your t-shirt designs?
• Will you host a traveling pop-up t-shirt store?

How to Start a T-shirt Business From Home

Finding a good spot, step 8. inventory, screen printing machines, and product displays.

Used Printing Machines and Product Displays

Step 9. employees.

Tax Filing and Withholding

Federal employment and labor law posters.

• Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9)
• State's New Hire Program
• Worker's Compensation Insurance
• Disability Insurance (varies by state)
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

Job Posting

• Zip Recruiter

Compensation

• Salary: You might want to assign yourself a flat weekly or monthly rate for budgeting purposes.
• Hourly: This pay structure tracks the hours an employee works and pays them a set hourly rate, but it doesn't reward performance.
• Commission: If you only want to reward performance and not time, a percentage of revenue is the way to go.
• Hybrid Models: Hybrid models combine two pay structures. Combining hourly and commission encourages employees to help drive sales.

Step 10. Financial Management

Budget! Budget! Budget!

• dsBudget : This open-source software requires some development experience.
• QuickBooks: This popular resource is used by millions to make their accounting easy by setting up rules, connecting with their bank(s) directly, and more.
• Xero : I was introduced to them through an Australian client, and people love them. In my experience, it allows you to automate most of your processes but is meant to be set up by an accountant and software developer so that the platform works specifically based on your location(s) tax needs.

How to Start a T-shirt Business with No Money

• Shopify : Get a free 30-day trial of Shopify with our affiliate link.
• A print-on-demand company : I prefer Printful.
• Social media marketing : This might be less than $500 per month and is typically more economical than other options.

Common Funding Paths

• Loans from family or friends
• Business partners
• Government programs

Alternative Sources of Funding

• Crowdfunding  
• Credit cards
• Home equity loan
• Rollover for business startups (ROBS)

Develop a Pricing Structure

Increase prices every year.

• Send an email in November letting your customers know that prices will be going up at the beginning of the year.
• Book enough online t-shirt business to keep you busy through the slow months (January to March).
• Raise prices on January 1st. 

Step 11: Sales Tax and Insurance

Sales Taxes

Step 12: marketing.

More Marketing Tips for T-Shirt Businesses

• Building relationships. Networking is what makes a business pay off.
• Continually focusing on SEO for your ecommerce business. Start by familiarizing yourself with Google requirements .
• Checking customers' previous print jobs to give you ideas on how to sell more shirts.
• Following up! It makes a difference.
• Using analytics.

Influencers

• Elon Musk : Let's face it, both Sanford and I think he's a rockstar. He mixes jokes, insight, and enthusiasm to spread his message. He's the founder of six companies and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. We can all learn from him.
• Screen Printing Blogs : Want a list of 40 blogs focused on t-shirt printing? Check out this one. 
• SEO Influencers: Rand Fishkin , Danny Sullivan ,and Neil Patel

Go Forth and Start Your Own T-Shirt Business!

• Do I know how to start an ecommerce store?
• Is it worth it for me to sell online?
• Will I be comfortable speaking to clients?
• Am I starting a clothing line this year?
• Why am I starting a clothing business?
• Do I need employees or advice to get started?
• What will I need to feel successful?

440 Stand-Out Craft Business Names

Did you know craft business owners are expected to make 50% more in 2028 than they did last year?

That means there’s a lot of demand for handmade craft business names. Choosing a great craft business name can give you a headstart in competing for potential customers.

Here, we discuss the craft industry, what makes a good craft business name, catchy craft names for your business, and how to register your craft company name.

[su_note note_color="#dbeafc"] Click on any of the links below to jump ahead in your artistic journey.

Craft Business Industry Outlook

What makes a good craft business name, what should i name my craft business, 30 catchy craft business names, 34 cool craft business names, 36 funny craft business names, 34 creative craft business names, 30 professional craft business names, 20 personal craft business names, 34 location-based craft business names, 40 handmade craft business names, 30 creative shop name ideas, 28 unique craft business names, 30 clever business names for crafters, 32 cute shop names for crafts, 32 jewelry business name ideas, 30 crochet business name ideas, how to register your craft business names.

• Next Steps After Naming Your Craft Business [/su_note]

Craft businesses are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.69% and reach $68 billion in industry revenue by 2028. That means a crafting business should expect to see considerable growth in the future if it provides quality handmade crafts.

A good craft business name should be:

• Memorable: Your business name should be easy to remember and pronounce.
• Relevant: Your business name should reflect the type of crafts you make and sell.
• Unique: Your business name should be unique and not already in use by another business.
• Professional: Your business name should sound professional and trustworthy.
• Appealing: Your business name should be appealing to your target audience.

Let’s look at some of the different ways of creating a catchy craft business name.

The best craft business names help you attract customers and communicate what your crafting business does. We’ll cover all kinds of timeless craft business names, including:

• Catchy business names for craft companies
• Cool craft names
• Funny craft names
• Creative name ideas
• Professional names for craft products
• Personal name ideas for craft business owners
• Location-based craft business naming ideas
• Business names perfect for handmade products

Keep reading to get your creative juices flowing. You’re sure to find unique craft business names that you love.

Consider one of these business name ideas when you start selling your crafts.

1. Crafty Creations 2. Creative Hands 3. The Craft Corner 4. The Happy Maker 5. The Artful Crafter 6. The Craftiest 7. The Colorful Crafter 8. The Crafters 9. The Crafty Corner 10. The Craft Zone 11. The Craft Hub 12. The Craft Room 13. The Craft Shop 14. The Craft Studio 15. The Craft Workshop

16. The Crafty Cottage 17. The Crafty Cabin 18. The Crafty Den 19. The Crafty Nook 20. The Crafty Retreat 21. The Crafty Spot 22. The Crafty Store 23. The Crafty Table 24. The Crafty Treehouse 25. The Crafty Turtle 26. The Crafty Unicorn 27. Crafty Wonderland 28. Creative Corner 29. The Creative Studio 30. Craft Galore Club

Pro Tip: Once you have a catchy business name, check if the corresponding domain name is available. Just input the name in the search bar of your web browser and see what comes up. If the website and the social media handles are available, you will have a much easier time attracting customers.

You can create a cool craft brand by combining two or more words to create a new and memorable phrase. This works especially well if they are keywords related to craft businesses.

1. Craftastic Creations 2. The Crafty Caravan 3. The Artisan's Nook 4. The Craft Emporium 5. The Crafter's Collective 6. The Crafty Cat 7. The Crafty Owl 8. The Crafticorn 9. Foxxy Crafty 10. Crafty Rabbit 11. The Crafty Bear 12. The Crafty Mouse 13. Crafty Dog 14. The Crafty Penguin 15. Crafty Frog 16. The Crafty Giraffe 17. Crafty Monkey

18. Crafty Elephant 19. The Crafty Hippo 20. Crafty Lion 21. The Crafty Tiger 22. Crafty Zebra 23. The Crafty Panda 24. Crafty Koala 25. The Crafty Kangaroo 26. Crafty Wombat 27. The Crafty Echidna 28. The Craftipus 29. Crafty Innovation 30. Yarns + Crafts 31. Crafting Cottage 32. The Paperie 33. Pottery Place 34. Woodworking Wizardry

Pro Tip: Rhyming words can also be used to come up with crafty business name ideas.

If your craft business offers products that are defined by their silly or goofy vibe, you might want to go with funny business names for crafts.

1. Artsy Fartsy Crafts 2. Bobbin and Skein 3. Color Me Happy 4. Crafty Critters 5. The Crafty Pickle 6. The Yarn Pirates 7. The Bead Bandits 8. The Crafty Cat Lady 9. The Knit Wits 10. The Sew and Sews 11. The Paper Puppets 12. The Paint Party People 13. The Claymation Crew 14. In Stitches 15. The Crafting Queens 16. The Junk Art Junkies 17. The Upcycled Oddities 18. The Mismatched Masterpieces

19. The Quirky Creations 20. The Silly Sculptors 21. The Wonky Woolen Wonders 22. The Crafty Critters 23. The Whimsical Woodland Workshop 24. The Doodling Dinosaurs 25. The Crafty Cacti 26. The Mischievous Makers 27. Playful Papercrafts 28. Goofy Gifts 29. Silly Stitches 30. Crazy Candles 31. Wonky Wall Art 32. Mismatched Mosaic Madness 33. Crafty Chaos 34. Quirky Quilts 35. Crafty Capers 36. Makin' It Mine

Pro Tip: When choosing a funny craft business name, it's important to strike the right balance of humor and professionalism. You want your name to be memorable and attention-grabbing, but you also don't want to alienate potential customers.

Here are a few tips for choosing a funny craft business name:

• Use puns or wordplay. This is a great way to add humor to your name without being too over the top.
• Choose a name that is relevant to your products or services. This will help customers understand what your business is all about.
• Keep it short and sweet. A long, complicated name is less likely to be remembered than a short, catchy one.
• Avoid using offensive or vulgar language. This could alienate potential customers and damage your reputation.

Want to create a craft business brand that stands out from other crafters? Consider some of these craft business names.

1. Stitch & Stone 2. Nature's Canvas 3. Artisan's Haven 4. Color & Craft 5. Threads & Textures 6. Paper & Paint 7. Clay & Creation 8. Mosaic Moments 9. Yarn & Wonder 10. Fiber & Fabric 11. Metal & Magic 12. Glass & Glamour 13. Wood & Whimsy 14. Resin & Radiance 15. Leather & Love 16. Quill & Ink 17. Candle & Calm

18. Soap & Serenity 19. Bath & Body Bliss 20. Home & Heart 21. Garden & Grace 22. Jewelry & Joy 23. Accessories & Adornments 24. Gifts & Gadgets 25. Party & Play 26. Learn & Create 27. Craft & Connect 28. Inspire & Be Inspired 29. The Maker's Muse 30. Spindles and Yarns 31. Fiber Frenzy 32. Funky Findings 33. Handmade Heaven 34. Heartfelt Creations

Pro Tip: You might incorporate some of your specific craft supplies’ names as you’re brainstorming creative small business names for craft companies.

Professionalism can make all the difference to craft store customers. Consider some of these names to differentiate yourself from other businesses.

1. Crafted Creations 2. The Crafted Studio 3. The Craftery 4. The Crafthouse 5. Crafty Corner 6. Creative Crafts 7. Design & Craft 8. Handmade Elegance 9. Handcrafted Wonders 10. The Craft Loft 11. The Craft Parlour 12. The Craft Station 13. The Crafty Rabbit 14. The Designery 15. The Maker's Place

16. The Maker's Studio 17. The Studio 18. The Workshop 19. Uniquely Crafted 20. Baubles & Blooms 21. Crafted with Love 22. Handcrafted Treasures 23. The Crafting Co. 24. The Crafty Canary 25. The Crafty Cardinal 26. Handmade with Love 27. Crafted By Yours Truly 28. Passion Crafts 29. World of Crafts 30. Wonderfully Handmade

Pro Tip: Your business name ideas should help people understand what you do. You don’t want to confuse customers.

When it comes to personal business names, ideas might include your first name, last name, or something or someone dear to you. Consider some of these creative names for business owners.

1. Emily's Embellishments 2. Ava + Milo Studio 3. Jake's Handmade Haven 4. Lily's Craft Corner 5. Alex's Artistry Alcove 6. Masterpieces by Mason 7. Chloe's Creative Crafts 8. Owen's Originals 9. Bella's Boutique Creations 10. Noah's Nifty Crafts

11. Ava's Artful Designs 12. Smith & Stitches Studio 13. Johnsons Jovial Crafts 14. Anderson Artisans 15. Davis Design Den 16. Taylor Family Treasures Workshop 17. The Miller's Handcrafted Haven 18. Lily & Sage Creations 19. EthanRose Designs 20. Olivia-Max Crafts

Pro Tip: Adding a personal touch to business name ideas helps make your craft store name more relatable to your target customers.

Using your location as part of your craft business name is a great way of selling arts locally.

1. Albuquerque Artisans 2. Anchorage Crafts 3. Atlanta Artworks 4. Austin Artisans 5. Baltimore Crafts 6. Rodeo Drive Designs 7. Boston Creations 8. Charleston Craftsmen 9. Chicago Crafters 10. Cleveland Crafts 11. Columbus Creation 12. Dallas Designs 13. Denver Designs 14. Abbey Road Artistry 15. Detroit Artisans 16. Houston Handcrafts 17. Indianapolis Craftsmen

18. Jacksonville Creations 19. Kansas City Crafts 20. Las Vegas Craftsmen 21. Los Angeles Creations 22. Louisville Artisans 23. Bourbon Street Crafts 24. Memphis Craftsmen 25. Miami Designs 26. Milwaukee Crafters 27. Minneapolis Creations 28. Nashville Craftsmen 29. New Orleans Crafts 30. New York City Creations 31. Orlando Artisans 32. Philadelphia Craftsmen 33. Phoenix Designs 34. Fifth Avenue Creations

Pro Tip: You might also try cute business names using nicknames for your region.

Handmade craft business name ideas can help show that your specific craft is done by hand. See if any of these unique business names for handmade crafts is a win for your business.

1. The Crafted Corner 2. The Maker's Market 3. One-of-a-Kind Creations 4. The Handmade Studio 5. The Craft Cottage 6. Creations by [Your Name] 7. The Upcycled Workshop 8. The Sustainable Stitchery 9. The Yarn Haven 10. The Soap Emporium 11. Candlelight Studio 12. The Artful Abode 13. The Creative Nook 14. The Artisanal Marketplace 15. The Handmade Collective 16. The Maker's Guild 17. The Craft Bazaar 18. Artisan's Alley 19. Handmade Haven 20. The Upcycled Market

21. Sustainable Studio 22. Eco-Friendly Emporium 23. Trinket Trove 24. Crafty Kaleidoscope 25. Tantalizing Creations 26. Upcycled Creative 27. Fabled Fibers 28. Fibers and You 29. Craft Me Not 30. Lovingly Handmade 31. Inspired by Nature 32. Joyful Creations 33. Knitting Nook 34. Papercraft Paradise 35. Piecework Perfection 36. Quilting Corner 37. Recycled Relics 38. Sew Much Fun 39. Something Special 40. Stitching Time

Whether you’re looking for an Etsy shop name or are opening a brick-and-mortar retail store selling your crafts, a great shop name can help your business thrive. Consider some of these craft business name ideas. 

1. The Gilded Thimble 2. The Yarn Garden 3. The Bead Bazaar 4. The Fabric Emporium 5. The Paper Palace 6. The Paint Box 7. The Clay Studio 8. The Jewelry Workshop 9. The Woodworking Shop 10. The Glassblowing Studio 11. The Pottery Barn 12. The Fiber Arts Studio 13. The Weaving Studio 14. The Knitting Nook 15. The Quilting Bee

16. The Embroidery Guild 17. The Cross-Stitch Society 18. The Needlepoint Club 19. The Tatting Circle 20. The Lace-Making Society 21. The Bobbin Lace Guild 22. The Crochet Club 23. The Macrame Society 24. The Beading Circle 25. The Jewelry-Making Guild 26. Sew Many Stitches 27. The Doodling Dragon 28. The Mismatched Menagerie 29. The Beaded Bookmark 30. The Quirky Quilter

Want unique craft business name ideas? Here are a few examples.

1. Handman Concoctions 2. Crafty Kids 3. Natural Materials Crafters 4. Craft 4 Days 5. Crafts Gone Wild 6. Curious Craft Company 7. Crafts Galore 8. The Crafty Kraken 9. The Creative Canvas 10. The Stitching Studio 11. The Yarn Emporium 12. The Paintbox 13. The Clay Cottage 14. The Jewelry Junction

15. The Scrapbooking Shack 16. The Upcycling Emporium 17. The Repurposing Realm 18. The Eco-Friendly Crafts Co. 19. The Craft Collective 20. Craft Central 21. Crafty Craze 22. Craftastic World 23. Inkwell & Quill 24. Crafty Concoctions 25. The Painted Petal 26. The Enchanted Easel 27. Button Bonanza 28. The Gilded Loom

Craft business name ideas should show off how crafty you are. What better way than to come up with a clever company name? Try some of these craft business name ideas.

1. Threaded Dreamscapes 2. Fiddlesticks & Fleece 3. Wondrous Weaves 4. Yarnicorn Creations 5. The Looping Llama 6. Crochet Couture 7. Whimsy & Wool 8. Cuddly Creations 9. The Hooked Haven 10. Yarnivore's Delight 11. Knot Just Crochet 12. Threaded Tales & Trails 13. Stitchy & Chic 14. The Wooly Wyvern 15. The Cozy Nest

16. Yarnography 17. The Unraveling Ramble 18. Stitching Symphony 19. Woolful Wonders 20. The Hooked Hippogriff 21. Yarntastic Creations 22. The Cozy Cauldron 23. Loopty-Loo Crafts 24. Hooked on Happiness 25. Stitchin' with Sass 26. Knotty, Spice, and Everything Nice 27. Hook, Line & Stitcher 28. The Yarnival Effect 29. The Fuzzy Foxglove 30. The Critter's Crochet

1. The Threadbender 2. The Painted Fox 3. The Twisted Twine 4. The Gilded Lily 5. The Woven Willow 6. The Knotty Gnome 7. The Beaded Butterfly 8. Our Enchanted Forest 9. The Mermaid's Cove 10. The Dragon's Hoard 11. The Unicorn's Horn 12. The Rainbow Room 13. The Land of Oz 14. Candy Land Crafts 15. The Glass Chocolate 16. Bon Bon Craft Supplies

17. Toyland Crafters 18. The Enchanted Garden 19. The Magic Kingdom 20. The Land of Make-Believe 21. The Land of Dreams 22. Neverland Crafts 23. The Lost World 24. The Secret Garden 25. Misty Mountains Crafters 26. Sparkling Sea Artisans 27. Whispering Woods Studio 28. The Starry Night 29. Knotty and Nice 30. Whimsical Baubles 31. The Yarn Barn 32. Whimsical Wonders

A jewelry company is often focused on crafting and will be appealing to its customers’ aesthetic sensibility. You might try some of these handmade business name ideas if you’re selling a custom jewelry line.

1. The Jewelry Box 2. Adorned Elegance 3. Artisan Jewels 4. Bling Bliss 5. Charm & Chic 6. Dazzling Delights 7. Enchanted Embellishments 8. Exquisite Adornments 9. Gemstone Glamour 10. Heirloom Jewels 11. Jeweled Creations 12. Luminous Luxuries 13. Made with Love Jewelry 14. Ornate Opulence 15. Precious Pieces 16. Radiant Reflections

17. Shimmering Splendor 18. Sparkling Sensations 19. The Bling Boutique 20. Timeless Treasures 21. Unique Adornments 22. Vintage Vibes Jewelry 23. Wearable Art 24. Artisan Adornments 25. Crafted with Care 26. Elegant Expressions 27. Enchanted Elegance 28. Handmade Heirlooms 29. Enchanted Trinkets 30. Embellished by You 31. Diamond Bright Studio 32. The Beading Boutique

Want more ideas? Check out our picks for a crochet business.

Many craft business owners like to crochet. Consider some of these names for crocheted crafts.

1. Hooked on Crochet 2. Stitches of Love 3. The Crochet Corner 4. A Stitch in Time 5. Knotty by Nature 6. Yarn and Joy 7. The Crochet Studio 8. The Yarn Loft 9. Hooked on Handmade 10. The Crochet Cottage 11. The Crochet Parlour 12. The Yarn Boutique 13. The Stitchery 14. The Crochet Nook 15. The Yarn Stash

16. Yarn Over 17. Hook, Line, and Sinker 18. The Yarn Diva 19. The Crochet Queen 20. The Yarn Whisperer 21. The Crochet Goddess 22. The Yarn Enthusiast 23. The Crochet Maven 24. The Yarnista 25. The Crochet Alchemist 26. Yarnspirations 27. Knotty Nirvana 28. Purrfectly Hooked 29. The Cozy Burrow 30. The Wandering Skein

Now that you have plenty of craft business name inspiration, it’s time to talk about how to register your craft business’s name. You’ll want to make sure to:

• Choose a business name. Your business name should be unique, memorable, and relevant to your products or services. It should also be available as a domain name and social media handle.
• Check the availability of your business name. Once you have chosen a business name, you should check to see if it is available in your state. You can do this by searching the Secretary of State's website or contacting the office directly.
• File a DBA (Doing Business As) name. If your business name is different from your legal name, you will need to file a DBA name with the county clerk's office in the county where your business is located.
• Register your business with the IRS. You will need to register your business with the IRS to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN). You can do this online or by mail.
• Obtain the necessary licenses and permits. Depending on the type of craft business you are operating, you may need to obtain certain licenses and permits. You can contact your local Chamber of Commerce or the Small Business Administration (SBA) for more information.

Local artisans will have so much more to accomplish for their handmade business operations to be successful. Let’s discuss some of the things you’ll need to do next.

Next Steps After Naming Your Craft Business

Once you’ve found a craft business name you love and registered it, you’ll need to start building your inventory of crafts, create a website, and start marketing your crafts. One of the best ways to market a crafts business is to record yourself making them and share your videos on social media.

What crafts business name do you like?

13 Recession-Proof Businesses (2024)

Are you worried about the direction of the global economy?

You’re not alone. Both business owners and employees are feeling a crunch from rising costs. That’s why we’re going to discuss recession-proof businesses.

[su_note note_color="#dbeafc"] We’ll help you understand more about recessions, including:

Are we in an economic downturn?

What are recession-proof businesses, what industries are recession-proof.

• How do economic downturns impact businesses ?

Recession-Proof Business Ideas: 13 Good Businesses to Start in a Bad Economy

Benefits of starting a business in a bad economy.

• Conclusion [/su_note]

When you’re done reading this, you’ll have an understanding of recession-proof sectors and be prepared for the next economic downturn. Read from start to finish or click any of the links above to jump straight to the section you need to know more about right now.

According to the Federal Reserve , as of April 5, 2024, we are not in a recession, but economic downturns tend to occur every 6.33 years and typically last between 6 and 18 months.

The last economic downturn was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and government shutdowns that lasted two quarters. Prior to that, the housing market crash of 2008 resulted in a recession that lasted for nearly two years.

Many people believe that the relatively high rate of inflation, the housing and rent bubble, and the reduction in spending power for many Americans are signs that the economic climate is primed for another economic crisis.

If you’re a business owner, now’s the time to should look at your business model and consider how it will survive and thrive during tough economic times.

Recession-proof businesses are companies in industries that tend to perform better than the gross domestic product (GDP) as a whole.

As we experienced during the pandemic, if a small business was considered an “essential service,” it could ride out the tough times because the economic activity that kept it afloat didn’t stop, even when most businesses were not allowed to operate as usual.

When a recession hits, some industries and sectors tend to do better than others. There are essential services and products that people still need during economic slumps, including:

• Utility services
• Disposable goods
• Consumer staples
• Auto repairs

Meanwhile, revenue streams tend to dry up for some companies when widespread economic hardship occurs. Consumer demand for the following tends to decrease during an economic recession:

• New automobiles
• Restaurants
• Large purchases

The economic conditions during each recession will be different, which means consumers cut costs in different areas depending on what the scenario is.

For instance, during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, real estate agents were hardest hit because the cash reserves and risk appetite of banks were vastly reduced. In the 1980s, oil embargos caused people to reduce their driving because of gas shortages.

How do economic downturns impact businesses?

When economic uncertainty hits, small business owners will normally experience a reduction of incoming cash flow and be compelled to tighten up their budgets and stop hiring.

When the economic situation gets even worse, they may need to offer cheaper alternatives, lay people off, and, in the worst-case scenario, close their businesses.

Industries that are recession-proof will normally be able to avoid many of the worst-case scenarios because people still need food, clothing, shelter, and other recession-proof products.

In the sections below, we’ll discuss industries that do well in recession.

The following businesses are sorted based on the number of searches for each type of recession-proof business. Why? Search volume is a good indicator of the demand for information about recession-proof industries.

Consider the following recession-proof business ideas:

• Affiliate marketing
• Grocery stores
• Food delivery services
• Auto repair shops
• Home improvement and home repair companies
• Property management companies
• Cleaning services
• Accounting services
• Healthcare industry
• Information technology support
• Dollar stores

Keep reading to learn about the most recession-proof industries.

1. Affiliate Marketing

According to Kinsta , 56% of affiliate marketers increased their earnings during the recession of 2020, making it the best recession-proof business. If that’s not enough, Authority Hacker expects affiliate marketing to be a $27.78 billion recession-proof industry by 2027.

Affiliate marketing is the most commonly searched for recession-proof business. It doesn’t require an inventory, and you make commissions on every sale.

You might need to refer people to recession-proof services like bookkeeping services and rideshare services to keep your income flowing, but there are plenty of great affiliate marketing offerings.

Learn more about affiliate marketing through our interview with affiliate marketing master Matt Diggity.

2. Grocery Store

Grocery stores are another of the most recession-resistant business models. The food industry is never going to end because we have to eat to survive.

According to Forbes , people spend about 14% of their income on food, and the percentage of that spending that goes to fast food and restaurants has declined from 45% to 40%. That means people are grocery shopping more.

Check out our interview with Punardeep Sandhu, a serial entrepreneur who owns a grocery store.

3. Food Delivery Services

According to Bloomberg Second Measure , delivering food spiked during the pandemic. Given this industry hasn’t been around long enough to survive multiple recessions, it might not be as recession-resistant as the chart suggests.

That said, a business owner could focus on offering the same services for grocery stores to help protect against sudden reduced cash flow.

Find out how Adam Haber started his courier services working with Amazon.

4. Auto Repair Shops

According to the Denver Post , auto mechanics saw a 16% increase in revenue during the 2008 financial crisis, making it a fairly recession-proof business. These support services benefited from the lack of available loans during that time.

Meanwhile, repair shops saw a decrease in business during the pandemic because people drove 13.2% less .

Find out how Lucky Sing started his repair business in 2016 for just $20,000.

5. Home Improvement and Home Repair Companies

During the Great Recession, the home improvement and repairs industry dropped 1% the first year before starting to increase again according to Statista . Meanwhile, home repairs increased by 22% during the pandemic.

Depending on the cause of each recession, the business opportunities may be in repairs or improvement. Offering both types of services makes a business that much more recession-proof.

Check out our list of construction businesses to learn more about starting home repair and improvement businesses.

6. Property Management Companies

According to the Congressional Research Survey , there are 49.5 million rental properties in the United States. Furthermore, 44% of them are managed by property managers according to DoorLoop .

People don’t stop renting just because the economy isn’t doing well, and these companies take a percentage of monthly revenue.

Learn more about property management and real estate investment.

7. Cleaning Services

A cleaning business can be recession-resistant. Home cleaners may find people cut back on cleanings, but janitorial services are unlikely to stop managing cleaning contracts because nobody wants to go to a business that is filthy.

During the pandemic, many cleaning services added sterilization services to drive new revenue and growth.

Learn how Christobal Mondragon makes over $1.5 million per year in our exclusive cleaning business course .

8. Accounting Services

Almost everyone in the United States needs accounting services. Some people only need once-per-year tax filing assistance, while others need financial advisors for things like:

• Financial planning services
• Bookkeeping
• Quarterly taxes
• Comparing financing options

These services are in high demand during all economic conditions.

9. Healthcare Industry

The healthcare sector benefits from people getting sick and having emergencies. That means healthcare companies make money no matter what the economy is doing.

Right now is a perfect time for starting a new business in the healthcare industry. According to The Hill , the entire healthcare industry is facing shortages of essential workers. The work is typically high paying and offers job security for those who can handle the grueling hours and stressful environment.

10. Child Care

According to Statista , there are 46.6 million American kids under 11 years old. The Census Bureau estimates 17% of their parents rely on paid childcare services. Meanwhile, the Department of Labor reports that people pay between $5,357 and $17,171 per year for childcare.

In-home daycares make great small businesses—you can save money and fulfill the ever-higher demand for childcare.

Pro Tip: Check out our picks for 698 Endearing Daycare Names and How to Start a Day Care (in 9 Simple Steps) .

11. Information Technology Support

IT support companies are recession-proof companies because people still need help solving their tech-related problems, even in a downturn.

According to Axios , tech companies did poorly at the turn of the century because of the tech bust, but 2008 led to a lot of new technology that opened new business opportunities. Then, in the pandemic, there were grants to help small businesses implement new technology.

Small business ideas in this field tend to have high profits that make it easier for them to be recession-proof businesses. Just make sure to save money so you can weather economic downturns and invest in businesses that thrive in recession.

12. Pet Care

Recession-resistant industries include pet care. These are good business ideas because pets still need to be fed and go to the bathroom during economic downturns.

These recession-resistant businesses can use affordable luxuries like online shopping, digital marketing, and social media to make modern life easier for their pet-owning customers.

13. Dollar Stores

Dollar stores tend to do best when money is tight. According to USA Today , multiple chains are closing down their dollar stores due to financial challenges.

These businesses need to be able to purchase things in bulk and sell them for low costs, which requires implementing successful and sustainable buying and pricing strategies.

While dollar stores can be businesses that are recession-proof, getting into the game might be best in expansionary times.

Starting a business during a recession can actually be really beneficial. A recession often provides people who want to start a business with some competitive advantages, including:

• An Obvious Problem: Recessions are almost always tied to a specific event or industry bubble. Finding the solution to solve that problem can be highly beneficial.
• Lower Costs: Many large purchases, like equipment, real estate, and existing businesses, tend to be less expensive during economic downturns.
• More government incentives: Governments tend to provide other businesses more support during recessions than expansionary times. As long as you provide a solution in the industries they are focused on, this can help you.

Don’t focus so much on what industries do well in a recession; rather, focus on the industries in which you can differentiate yourself.

Consider this example: Lee Kindell started Moto Pizza when COVID shutdowns closed his hotel. He put $60,000 on a credit card to open the pizza shop—and has since opened multiple locations. Find out how he did it in the interview below.

At this point, you have an understanding of recession-proof businesses that commonly perform well during an economic downturn.

We discussed the industries that perform well during recessions, how businesses are impacted by recessions, what businesses do well in a recession, and why you might want to start a business…even during an economic downturn.

It’s up to you to do the research on each business, but we have interviewed hundreds of business owners to learn what they did and how you can speed up your process to success. Consider taking one of our courses to start a successful business faster .

What recession-proof business will you start?

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Home » Teens

Business Plan Templates for Teens

If you want to launch a business, you have to have a plan! Here are some templates to help you get started.

The key to any successful business is to have a plan before getting started. Mapping out the business details is instrumental in determining if this idea is worth pursuing, which can save a lot of time and resources that could be used towards a different business that would be better suited for you and your business needs and wants. 

What To Include In a Business Plan

The point of a business plan is to outline your business strategy and plan your business out on paper. As your business grows and you are looking at expansion options, lenders will want a well-defined business plan to help them determine if lending to your business is the best option. When looking at business plan template packages for teens, you are looking for business plan templates that will help you transition your business ideas to full-fledged businesses that will help adults see the vision. 

The 7 parts of a business plan include:

• Executive Summary
• Business Description
• Products and Services
• Market Analysis
• Strategy and Implementation of Strategy
• Organizational Structure and Management Team
• Financial Plan and Future Projections

Best Business Plan Templates for Teenagers

Bizkids’ guide to writing a business plan.

This resource helps define the business idea and determine what to charge for the products and services that you want to offer. Learn how to evaluate your competition and what they are doing with their brand to bring value to their customers to figure out ways to make your brand unique so you can stand out in the marketplace. Determine what resources you need to build your business and how much those resources will cost you. Are there ways to bootstrap the company to make startup costs cheaper? Learn about breakeven costs and how many units you have to sell before you start making a profit with your business idea.

Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox: The Small-Business Guide for Teens

This toolbox provides 8 easy to follow, actionable steps to help teens evaluate whether or not their business idea is feasible for them to start and how to go about getting started. If you don’t currently have an idea for what business to start, this provides ideas and how to get started with them! Real teens share real business experiences and advice from their own journey, which can help you avoid making common business mistakes that will decrease your learning curve and get motivation and encouragement from teens that have faced similar challenges while building their businesses. Learn about marketing techniques that work, how to provide top-notch customer service, money management of profits, and goal setting for future growth. 

Home Sweet Road’s My Business Plan

This one-page business plan is free and easily downloadable. It can be printed out and hung on the wall for easy reference. The questions asked in this document are thought-provoking and help teens determine who the target audience is for their products and services. Defining the target audience will help establish a solid marketing plan that conveys the value of the product offering while making sure that the customer’s needs are being met. Customers want to buy from businesses that understand their needs and provide an ideal solution.

Proverbial Homemaker’s Family Business Plan Guide

Families can work together to build a business that kids and teens can run themselves and are passionate about running using this comprehensive business template and associated resources. Consider first why you want to start a business and why you are choosing THIS specific business. Understanding the reason for selecting that business idea builds confidence and helps maintain the passion for the company as time goes on. Create a monetary budget based on projected profits and figure out what price is best to charge for your products and services to secure sales from your target market. Set goals and manage your time, then figure out what laws are applicable for your business venture.

Learn how to conduct market research to see if there is a need for the services you want to provide before starting by conducting surveys or soft test launches. Find out where to source materials to make products and how much that will cost.  

Boss Club Kid Entrepreneur Kit

This kit is literally a business in a box, so kids and teens can get started right away as soon as they have it in their hands! Choose your kit and create the following businesses:

• Homemade dog treats
• Specialty cake pops
• Luxury bath bombs
• Delicious fudge
• Handmade soaps

If you are homeschooling, this kit counts as a homeschooling resource that you can receive credit for completing, which is a fantastic additional perk of using this tool. The intended audience is kids and teens ages 11-18, and provides over 100 videos with step-by-step instructions on how to set up and grow a business from the ground up. So far, over 100 schools across the United States are using this option for their students to learn how to set up a business that they are passionate about running. Getting teens started young on their entrepreneurial journey has been found to build self-esteem and teach decision-making early on that helps young adults make solid decisions in their lives as they mature. The benefit of this specific program is that it was created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and not created by scholars that don’t have practical business knowledge. There is a quiz on their website that takes 30 seconds and helps you decide what business is best for your needs. 

Small Business Administration

This is a great government resource for teens who want to learn about business for free and about what resources are available from the government, such as loans and business coaching from experienced business owners in your community. There is no absolute right or wrong way to write a business plan in business, and you can choose how your business will run or how much money you need to start it. This resource allows you to walk through your business idea and plan with an experienced business owner that can talk through the pros and cons of what you feel is the next step for your business, from expansion to new investors to additional product offerings. This resource offers two different business plan templates that walk you through example business plans.

Solid Gold Biz Plan

This free business plan template from Money Prodigy discusses the author’s mistakes during her first 7 years in business and provides insights into how she would have conducted her business affairs differently if she had to start over again knowing what she knows now. The primary goal of this template is to find a problem that your business will solve. Many new entrepreneurs focus on the product or service but not on the problem it will solve in the marketplace. The goal should be to identify the problem and then develop the solution that will be offered as a product or service by your company. After determining the primary problem, she focuses on how to best deliver the solution and how much it will cost to maintain the delivery of the product or service. 

Shark Tank Lessons in Business and Entrepreneurship from Scholastic

A free lesson plan with a teacher’s guide that can be used in a group setting or as a family! Topics covered include entrepreneurship basics, writing an effective business plan, crafting persuasive pitches for investment presentations, and how to find a great business mentor. The target age group is grades 6 to 12.

Shark Tank Marketing Plan

A worksheet template that focuses on the target demographic for your business and the motivation that that demographic would have to buy a product or service that you are offering so you can establish the best way to market to them. Games are encouraged with this marketing package because this helps draw out ideas in fun ways that promote creativity and growth. Business is about finding creative solutions to problems and pivoting the company into new arenas when it becomes necessary for growth. Keeping an active marketing plan up to date as the business grows is key to expanding when necessary or finding innovative ways to keep customers engaged with your brand. 

Shark Tank Analysis Worksheet

Use this worksheet when evaluating businesses to learn what investors are looking for when assessing whether or not to invest in a business. Understanding what investors are looking for in a management team, mission, vision, product/service, research and development, and strategic implementation will help you create that within your own business to make your foundation strong.

A strong business plan that is well defined will take even the novice entrepreneur to the expert level of business in no time with the proper preparation. Using a business plan template in areas of planning, marketing, product development, and strategy will assist in building a business that can be bootstrapped and stood up quickly to test the business out in ways that require little startup capital.

Related Reading

• Entrepreneurship for teens
• How to earn money for teens

7 Business Plan Templates for Kids (Free Printables!)

By: Author Amanda L. Grossman

Posted on Last updated: May 7, 2024

Download one of these (mostly) free business plan templates for kids to help your child focus on a business idea.

What do supersoakers, Apple computers, and Nike shoes all have in common?

They all started as a business plan.

A business plan template for kids is great for two reasons:

• Your child can play around with it and get familiar with what's required (even if they never start the business)
• It helps kids focus on just one business idea at a time, and to see if they should move forward with it

No matter which category your own child falls into – just playing with business plans, or they have an actual business idea – I’ve got just the free business plan template for you.

Honestly? I wish my own parents would’ve given me one of these when, as a kid, my childhood friend and I had come up with our first kid business idea: selling bean bags. So, good on you for getting your kids involved with business plans so early in life!

Best Business Plan Templates for Kids

Use one of the business plan templates for kids below with one of these 16 kid business ideas .

OR, help them to use one of their original ideas sending sparks in their brain. You can use these 3 kid business plan examples for help with filling it out.

1. Solid Gold Biz Plan

I’ve been in business for 7 years and I’ve made about every mistake in the book.

Probably one of the biggest? Was that I didn't sit down to write a proper business plan (or, ANY business plan) until I was several years into blogging. 

Because of this, I created a free business plan template for kids and teens (on Page 6 of this free printable), so that they practice how to do it right, from the beginning! 

What makes my free Solid Gold Biz Plan different is that it starts your child thinking about the problem that they want to solve – because ultimately, that is the purpose of creating a product or a service. To solve a specific problem for people.

It then goes on to ask them simple questions that will focus them in on what it takes to plan out a business idea.

For example, I raise the question of how much it will cost to not only create the product/service but to also deliver it and maintain it. These are sometimes costs forgotten costs when creating a business plan.

2. BizKids’ Guide to Writing a Business Plan

This free business plan guide for kids includes sections for your idea, your marketing (and what makes your product unique), your startup costs, and an area for pricing so that you can make sure you’ll make a profit.

At the end is a one-page summary where your child can write up their answers from the previous pages all in the same place. Great for tacking up on the wall!

3. Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox

Anthony ONeal partnered up with Dave Ramsey to create the  Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox , a kid’s entrepreneur kit and small business guide for teens.

In other words, it’s so much more than just a business template for kids!

The entrepreneur kit includes the following:

• Access to the Free Entrepreneur Toolbox app
• Teen Portfolio Book
• DVD of Anthony’s Training Video
• Parent’s Guide Book
• Pack of Thank You Cards
• Deck of Conversation Starter Cards about Starting a Business
• Goal Tracker Poster

Here's my full review of the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox .

4. Proverbial Home Maker’s Family Business Plan Guide

This is such a fun guide that you can fill out with your child, teen, tween, or even the whole family. It includes family business ideas, a sales ledger, an inventory worksheet, and much more.

Business Plan Examples

You may be wondering where you can find business plan examples to show your kids or teens.

For starters, you should look right at home. Are you a small business owner?

Then you’ll definitely want my free Take Your Child to Work Day printables – it’s got a section for you to fill in about your own business, which is a perfect business plan example to discuss with your child.

You can also find two business plan examples on the Small Business Administration’s site (scroll down until you see red buttons for Rebecca’s example business plan, and Andrew’s plan).

They’re not entirely kid-friendly but can give lots of ideas for the kind of information and research to put into a business plan.

Business Plan Activity Worksheets

Check out these free PDF Shark Tank worksheets for students . Students or kids can work through coming up with their own business ideas, create an advertisement for it, and a scoring card to judge the business ideas.

You’ll find a free 30-minute Small Business Administration course for young entrepreneurs meant for teens that you can use with your students (or have your child go through).

Hint: In Objective 3, it goes over how to create a business plan.

Are you an educator? Great – you can get a free entrepreneur curriculum for Grades 1 – 12, with lots of worksheets, from the Venture Lab .

Further resources include:

• Teen Business Video Lessons
• EverFI’s Entrepreneurial Expedition
• FEE’s Course on the Entrepreneur’s Role in Creating Value
• Business Plan Note Taker (lots of great prompts to create a business plan with)

Grab 23 more entrepreneur lesson plans here.

I hope you've found some business templates for kid resources that interest you. Below, you'll find other related kid entrepreneurship articles that will help your kids, teens, and students learn about the entrepreneur's career path. 

Related Kid Entrepreneurship Resources

• 27 Youth Entrepreneur Awards and Scholarships
• 5 Kid Entrepreneur Kits
• 14 Kid Entrepreneur Books
• 11 Best Business Simulation Games for Kids
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This free Notion document contains the best 100+ resources you need for building a successful startup, divided in 4 categories: Fundraising, People, Product, and Growth.

This free eBook goes over the 10 slides every startup pitch deck has to include, based on what we learned from analyzing 500+ pitch decks, including those from Airbnb, Uber and Spotify.

This free sheet contains 100 accelerators and incubators you can apply to today, along with information about the industries they generally invest in.

This free sheet contains 100 VC firms, with information about the countries, cities, stages, and industries they invest in, as well as their contact details.

This free sheet contains all the information about the top 100 unicorns, including their valuation, HQ's location, founded year, name of founders, funding amount and number of employees.

The Best 36 Business Ideas for Students on a Budget 2024

Description

Everything you need to raise funding for your startup, including 3,500+ investors, 7 tools, 18 templates and 3 learning resources.

Information about the countries, cities, stages, and industries they invest in, as well as their contact details.

List of 250 startup investors in the AI and Machine Learning industries, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.

List of startup investors in the BioTech, Health, and Medicine industries, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.

List of startup investors in the FinTech industry, along with their Twitter, LinkedIn, and email addresses.

When you are a high school or college student, you generally have huge batches of free time. There's no better way to spend them than becoming a student entrepreneur...

In the past decade, the world has seen many incredible businesses being started by college students (Facebook, just to name one).

Is it Possible to Start a Business While Being a Student?

The internet has removed many barriers that once prevented students from starting businesses. These days, there are no legal, financial, or knowledge restrictions holding you back from launching a side hustle while in school.

School and university demand many of your hours, but if you stay organized and make the best use of your hours, you will find time to both study and run your startup.

Best 36 Business Ideas for Students

1) sell used books.

Difficulty : Low

Investment : Low

Description : You finished your academic year, congratulations! Now check your desk… you have a pile of used books, right? In many cases, they end up in your house’s trash bins. However, there’s something better to do with them: sell them to younger students at a cheaper price than what a new copy is.

You'll probably, at least, make enough money to purchase the books needed for your next semester. The best of this idea is that it doesn’t require either any investment or much time.

Resources : Here’s an article on the 6 best places to re-sell old books and some tips on how to do it.

2) Flip Websites

Difficulty : Medium

Investment : High

Description : You buy websites that are exiting for a low price, grow them in 6 months to 2 years, and sell them at a much higher price for a profit. There are people who work full-time on this and make millions per year with their sites.

The key here is to buy a high-quality website at a low price. There’s a ton of information on what you should consider and check when doing it. At the same time, there are all kinds of free digital marketing courses that you will find useful if growing one of these websites.

Resources : Flippa , Empire Flippers, and Micro Acquire are three website marketplaces. Besides that, you should check out this article on how to find, evaluate and buy websites , as well as this review we've written about Micro Acquisitions course , which goes all about buying, growing, and selling sites.

3) Re-Selling

Investment : Medium

Description : There’s an ethical unresolved issue around re-selling sneakers, tickets, or whatever, but I’ve personally seen many people make loads of money buying items at a low price and selling them at a higher one. Re-selling works best with limited items (such as the mentioned tickets and some exclusive sneakers), as those who haven’t been able to purchase them are willing to pay more than their original price to have them once the item is out of stock.

The key when re-selling is understanding the market and anticipating which items will people be more willing to pay for once they run out. Note that it can be pretty risky; I know of a guy who bought 10 tickets for a concert and couldn’t re-sell them. He ended up inviting all of his friends for free with a huge loss.

Resources : This is a really inspirational article on how to re-sell sneakers and make a profit.

4) Writing Services

Description : Start a website that offers all kinds of writing services to students or businesses. It could be anything from sales & marketing copy, SEO content, essay writing, academic papers, or even simple proofreading.

There are already many trustworthy services online, and before starting out your own writing service, it is a good idea to work as a professional essay writer for a top website. After you have gained some valuable experience doing this, you can move on to creating your own essay-writing service. You could charge per hour or project.

+1 if the website invites other fellow students to offer such writing services and you charge a fee ;)

Resources : This article will help you decide whether you should or should not start freelance writing. If yes, make sure to check this one, which teaches you how to do it.

5) Play Cupid

Description : Set up a website or an app, exclusively for your college campus or local area, to let the singles meet. This will be much appreciated by the community and, with a small fee, the app could kick-off and be the Tinder of your campus or neighbourhood.

The app could, instead, be focused around networking. People could use it to meet other people and make new friends.

Alternatively, the app could also be focused around professional networking.

Resources : This Bubble template is a great and cheap point to start a dating app.

6) Motivational Apps

Difficulty : Hard

Investment : Medium 

Description : Motivational apps have a broad scope range. They could be for anything from academics to mental health.

Consider academics. The app could show events, seminars, or lectures and let the user log the attendance to these, getting award points in exchange. Such apps encourage improved productivity among students in a positive and fun way.

These rewards could be in the form of vouchers, coupons, or deals for any local service. For the sponsors, this would be a worthwhile advertisement option among the clientele too.

Similar apps could be designed for fitness, gym attendance, and other activities too.

The easiest way to monetize such an idea would be through ads.

Resources : There are many tools out there to build apps cheaply and fastly (even without coding). Check our Tools page .

7) Babysitting

Description : There will always be demand for babysitters and nannies. With both parents working and maternity and paternity leave shrinking in length, the market for this is only widening. If you have a knack with babies and have a pleasing personality, you are already good to go.

Resources : Here is a detailed article on how to properly set up your babysitting business and make the most of it.

8) Babysitting Network

‍ Difficulty : Medium

Description : You can create a sort of marketplace for babysitting. Other prospective babysitters could sign up for it and offer their babysitting services. Parents could select between the available babysitters and hire them through the platform. You could keep a commission.

Even if you are not able to do the babysitting job due to lack of time, you'll still make a commission from fellow babysitters who have signed up for the program.

Resources : Here is a long article on how to build and grow a nanny app.

9) Pet Sitting

Description : What’s better than babysitting? Pet sitting! Who doesn’t want to spend the whole day playing with dogs? There are busy workers and families taking holidays who need someone to take care of their loved pets.

There are two main ways to face this business idea. The most common one is to take pets for a one/two-hour walk every day/every two days. The second one would be to take care of pets of people taking holidays, for one to four weeks.

Resources : The Balance Careers has a huge series of resources for pet sitters.

10) Local Reviewer

Description : Every time we want to buy a product, the first thing we do is to look online for product reviews. Sure enough, all big cities have their own dedicated websites for such reviews from multiple sources. But what about small places or even campuses? There’s a huge opportunity there.

Start a website that reviews the local accommodations. You can make this exclusive for the campus itself or other accommodations in the area that students could rent out. This would work as a credible source rather than just word of mouth. There could also be options added to include listings and discussion forums. You can monetize this through advertising.

Resources : WPBeginner has a long article on how to build a review site using WordPress, which would probably be the cheapest and fastest way to do it.

11) Swap Website

Description : Swap websites are used to swap, sell, and borrow goods and services. For example, if a person needs something but only for a single use, it is best to rent it out rather than buy one.

On campus, there is more than one person who is willing to do that, but it is lacking a way to find that person. Such a website would simplify this while enabling people to save a few bucks.

Call it a new age barter system; especially on campus, there would be a lot of demand for this. Start this locally and then expand it later. There are loads to borrow and exchange from academic services, bikes, books, and even clothes. You can monetize it through advertising.

Resources : Here’s a list of 36 bartering and swapping websites to get some inspiration. We’ve also interviewed the founder of a shutdown swapping site who shared all the mistakes he made throughout his journey.

There are loads to borrow and exchange from academic services, bikes, books, and even clothes. You can monetize it through advertising.

12) Design Services

Description : All kinds of businesses have design tasks. So, you can create a site that offers different types of design services, such as logos, flyers, packaging, or even websites, and niche down to local businesses or even other students starting their own startups. This is a great startup idea for students and you could charge per hour or per project.

When you are a student, it can be hard to get businesses to trust you. There are many ways to achieve it, such as showing them previous high-quality work, offering one free project, and connecting them with your previous clients.

Resources : You may be asking how to build a portfolio if you’re just starting and have never had clients, right? Here’s a tool that generates fake client briefs for you to design and showcase in your site.

13) Digital Marketing Services

‍ Difficulty : Hard

Description : Digital marketing has grown a lot in the last decade, with the emergence of eCommerce and online businesses. The businesses that don’t digitalize themself and ignore working on their internet profile and presence are missing a huge percentage of clients.

There probably are many local businesses looking for help on their digital marketing strategies. You can reach their owners and provide them with a free consultation to show you know about the subject. You could help them with local SEO , social media management , and Google Ads / Facebook Ads campaigns, among other strategies.

Resources : Make sure to check out Acadium , a tool connecting businesses looking for digital marketing work to be done, and students who are willing to learn and do that work. They provide great free digital marketing courses on different topics.

14) Development Services

Description : Having a website is a must for any kind of business, and most local ones tend not to have one. There’s a huge opportunity there.

Learning to code is super accessible for everyone. There are thousands of free development courses, books, articles, and videos, so “I don’t know how to code” is definitely no longer an excuse. And if you don’t want to learn, you can even build a website without coding. This site was built with Webflow , a powerful visual web design tool.

Resources : Google “free web development course” and you will get 3.2B results… I think that’s enough ;) You should also check this complete guide on web development freelancing.

15) Cleaning Services

Description : Publish an online ad offering cleaning services in your neighborhood. Do a great cleaning job and build trust with your clients. Ask your clients for a referral and you will soon be cleaning the houses of all your neighbors.

That’s actually what Kisten Hadeed did and the origins of Student Maid, a really successful cleaning company in Florida. You can charge per hour and keep initial investment really low by asking clients to supply you with the needed equipment. 

Resources : This article from Entrepreneur.com teaches how to get started in this industry.

90% of startups fail. Learn how to not to with our weekly guides and stories. Join 40,000+ founders.

16) Pool Cleaning Services

Description : Cleaning pools is an alternative to the already mentioned cleaning neighbor’s houses business idea. It’s definitely not as easy, as it requires to be educated on what you’re doing. You might even need legal permissions to work on it, depending on where you are based. On the side, it requires some investment in equipment and products to be able to carry out the job.

Both the difficulty and investment issues come with a big chance of making great money. You can easily get paid $40-60/hour. Note that the business would mainly run during the summer seasons.

Resources : This article provides detailed information on how to set up and grow a pool cleaning business.

17) Moving Service

Description : Both neighbors and students need moving services eventually, whether it's because the academic year has finished and the student is moving back to their homes, or because a neighbor has rented a new house. You can make money (at least $200/moving) if you find it easy to pack items and move boxes.

Resources : Here’s a long article on how to start a moving company, some tips for growing it, and the recommended price you might want to charge.

18) Transcription Services

‍ Difficulty : Low

Description : Transcription services are needed in all kinds of fields, such as law, medicine, and businesses. It also doesn’t require either fixed hours or many skills. On the side, there are many forms of transcription, including video podcasts and recorded lectures, so you will probably be able to select the niche that interests you.

No formal training is needed in order to be able to do transcription services. Good listening abilities, great knowledge of English grammar rules, and fast typing skills would be a perfect combination to get high-quality work done fast.

Resources : Here’s a motivational story on how Benjamin Walker grew a transcription business to +$1M/year.

19) Translation Services

‍ Difficulty : High

Description : Offering translation services isn’t as easy as offering transcription ones. You will need to be bilingual in both languages and know the grammar rules of the two of them. Businesses may not be really willing to offer advanced translation work to students, but they might be if it is basic and unimportant translations.

You could start by translating lectures, books, and articles for professors. There’s a ton of high-quality content in other languages - professors might want to share it with their students but they can’t as it isn’t in the student’s native language. That’s where you can help and charge per word translated.

Resources : Here’s a whole content site dedicated to the business of translation.

20) Photography Services

Description : If you love taking photographs, you can take your hobby and talent into a photography freelancing business. Both students and local businesses may need your services whether because they want to update their Tinder profiles or because they are looking to promote their recently-launched products.

In the beginning, you can start offering all kinds of services, but as you grow the business, you will probably realize there’s a ton of competition and you will need to niche and focus on one segment or one specific photography service in order to be different than the rest.

The biggest issue for this kind of business is the cost of the photography equipment, which, if you’re moving from one place to another, can break and make it even more expensive.

Resources : Make sure to check this guide from Bplans on how to start a successful photography business.

21) Photography Portfolios

Description : Good photography skills need to be appreciated before they get lost in that Instagram page. Any campus will have a few fellows with exceptional skills in photography and videography. It would be easy to make a database of students who are interested in and create a platform to sell their work to others.

The platform could charge a fee to either the photographer or the customer. On the side, it could also work hand in hand with a photography club giving more chances and connections to both sellers and buyers by offering more exposure.

Resources : Here’s a no-code template to build such an app.

22) Food Delivery Services

Description : Create a platform to deliver quick eatables, like sandwiches and smoothies, made by local businesses. Start by targeting firms with employees in younger age groups, who often go out to grab a meal during lunch breaks. This is a gold mine, with food deliveries for simple items that don't break their wallet, the business would be exponential. With options to schedule deliveries made earlier to arrive at lunchtime, this could actually be a problem solver for the firms.

Take a step further and make these homemade too. This way, it is not necessary to rely on multiple third-party services. The food will be authentic, tasty, and have a personal touch to the service.

Resources : Steven Long was the founder of Chowdy, a Toronto-based food delivery startup making $110k/month which had to shut down due to some legal issues. Ali Jiwani is the founder of MealSurfers, a Canadian food startup that made an exit when it was making $7k/month. Make sure to check those two stories and learn from both the wins and mistakes of each.

23) Deliver Food Hampers

Description : How often have you thought about that mac and cheese your mom makes so deliciously. Or even wondered when you are finally going to eat something healthy?

Well, the lack of time or will to go to a grocery store and cook something is in the least probable category. And the parents are well aware of this too. So design an app where parents can make such orders for kids that would be delivered to them. 

This will have the personal touch and love of a package coming from home itself. You could monetize it by taking a shipping fee.

Resources : Entrepreneur.com has a complete article about food hamper businesses. You should check it out!

24) Blogging

Description : Is there anything you really enjoy talking about? Are your friends tired of listening to you talk about it? Then start a blog about that topic, build an audience, and monetize it through ads and premium content.

 The startup costs of building a blog are super low nowadays (with a domain and hosting would be enough, so less than $50/year) and the information to grow such a site is free all over the internet.

When we started this site, we had 0 knowledge of how to grow it. Nowadays, it receives +150k users every month from all over the world. Note that it took us 3 years to build such an audience. Consistency is key when blogging.

Resources : GrowandConvert is a content marketing agency that has an amazing blog related to creating and publishing content on the internet. Backlinko is another blog that publishes content-related articles, particularly about the search engine optimization of these. 

25) Video Classes

Description : Visual media often makes things easier. That is precisely the reason why we are all so hooked up on Youtube, without having a clue why we are watching a cat playing piano at 3 am. The thought is simple, won’t lectures be so easy to understand with such visuals? With a creative mind and some graphic design skills, it could be put to use for this.

The idea is to make a visual representation of any lectures and offer them to tutors and students. It would make studying so much better and more straightforward. You could monetize it by pricing every video or through a monthly subscription.

Resources : Here’s a great guide on how to make videos look professional without investing much money.

26) Class Notes

Description : We all know those students who are pretty lazy to actually take notes or those others who tend to miss classes under any kind of excuse, right? Those students would be your niche market if you set up a class note business.

There are some people who are really great at taking lecture notes, being able to summarize the information in a nice-looking and concise way. If you are that kind of person, you should consider re-selling your notes to other students. You could sell them independently per class or in packages of all the notes related to one exam or to one semester.

Resources : Make sure to check this well-known book , in which Sönke Ahrens shares his unique technique to take smart notes that are easy to study and learn from.

Description : Where there are students, there are tutors. If you stand out in one subject, you can probably teach it to someone else who struggles to understand it. A common trouble-maker subject is Maths, but note that there are many math tutors as well.

Schools and professors tend to be helpful with students starting their tutor businesses. Some schools even have a database of tutor students, so make sure to check if there is one in your school. The monetization model would be per hour; you can charge anything between $10-$100, depending on the subject, the concepts taught (how advanced they are), etc.

Resources : This article is super inspiring for anyone starting a tutoring business. The writer shares how he is making $1,000/week as well as lots of recommendations and mistakes you should avoid.

28) Organize Trips

Description : It is a known fact that most of the group plans for a trip but never happens. The WhatsApp groups have seen hundreds of failed plans. It is the time that someone takes responsibility and get things done.

Organize trips to various destinations which could be for events, festivals, or even just weekend trips. You can charge a commission or a fixed amount for an all-inclusive deal.

Resources : Here’s a detailed guide from Bplans on how to start a travel agency.

29) Event Organizer

Description : Lots of students enjoy parties and socializing, so why not capitalize on it? Everyone is willing to spend $10, $30, or even much more on a great party. These can take all forms and shapes, from organizing a small meetup at a nightclub to running Project X 2.

What will you need? Excellent communication skills to convince everyone they can’t miss such a party (social media is a MUST to promote it!) and advanced organization abilities to make sure everything is in the right place at the right time.

Resources : Here’s a long article from Capterra explaining how to turn those small parties/events you have maybe carried out in the past, into a profitable business.

30) Campus Newsletter

Description : This is quite a unique business idea for students. If your campus doesn't have a newsletter already, it is time to start one. The source of money from this could come from advertisements from local businesses or even other student startups.

The newsletter could be sent as emails rather than printed versions or both. As a third party, a student can even make a deal with the college to create brand awareness among potential students using the letter. It could be used for promotional purposes, branding, and lead generations outside the campus too.

Resources : Here’s an article on 7 tips to create a school newsletter.

31) Campus Podcast

Description : Instead of a campus newsletter, you could do a podcast. It could be an interview podcast, talking with students and professors, or more like a solo podcast, talking about the news, events, and things going on in the campus.

The equipment needed is pretty cheap, with the possibility of recording even with your phone. As for monetization, it could be done through sponsorships from local businesses or premium content for those who love the podcast.

I haven’t personally seen this on many campuses, which makes me think this is one of the most innovative and unique business ideas for students on the list.

Resources : Here’s an article on the 5 steps required to start a school podcast.

32) Language Course

Description : Do you excel in any language? Do you enjoy teaching other people? Then you should set up a Skype language course and sell classes to people from anywhere in the world while staying in your home. You could easily charge $20-$60/hour and work part-time on it.

Growing your client base is all about building an online presence and getting referrals from your existing customers. In the beginning, you could boost your initial customers by providing them with a free 1-hour call.

Resources : Here’s a long guide for beginners on how to make $30/hour teaching languages and 6 places to get your first clients.

33) Bookkeeping

Description : You don’t need to have a finance degree in order to be able to manage a local business’s bookkeeping records. An online course or even just some Youtube videos would be more than enough to start with. As all businesses require such work to be done, you probably won’t have big issues finding your first customers.

The initial investment costs are super low, as you can ask the business owner to supply you with the needed tools. As for monetization, most bookkeepers charge per hour and the amount depends on the complexity of the tasks ($30-$100 or more).

Resources : Here’s a detailed video on how to start a bookkeeping business in 2021.

34) Jewelry Business

Description : This is a great startup idea for students because jewelry making isn’t as hard as it sounds. You can easily learn about it through online courses and Youtube tutorials. You will then need to practice a lot until you start getting great results. Profit margins can be really high when you achieve a nice looking product.

There’s a ton of competition in the jewelry space so you will have to identify a niche. Social media (particularly influencers) are among the most usual strategies carried out by this kind of businesses.

Resources : Shopify has a detailed guide on how to start such businesses. Besides that, a few years ago we interviewed , on this site, the founder of a jewelry business that shut down and then emerged again with a new business model just to start making +10k/month.

35) Baking Business

Description : Selling cakes, cookies, bread or other baked goods can be another startup business idea for students. You can easily post an online ad or some leaflets around your campus. Make a client happy, and you will have 3 new ones. The food industry works a lot with word of mouth.

There are two main ways to monetize this. The first would be to prepare the goods based on requests from customers. The second could be to produce 100 cookies, rent a bike, and wander around the campus and neighborhood looking for hungry people. The chosen price for the cookies would be cheaper than if it’s a requested job.

Resources : Here’s a detailed article on how to set up and grow such a business. You should also watch this video from the founder of a “late-night cookie delivery service” in his college city.

36) Youtuber

Description : Becoming a YouTuber looks like a easy and lucrative career. Many see it as a great business plan idea for students because you make videos on a niche that you enjoy and then make money off them through ads and sponsorships. But the reality is that becoming a well-known YouTuber is not an easy feat. 

Behind every famous one, there is a long, painful journey of hard work. Start by creating content and keep iterating from there with the help of your audience. It won't be an overnight success, but if you keep going for some time, you'll see amazing results.

Resources : Here’s an article about a checklist to become a successful Youtuber.

How Can a Student Start a Business?

Or in other words, how do you become a student entrepreneur?

The list of business plan ideas for college students mentioned above is nonsense if you don’t now take action toward the chosen business.

If you are a Business student, you probably have an idea of what are the steps that involve setting up and launching a business. However, all kinds of students read this article, so here are some common steps that entrepreneurs carry out:

1) Decide on the idea

All of the business ideas for college students on the list are really interesting ways of making money, but you definitely can’t work on them all.

To decide which to focus on, make sure to think about what you enjoy doing in your free time, what you excel in, and what would you be willing to keep doing even if it doesn’t bring money (or it means negative numbers). We have compiled a list of both online business ideas and offline business ideas so you can pick the one that best suit your needs and skills. We hope we came up with some innovative startup business ideas for students that you would have never imagined.

Make sure to also consider your initial investment. Some featured in the list are business ideas for college students without investment or little resources, while some others will require a few hundred or thousands to start.

Note that some of the above are business ideas for students in university (or would work better with them) and others are business ideas for students in school (those that don’t require much money and getting physically involved).

2) Decide on a niche

Nowadays, there are businesses of all sizes and shapes. Building one has become so easy that the internet is full of websites, millions of videos are uploaded to Youtube every second, and thousands of LLCs are formed every day.

This means that there’s a lot of competition in any industry. The best solution for students who don’t have enough resources to invest in research and development and build a unique product or don’t have the capital required to set up a huge factory and win over competitors through economies of scale (= low pricing), is to focus on a niche.

A common niche could be to geographically limit the business so that you just focus on people within your neighborhood or your college campus. Another could be to focus on people with certain interests and likes.

3) Choose a name and a brand style

Here’s a detailed article on how to choose a name for your startup. The key is to brainstorm many, evaluate each option, and ask for feedback from your partners.

As for branding, here’s another article on how to build the brand of a business. There are free tools to do it. Don’t spend much money/time on it, at least at the beginning.

4) Launch the business

It’s now time to push the LIVE button for your business.

This needs to happen as fast as possible so that you quickly validate whether it is worth it to keep pushing towards that business idea or it’s better to move to a new one from the above list of entrepreneurship ideas for students.

There’s a common issue entrepreneurs face when launching new startups that’s called “ paralysis by analysis ”. They keep improving the product, adding features, changing the design, etc, and spend months and months without launching it.

This is exactly what you need to avoid, especially if this is your first business. 90% of startups fail (I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this), so you need to launch fast, validate early, and move to another business if it didn’t work.

5) Market your business

You pushed the LIVE button and you didn't get any sales, right?

The “build it and they will come” phrase is a completely unreal myth . It will take you blood, sweat, and tears to get your first clients.

Do some advertising, go outside your home and deliver leaflets (there actually are some unique business ideas for students at home above, in case you’re too lazy), knock on your neighbor’s doors, send cold messages to potential customers that you found on Facebook groups, etc.

6) Make sure your customer is happy

Many of the college business ideas tend to market themselves by word of mouth and referrals. That is why it’s essential to make sure that each of your clients is happy with the results.

Interact with your customers, ask them what they think you could do better next time, provide them with a discount if any parts of the job were done incorrectly… there are so many ways to make your client happy, even if the price of the service is high or the quality of the work wasn’t the best.

If the business is going well, you will soon find yourself with many tasks under your belt and little time to work on them, along with studies and extracurricular activities.

That’s when you might start considering hiring your first employee. In order to avoid the risks of going into negative numbers during a bad month, you can work on a commission-based wage.

In this stage, the selection of new team members is essential. Remember that word of mouth can be a key way of promotion and marketing. If you hire someone who has zero knowledge of the tasks they are required for, delivers low-quality work, or mistreats clients, you will soon find yourself ceasing operations.

Now It’s Your Turn!

There is no direct and simple answer to the question of how to start a business in college.

As smooth as the above startup ideas for students may sound, they will all inevitably require a lot of dedication and perseverance.

There is an abundance of resources at your fingertips, from valuable classes to school technologies, and access to professors. So make use of them in the best way possible, and if the idea still doesn’t seem feasible, lay the groundwork for it.

You would be getting practical knowledge and work experience before finishing the course. Even if it fails. Remember that college is the time to blossom and experiment, and it is only the beginning of your life journey.

If you have any questions, have other small business ideas for students you think we’re missing, or want us to help you with your new startup, make sure to reach us at [email protected] !

Which Business is Best For Students?

Here are some of the best businesses: flip websites, re-sell sneakers or tickets, baby or pet sitting, deliver writing, design or development services, start a blog, sell your class notes, become a tutor, organize others’ trips, organize parties, and create a campus newsletter or podcast.

What Kind Of Business Can a Student Start?

Students can start all kinds of businesses, but it’s really common that they start a service-based one, such as house cleaning, pool cleaning, food delivery, content writing, content transcription, graphic design, and website development, among others.

First, decide your business idea and choose the segment of the market that you’ll be serving. Then, choose a business name and design your business’ brand. Once it is launched, market your business in your neighborhood or campus. Finally, hire employees and scale it!

90% of startups fail. Learn how not to with our weekly guides and stories. Join +40,000 other startup founders!

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How to Start a Business As a College Student

A s thousands of students graduate this year with their undergraduate and graduate degrees, the internet is collectively exploding with advice listicles on topics ranging from the best cities to find a job and how to create a post-college financial plan .

Right behind these seniors are three years’ worth of students who will be following in their graduation footsteps—in the near future, that is. Until then, many startup owners argue that college is the best time to be an entrepreneur.

Universities offer up an abundance of resources to students, including startup competitions, advisors, and tech labs—it’s truly an incredible time for aspiring entrepreneurs! If you’re planning to be a post-grad small business owner (or even start one during your time in school), here’s what you can do to get ahead on the entrepreneurial track.

5 ways college students can prepare for business ownership

1. start making business contacts.

No matter which school you enroll in, keep the phrase “your tribe is your vibe” in mind.

Just like in life, it’s important to surround yourself with people who are as motivated and driven as you are. Evaluate the school environment, get a feel for the kinds of people who go there, and then, start connecting with them. Get to know fellow classmates in your classes and build relationships with them.

Also, take the time to expose yourself to new opportunities like extracurricular activities on campus and internships to further reach out to new contacts. The relationships you establish now will become ones you will carry with you for life, enabling you to create your own inner network of professionals that you'll one day be able to call on for help.

2. Build rapport with your professors

Just as much as you’re making the most of your time in school with your coursework and relationships with fellow classmates, you should also focus on establishing rapport with the faculty. Get to know your professors as much as possible. Pick their brains about questions you might have about marketing, product management, and finance. Remember to stay in touch after graduating, too. Keep them posted on your small business journey and stay connected via social media and networking platforms like LinkedIn.

3. Draft a business plan

A business plan is often considered to be one of the most daunting documents an entrepreneur can put together, but it is actually one of your startup’s greatest assets. Once you know what product or service you will be selling, your business plan will provide an objective evaluation of your company. Here’s a quick look at the must-haves of this document:

• Executive summary: A basic description of your business.
• Business description, concept, and strategy: An in-depth look at what makes your business unique, and its overall goals.
• Industry analysis: A thorough look at your competition and their offerings.
• Market analysis: A glimpse at your target audience and what they need.
• Organization and management: Profiles of team members that work at your business.
• Financial projections: Your financial numbers, including a projected cash flow, profit and loss, and break-even analysis.
• Financing request: Outline of the funding required from investors.
• Appendix: Documents like industry studies, trademark registrations, and letters of incorporation, to name a few.

4. Build your credit

College students may be the last individuals that need to be told to stick to a budget, but it’s crucial that they pay attention to their credit. According to a study of millennial small business owners by Wells Fargo, 14% of millennials with small businesses get started using a personal credit card instead of taking out a loan.

Because of their young age, size of their businesses, and annual revenue, many, unfortunately, do not qualify for the same kind of financial assistance given to established business owners. College students and graduates alike who may be funding their startups on personal credit need to make sure they establish strong credit early on by never missing monthly payments and by paying off debt.

5. Pitch potential investors

As I mentioned earlier, your business plan should include a financing request required from investors interested in your business. Learn to get comfortable with pitching people with your business while you're in school. Many universities will hold pitching competitions for startups where students can deliver presentations in front of a panel of judges and audiences can vote on pitches they like the best as well as critique them.

Above all, use your college years to take risks and learn as much as you can about your business. As a college student preparing for business ownership one day, you have nothing to lose, but everything to gain in how much you keep learning along the way.

RELATED: How to Launch a Successful Startup While Still in College

Free PDF Business Plan Templates and Samples

By Joe Weller | September 9, 2020

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We’ve gathered the most useful collection of business plan PDF templates and samples, including options for organizations of any size and type.

On this page, you’ll find free PDF templates for a simple business plan , small business plan , startup business plan , and more.

Simple Business Plan PDF Templates

These simple business plan PDF templates are ready to use and customizable to fit the needs of any organization.

Simple Business Plan Template PDF

This template contains a traditional business plan layout to help you map out each aspect, from a company overview to sales projections and a marketing strategy. This template includes a table of contents, as well as space for financing details that startups looking for funding may need to provide. 

Download Simple Business Plan Template - PDF

Lean Business Plan Template PDF

This scannable business plan template allows you to easily identify the most important elements of your plan. Use this template to outline key details pertaining to your business and industry, product or service offerings, target customer segments (and channels to reach them), and to identify sources of revenue. There is also space to include key performance metrics and a timeline of activities. 

Download Lean Business Plan Template - PDF

Simple 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template PDF

This template is designed to help you develop and implement a 90-day business plan by breaking it down into manageable chunks of time. Use the space provided to detail your main goals and deliverables for each timeframe, and then add the steps necessary to achieve your objectives. Assign task ownership and enter deadlines to ensure your plan stays on track every step of the way.

Download Simple 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template

PDF | Smartsheet

One-Page Business Plan PDF Templates

The following single page business plan templates are designed to help you download your key ideas on paper, and can be used to create a pitch document to gain buy-in from partners, investors, and stakeholders.

One-Page Business Plan Template PDF

Use this one-page template to summarize each aspect of your business concept in a clear and concise manner. Define the who, what, why, and how of your idea, and use the space at the bottom to create a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) for your business. 

Download One-Page Business Plan Template

If you’re looking for a specific type of analysis, check out our collection of SWOT templates .

One-Page Lean Business Plan PDF

This one-page business plan template employs the Lean management concept, and encourages you to focus on the key assumptions of your business idea. A Lean plan is not stagnant, so update it as goals and objectives change — the visual timeline at the bottom is ideal for detailing milestones. 

Download One-Page Lean Business Plan Template - PDF

One-Page 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template

Use this business plan template to identify main goals and outline the necessary activities to achieve those goals in 30, 60, and 90-day increments. Easily customize this template to fit your needs while you track the status of each task and goal to keep your business plan on target. 

Download One-Page 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template

For additional single page plans, including an example of a one-page business plan , visit " One-Page Business Plan Templates with a Quick How-To Guide ."

Small Business Plan PDF Templates

These business plan templates are useful for small businesses that want to map out a way to meet organizational objectives, including how to structure, operate, and expand their business.

Simple Small Business Plan Template PDF

A small business can use this template to outline each critical component of a business plan. There is space to provide details about product or service offerings, target audience, customer reach strategy, competitive advantage, and more. Plus, there is space at the bottom of the document to include a SWOT analysis. Once complete, you can use the template as a basis to build out a more elaborate plan. 

Download Simple Small Business Plan Template

Fill-In-the-Blank Small Business Plan Template PDF

This fill-in-the-blank template walks you through each section of a business plan. Build upon the fill-in-the-blank content provided in each section to add information about your company, business idea, market analysis, implementation plan, timeline of milestones, and much more.

Download Fill-In-the-Blank Small Business Plan Template - PDF

One-Page Small Business Plan Template PDF

Use this one-page template to create a scannable business plan that highlights the most essential parts of your organization’s strategy. Provide your business overview and management team details at the top, and then outline the target market, market size, competitive offerings, key objectives and success metrics, financial plan, and more.

Download One-Page Business Plan for Small Business - PDF

Startup Business Plan PDF Templates

Startups can use these business plan templates to check the feasibility of their idea, and articulate their vision to potential investors.

Startup Business Plan Template

Use this business plan template to organize and prepare each essential component of your startup plan. Outline key details relevant to your concept and organization, including your mission and vision statement, product or services offered, pricing structure, marketing strategy, financial plan, and more.

‌Download Startup Business Plan Template

Sample 30-60-90 Day Business Plan for Startup

Startups can use this sample 30-60-90 day plan to establish main goals and deliverables spanning a 90-day period. Customize the sample goals, deliverables, and activities provided on this template according to the needs of your business. Then, assign task owners and set due dates to help ensure your 90-day plan stays on track.

‌Download Sample 30-60-90 Day Business Plan for Startup Template 

For additional resources to create your plan, visit “ Free Startup Business Plan Templates and Examples .”

Nonprofit Business Plan PDF Templates

Use these business plan PDF templates to outline your organization’s mission, your plan to make a positive impact in your community, and the steps you will take to achieve your nonprofit’s goals.

Nonprofit Business Plan Template PDF

Use this customizable PDF template to develop a plan that details your organization’s purpose, objectives, and strategy. This template features a table of contents, with room to include your nonprofit’s mission and vision, key team and board members, program offerings, a market and industry analysis, promotional plan, financial plan, and more. This template also contains a visual timeline to display historic and future milestones.

Download Nonprofit Business Plan Template - PDF

One-Page Business Plan for Nonprofit Organization PDF 

This one-page plan serves as a good starting point for established and startup nonprofit organizations to jot down their fundamental goals and objectives. This template contains all the essential aspects of a business plan in a concise and scannable format, including the organizational overview, purpose, promotional plan, key objectives and success metrics, fundraising goals, and more.

Download One-Page Business Plan for Nonprofit Organization Template - PDF

Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan PDF Templates

Use these fill-in-the-blank templates as a foundation for creating a comprehensive roadmap that aligns your business strategy with your marketing, sales, and financial goals.

Simple Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan PDF

The fill-in-the-blank template contains all the vital parts of a business plan, with sample content that you can customize to fit your needs. There is room to include an executive summary, business description, market analysis, marketing plan, operations plan, financial statements, and more. 

Download Simple Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan Template - PDF

Lean Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan PDF

This business plan is designed with a Lean approach that encourages you to clarify and communicate your business idea in a clear and concise manner. This single page fill-in-the-blank template includes space to provide details about your management team, the problem you're solving, the solution, target customers, cost structure, and revenue streams. Use the timeline at the bottom to produce a visual illustration of key milestones. 

Download Fill-In-the-Blank Lean Business Plan Template - PDF

For additional resources, take a look at " Free Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan Templates ."

Sample Business Plan PDF Templates

These sample business plan PDF templates can help you to develop an organized, thorough, and professional business plan.

Business Plan Sample 

This business plan example demonstrates a plan for a fictional food truck company. The sample includes all of the elements in a traditional business plan, which makes it a useful starting point for developing a plan specific to your business needs.

Download Basic Business Plan Sample - PDF

Sample Business Plan Outline Template

Use this sample outline as a starting point for your business plan. Shorten or expand the outline depending on your organization’s needs, and use it to develop a table of contents for your finalized plan.

Download Sample Business Plan Outline Template - PDF

Sample Business Financial Plan Template

Use this sample template to develop the financial portion of your business plan. The template provides space to include a financial overview, key assumptions, financial indicators, and business ratios. Complete the break-even analysis and add your financial statements to help prove the viability of your organization’s business plan.

Download Business Financial Plan Template

PDF  | Smartsheet

For more free, downloadable templates for all aspects of your business, check out “ Free Business Templates for Organizations of All Sizes .”

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Business Plan Examples and Sample For Students

Business Plan Examples For Students. Business Proposal Examples for Students. Also, Business Plan Sample pdf for Students. Business Plan Examples For Students Entrepreneurship PDF.

Business Plan

The business plan refers to the company’s written statement explaining the company’s background and business details. This plan includes the executive summary of the company, product and service, operation, marketing, and financial plan.

The employee creates the business plan to represent and improve the organization’s image to stakeholders, customers, and affiliates. It proposes the business strategy entirely mentioning how the company profits and survives in markets. So, a business plan is also known as a business proposal that is crucial for corporate branding. The business plan is essential for every company to build rapport with stakeholders and business partners as well as achieve competitiveness.

The key elements of a business plan or proposal are an executive summary, background, product and service, organizational structure , sales and marketing strategy, financial and operational plan, and more.

Business Plan Examples

A business plan example refers to a business proposal sample that thoroughly explains the business, including the executive summary of the financial statement. It is also known as a business report example or business proposal format. An example of a business plan certainly includes the executive summary of the business, operating strategy, start-up financial projections, financial projections, etc. The business plan example for students is also known as the business report format.

Business plan writing is a mandatory assignment for students in entrepreneurship. It is also a compulsory assignment for business students. The importance of a business plan is growing day by day for selling products on digital platforms and managing the organization virtually.

The business proposal is also compulsory for getting a bank loan. The organization needs it to make agreements with other organizations. The bank authority surely asks the organization to submit a business plan with the bank loan application. The other names of a business plan are business proposal, report, profile, and more. A business plan example is also known as an example of a company profile , business proposal example, sample, and format.

Elements of Business Plan Example

The Nine Components of a Business Plan are as follows:

Business Plan Examples For Student Entrepreneurship

Today, the authors present a business plan example for students. They wrote it while they were students in entrepreneurship courses at the Faculty of Economics and Management University Putra Malaysia (UPM). The lecturer sets group assignments for the students; therefore, the students make the business plan example to complete the group assignment. Thus, this business plan or proposal example for students certainly assists business administration students. It also assists students in BBA, MBA, economics, finance, and business communication courses and researchers.

The author also wrote business plan examples for students about food and an Example of Business Report.

The students set the company name “BambooS.” It sells reusable and eco-friendly bamboo straws. Straws are a unique product in Malaysia that can be customized for length and diameter. Besides, the company offers engraving services for customers. So, customers can customize a meaningful word on the bamboo straw for engraving. In addition, it provides a designed pouch as packaging for our straw that looks smart.

Business Plan Example For Students

1.0 Executive Summary Of Business Plan

BambooS Sdn. Bhd. company was created by a group of 10 students in the Basic Entrepreneurship course. This company is named BambooS. It produces and sells bamboo-based products. The capital S in the company’s name stands for straw. The original idea came from a student. And we chose Bamboo as the main ingredient of the products. Currently, we focus on producing eco-friendly straws to serve our customers. The products are the best quality yet affordable straws.

Our product is also biodegradable as it is made from Bamboo. We also guarantee that customers can use our products many times. It is reusable and easy to wash and carry. The straw size is customizable. So customers choose the size based on their preferences. In addition, our specialty is not only in our product but also in our packaging.

There are ten members in a group and each member will contribute RM 100. The total paid-up capital is RM 1000. We set up our warehouse in the Serdang area to produce, package, and store our products. We are making the straw as per the customer’s demand and request. For the marketing part, we are advertising and promoting our product through social media sites, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, and e-commerce, such as Shopee. We adopt the lean canvas business model tool to assess the outcome of the business.

2.0 Background of the Company

2.2 Company overview

2.3 Vision And Mission Statement

2.3.1 vision statement.

To become the most notable company in Malaysia for producing eco-friendly bamboo straws.

2.3.2    Mission Statement

We want to fulfill the objective of satisfying customers with our eco-friendly products. We want to reduce pollution by using reusable straws anywhere and anytime.

2.4 Keys To Success

The Keys to Success for BambooS Include the following: 

Table: 4 Keys of Success

2.5 Organizational Chart

3.0 Administration anD Human Resource Plan

3.1 business strategies.

Business strategy is crucial to maintain business growth.

The personal preferences of corporate management do not influence good business strategies. We emphasize every department’s function. It ensures the plans run smoothly to meet goals. We need to achieve them. We have put as much emphasis on the efficiency of each Department.

Our company has set several strategies to achieve the company objectives. However, these strategies have been made based on every Department’s suggestion.

a. Administration and Human Resources Department

• The admin and human resource department monitors all the business operations. It manages employees’ and management problems.
• It also solves problems that affect people management programs in the long run.
• Moreover, it follows the five-gap model of service quality to ensure service quality.

b. Marketing Department

• This department handles marketing of the product and promotional activities in order to reach the products to a vast amount of potential clients.
• It also promotes the business and mission of an organization through social media.

c. Operational Department

• This department ensures that all the equipment and material are ready to run the operation smoothly. It ensures that all products are of good quality. This department follows the eight principles of TQM to ensure product and service quality.
• Additionally, this department has the ultimate accountability for profit and loss and seeks to maximize shareholder return on investment.

3.2 Management Team

3.3 Job Descriptions

4.0  Market Plan

4.1  introduction.

BambooS Sdn. Bhd. support the “Save The Earth” campaign by producing eco-friendly Bamboo straws. These straws are environmentally friendly products. Therefore, these products are alternatives to plastic straws. The government has imposed restrictions on the use of plastic straws. They also create social awareness of to use of natural products.

Hence,  It is an important driving factor of our market strategy. In addition, the surging demand for drinking beverages, including juices and Boba drinks and then the save the turtle campaign, is also propelling the demand for bamboo straws across the globe. Bamboo straws are reusable compared to plastic; they are better for health, durable & robust, and it is an environmentally friendly product. The products will contribute to reducing global warming and preventing climate change globally .

4.2 Objective of Marketing

Our objective in producing Bamboo straws is to encourage consumers to use natural, eco-friendly products. Why are bamboo straws better than metal? Firstly, Bamboo comes from a natural source. So it is naturally sturdy and easy to collect. We do not need to use chemicals to make straws.

Additionally, metal straws are not pocket-friendly compared to Bamboo. Moreover, metal will rust when in contact with water and oxygen. Bamboo stock is much cheaper, less work, and easy to collect. Our marketing strategy will focus mainly on reusable principles and are much more trendy to youngsters because we have an engraving service to attract them.

4.3 Analysis of Marketing

4.3.1 market trend.

The demand for bamboo straws has risen due to growing environmental attention. Additionally, plastic straws have been reduced due to state restrictions. However, the bamboo straw market is expected to achieve high growth shortly. In addition, BambooS Sdn. Bhd is a unique company in Malaysia. We produce our straw ourselves, and we provide safety and hygiene assurance. The buyer can engrave their name on the straw. Nowadays, customers want recognition for something they buy or support. They are also sincere about ‘Save the Earth’ and deserve to flex.

4.3.2 External Environment Analysis

Our first demographic psychographic and geographic target market is the University Putra Malaysia (UPM). Since we are students of UPM, it is easier to approach our target customers, including students and staff. Students tend to bring their water bottles or flasks to classes. It is one step toward being environmentally friendly; thus, we promote their effort by selling bamboo straws. In addition, we will promote our product at cafes or food courts at the faculty and library. We also establish a booth at super shops.

4.3.3 Internal Environment Analysis

(SWOT ANALYSIS)

4.3.4 Market Opportunities

Our bamboo straw comes with a pouch; thus, it is hygienic and easy to bring everywhere. We also provide a small brush to ensure deep cleaning of the inner straw. Our product is able to be used again and again. So students and staff can save money. They do not need to bring straws in large volumes. The structure of our bamboo straw is strong and sturdy; thus, it will not break if soaked in water for a long time, unlike paper straws.

4.4 Target Market

4.4.1    segmentation.

• S size is fit for ordinary drinks, fully liquid
• L size is suited for Boba drink or any drink that has topping.
• People use straws for drinking tea, juice, frappe, and Boba.
• Restaurants, cafes, food court, canteen, food stalls, super shops around UPM

4.4.2 Consumer Market and Buyer Behaviour

(i) Students and staff at UPM (ii) Cafe and Restaurant at UPM

4.4.3 Positioning

• New business strategy for eco-friendly products in the market.
• Our production, process, and packaging materials match zero pollution.
• Providing Engraved service
• Customized and Eco-friendly bamboo straws of different sizes
• Made of organic material
• Unique punch made by the jute bag.

4.5 4 P’s Marketing Strategy

4.5.1 product strategy.

To make our product unique, we ensure the quality and safety of our products always satisfy our customers.

Our product comes neatly packaged in a unique eco-friendly punch. It is made of a jute bag. The natural bag is designed to make people use bamboo straws every day.

Labeling/Customised

Our company provides customized products. We resize and engrave the bamboo straws to attract more customers. So, our customers can request any size and imprint their straw with any logo or design they like. Our product comes in two sizes: the regular size for the standard drink, fully liquid, and the large size for the Boba drink or drink that has topped. Customers can send us their logo or name on social media sites. Personalized bamboo straws look fantastic across social media.

4.5.2 Price Strategy

Price is the payment given by one party to the other in order to get the return for goods or services. It is necessary as it determines our profit and business survival. Two factors affect our pricing strategy to increase our profits. The internal factor that affects our pricing strategy is production and management cost. At the same time, the external factor is the competitive environment.

Our management team decided to sell the straw in four sets: A, B, C, and D. Our company decided to set the price at RM 10.00 for set A. This set includes the common Bamboo straw, brush, and pouch. Then SET B cost RM 12.00, including the Boba size straw, brush, and pouch. SET C and SET D are more special because they include the engraving service. The engraving cost is RM 8.00 for each Set. As we mentioned before, we resize products for clients. So our customers can personally request to resize the straw. We charge it costs RM 9.00 per set.

4.5.3 Place Strategy

Place strategy is also known as distribution strategy, wherein the organization decides the mode of distribution for the product. The pacing strategy plays an important role in selling the products. We have chosen the market, cafe, or restaurant adjacent to the University Putra Malaysia. Our main target market is UPM staff and students.

Furthermore, we also decided to make it easy for our customers to find our product by using the shopping app, Shopee apps. We chose these apps because Shopee is the best option if you want to start selling online at a low cost and big money.

4.5.4  Promotion Strategy

Promotion is the advertising process to provide information to different parties about the products. It is a communication process that influences the customer to buy products. In order to get customers’ attention and obtain a more significant market share, Bamboos Sdn. Bhd uses digital and internet marketing.

We have set up social media accounts, Instagram, Facebook, Shopee, and Blogspot, to promote our business. The marketing team will upload the promotional content to social media sites. This is because most people stay on social media sites mostly. With that, social media sites are the easiest way to buy anything we want without going out. Moreover, online shopping has become popular in this era, and all these social media sites have become the hottest sites, especially Instagram, which has a high rating in advertisements. Many companies use social media to sell their products and services by putting corporate information in their accounts.

Social Media Advantages

Social media are free sites where we can reach a large number of customers. Hence, we use social media to do hard and soft selling.

We fully develop every post to attract customers. In addition, we will always update our posts and story feeds. We ensure that customers are more exposed to our product. Next, we also use social media hashtags. We use hashtags such as #Bamboos, #SafeTheEarth, and more to make it easier for customers. The marketing team uses social media for the ordering process.

Similarly, we will place the generated links on each social media to encourage the product ordering process. Our company also makes sure transactions with our customers are easy. Finally, we also produce videos to promote our sales. The video will achieve the highest social media reach for views and engagement.

We tend to focus more on WhatsApp groups, Shopee, and Instagram since our target audience is UPM students. Many students are involved in WhatsApp groups, such as on faculty, college, hostels, and clubs. WhatsApp and Instagram are more popular among students as the places they spend most of their time. WhatsApp is the most popular social media site in Malaysia.

5.0 operations planning

5.1  location and address.

We will mainly sell the straw on social media sites. The production team will handle the production process. They resize and wash the Bamboo at the warehouse in Selangor, Malaysia. The social media sites are Instagram, Facebook, Shopee, Blogspot, and WhatsApp. Supplies will be directly delivered to the responsible members for further processing based on our buyer’s order.

5.2 Objective of Operations

We aim to produce and deliver good quality Bamboo Straw. Our team ensures that all products are effective and attractive. We also must gain customers’ trust and happiness with our service, including price and delivery. We also make sure our products are cleaned and safe for use. Our team is very responsive to making good-quality straws. In addition, our company has ultimate responsibility for profit and loss. However, we seek partners for more investment.

5.3 Operation Strategies

A few strategies have been set up to ensure that our business runs smoothly throughout the week and meets our objectives.

5.4 Supplier

The bamboo stock was from a supplier via the Shopee platform, and the pouch supplies were from Giftstalk Sdn. Bhd. The company logo’s printing service was also included when we ordered the pouch from suppliers. Moreover, we order coconut fiber cleaning brush stock and packing Boxes from Shopee. We also surveyed purchasing and made sure that our supplies were reasonable. All the supplies are ordered online and delivered to our company via specialized courier service companies.

The bamboo straw will be customized and delivered to the customer using J&T Express, Ninja Van, and cash-on-delivery service, which will ease our delivery.

Thus, we have decided on the following suppliers as our supply providers:

• Wing.DIY – Shopee- For Bamboo Stock
• GIFTSTALK SDN BHD)- For Pouch Supplies
• Gd. Pack -Shopee)- For Paper Boxes Stock – Sandpaper Holder with Plastic.

5.5 Process Planning

5.6 Implementation Schedule

5.7 Machinery and Equipment Including GST

6.0 Financial Plan

6.1 introduction.

A financial plan can be defined as a process of framing procedures and budgets regarding the financial activities of concern. This is done to ensure good financial and investment procedures.

Generally, the financial plan is used to know an investor’s current pay and future financial state by using current known variables to predict future income, asset values, and withdrawal plans.

A financial plan is one of the most crucial parts of a business. Some of the importance of a financial plan are:

• A financial plan provides the direction of one’s business.
• It also helps understand how finances impact one’s business.
• Additionally, it helps to manage income better.

6.2 Purpose of the Financial Department

A few purposes are as below:

• Firstly, it determines capital conditions.
• Secondly, it operates the fund nicely for different purposes.
• Finally, it maintains proper cash flow.

6.3 Project Implementation Cost

Source of Fund

Our money is used as the start-up capital with a contribution of RM100.00 per shareholder, bringing the total investment to RM 1000.00.

6.4 List of Expenses

Twelve partners funded a total of RM1000.00 to cover all business costs, which is RM 617.29. Expenses are in terms of buying raw materials, equipment, and delivery fees. We will not invest all amount to the business.

The equipment is counted as fixed cost as they are bought in bulk. Refer to 6.4 (List of Expenses) for detailed information.

6.5 Record of List of Sales

6.6 Income Statement

After one month of business, BambooS ended up with RM 1600.00 from 7 different products. This includes selling 15 units of Set 1, 25 of Set 2, 35 of Set 3, and 30 of Set 4. Leftovers for bamboo straws are found. The income statement shows that the business’s net profit after one month of operation is RM 988.39, approximately 98.8% of capital invested into the business.

6.7 Cash Flow Statement

The case flow statement shows that the initial capital on hand is RM 1000.00, and at the end of the business, the total surplus (after deducting all expenses) is RM 1982.71.

The RM 1982.71 includes RM 100 capital invested by every shareholder at the beginning of the business. By dividing the remaining money after deduction, each shareholder would find themselves receiving an extra RM 98.27. Hence, every

6.8 Balance Sheet

At the start of the business (22 March 2021), the initial capital share is RM 300.00. There is no liability such as a loan.

At the end of 9 weeks’ business (22 June 2021), the cash on hand increased to RM 1982.71, as well as the owner’s equity. The firm’s net worth is RM 1982.71, done by subtracting liabilities from assets.

6.9 Financial Analysis

BambooS has a net profit margin of 61.42%. BambooS also has a break-even point of RM 126.50. Sales passing this break-even point means that BambooS can start making profits.

Set 1 has a break-even point of RM 11.90, and set 2 have it at RM 23.72. The break-even point for set 3 is RM 55.34, while set 4 has a break-even point of RM 35.58.

The interest for the business is 0.9827 or 98.27%. This means for every RM 1 capital invested in the business; the shareholders can get back RM 0.98 as profit.

7.0 Conclusion

  Based on the business plan template or business proposal example that we have made, BambooS will give us profitable returns. The assumptions we made for these three months are conservative as we know that our company is still in the beginning, and the marketing and promotion are still in the early phase. The company sets systematic planning to reach the target. Thus, BambooS is very confident that our company will be able to grow in the future and become the most popular brand in the world.

We will always ensure that everyone in the company cooperates well in order to achieve the business target profit. We hope that BambooS will be the best company for producing eco-friendly straws in Malaysia. Our company assists UPM students and staff in reducing plastic usage.

Problem Faced and Solutions in Business

Every business will need to face many challenges to sustain success. As a new business, we also must face many things to achieve our business goal.

Firstly, we confirmed the product we would sell; everyone gave their opinions and ideas. This leads to 10 different products and services on the list. So we need to vote for the best one. We had faced a healthy argument on picking the best product. After discussion, we finally came out with the idea of producing an eco-friendly product. We focused on global warming issues and finally decided to produce and sell bamboo straws.

Moreover, we also have to face a conflict in fixing the vendors. We need to find the best vendors that offer the most reasonable price for us to produce the bamboo straw. The cost must be tele with our starting capital. In order to solve this, everyone has done their research on all the possible suppliers until we find the best one to choose from.

To avoid extreme market competitors, our team chose a blue ocean strategy to create a new market to achieve competitive advantages.

Business Proposal Examples For Students PDF

A business proposal is a short business plan. The business proposal describes the business process. However, a business proposal includes an executive summary, problem statements, product, finance, and solution. The example of a business proposal for students certainly guides others to create a business plan. This business plan sample teaches how to write business plan assignments for students. Students might learn how to write a simple business plan and proposal.

The importance of a business plan is crucial to stakeholders, employees, students, and entrepreneurs.   Additionally, the business plan example assists employees in creating a professional business proposal.

Author: M M Kobiruzzaman

M M Kobiruzzaman, Content Writer View all posts by M M Kobiruzzaman

16 thoughts on “Business Plan Examples and Sample For Students”

this is wonderful ,,nice work

I need more info

Nice work keep on educating me I bet your help

Good Day! Can I ask your permission to use your template in my class discussion? It is very detailed and all the components present in this format.

Yes, You Can.

Great work,keep it up

great article . check out datatoleas.com

This template is the best I have seen It’s so detailed You have everything you are looking for

It’s a good sample for up coming entrepreneurs,keep it up 👍🏻

Mr Kobiruzzaman thanks so much am Kimera Kenneth from Uganda but your content is so useful.

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How to Navigate Starting a Business with Student Loan Debt

If your fixed monthly bills include a student loan payment, you're one of the more than 43 million Americans who have federal student loans, or roughly 13% of the total population in the U.S. In fact, national student loan debt totals $1.73 trillion and the average public university student borrows $32,637 to attain a bachelor’s degree. [1]

These numbers may feel eye-opening, they shouldn’t deter emerging entrepreneurs from pursuing their dreams of business ownership. While it's generally not advisable to take on more debt than you can handle, managing financial obligations may help sharpen your business acumen, offer opportunities for more advanced budgeting, and help you identify business financing options.

Take new dental and medical practices, for example. There’s a lot of education, testing, licensing, residencies and on-the-job experience that goes into becoming a medical doctor or a dentist. And because the courses and requirements are rigorous, many students take on student loan debt.

With an average student debt load of about $251,000, [2] new grads often start their dental or medical practices weighed down with a large volume of outstanding loans. The benefits may outweigh the challenges as those new grads vie for higher incomes, greater career freedom and the chance to build practices that align with their individual visions.

The same can be said for the budding entrepreneurs who set their sights on being their own boss, pursuing a passion, building wealth or making a difference (e.g., solving problems, addressing social causes or creating positive change).

Explore Your Options

Entrepreneurs with student loan debt can still successfully pursue their great business ideas. Here are some options for entrepreneurs who are in this position and looking to start a new business:

Personal finances or current employment. About 78% of new entrepreneurial ventures are self-funded, according to SCORE. Nearly half (42%) had about $5,000 in cash reserves and 49% started with over $10,000 in funds. [3] These bootstrapping entrepreneurs didn’t let their current debt loads stand in their way; they decided to get resourceful, which means you can too.

Alternative student loan repayment options. Here are some ways to whittle down or even eliminate student loan payments during your company’s startup phase: 

• Income-driven repayment plans effectively “cap” payments as a percentage of your current income. This can reduce your loan payments during your company’s startup phase, when it’s not producing any revenues yet.
• You can use student loan refinancing on private loans. Your income and credit score will be considered during the refinancing process. It's important to note that both federal loans and private student loans can be refinanced into a private student loan refinance product, yet federal loan benefits may be lost in the process.
• If you qualify, you may also consider student loan forbearance , which is a temporary pause of your loan repayments, during which time interest will continue to accrue. Forbearance programs are available for both private and federal student loans.
• You may also want to explore debt consolidation , whereby you consolidate multiple loans into a single loan. This may simplify your repayment process and could potentially save you money via a lower interest rate. For example, the Federal Direct Consolidation Loan program requires an application and allows borrowers to select the loans they want to consolidate and select a new monthly repayment plan.
• Business financing. Banks like PNC offer a wide range of business financing options, some of which require no collateral. For example, the bank offers lines of credit from $2,000 - $100,000 with variable interest rates on an unsecured basis. It also offers SBA loans that are typically more flexible—both in terms of structure and terms—and generally requires lower down payments than conventional loans. PNC has a history of helping business customers match their financing needs with the appropriate SBA lending program.
• Continuing education. There are many free and low cost educational resources, webinars and workshops available online, where you can equip yourself with the skills needed to get your business on the fast track to generating revenue — allowing you to continue your education without adding to your current student debt load. Consider building your knowledge base by exploring free courses targeted at your industry, joining a low-cost entrepreneurial program, or attending networking events. 
• Business grants. Uncle Sam offers several types of grants specifically for small businesses. Start your search for federal government grants at Grants.gov. This government site offers the most comprehensive database of funds the government is going to give away. There are thousands of grants to apply for and opportunities for a wide range of businesses.

Follow Your Entrepreneurial Path

Building a new business from scratch is never easy, but it’s particularly daunting for someone who has student loan debt. You can conquer these fears by identifying cost savings, using an auto-pay program and always making timely loan payments. Additionally, you might aim to reduce your spending on nonessentials and use discretionary income to build up your savings.

It’s also smart to have an emergency fund that will cover at least six months' worth of necessary expenses. This will help you work through any “unprofitable” periods and help address some of the “startup stress” that’s a natural part of being a new business owner.

Get Started

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put these business insights to work.

Important Legal Disclosures and Information

1. Student Loan Debt Statistics, Education Data Initiative, https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics#:~:text=Student%20loan%20debt%20in%20the,have%20federal%20student%20loan%20debt. 2. Hanson, Melanie, Average Medical School Debt,https://educationdata.org/average-medical-school-debt#:~:text=The%20average%20medical%20school%20debt,school%20graduates%20have%20educational%20debt 3. Weston, Bridget, How Do Entrepreneurs Finance Their Startups?,https://www.score.org/resource/blog-post/how-do-entrepreneurs-finance-their-startups 

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All loans, lines of credit and PNC Bank credit cards are subject to credit approval. Requires automatic deduction from your PNC business checking account. Other fees and charges may apply. May be subject to a property appraisal.

These articles are for general information purposes only and are not intended to provide legal, tax, accounting or financial advice. PNC urges its customers to do independent research and to consult with financial and legal professionals before making any financial decisions. This site may provide reference to Internet sites as a convenience to our readers. While PNC endeavors to provide resources that are reputable and safe, we cannot be held responsible for the information, products or services obtained on such sites and will not be liable for any damages arising from your access to such sites. The content, accuracy, opinions expressed and links provided by these resources are not investigated, verified, monitored or endorsed by PNC.

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Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand

The porn star testified for eight hours at donald trump’s hush-money trial. this is how it went..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

It’s 6:41 AM. I’m feeling a little stressed because I’m running late. It’s the fourth week of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial. It’s a white collar trial. Most of the witnesses we’ve heard from have been, I think, typical white collar witnesses in terms of their professions.

We’ve got a former publisher, a lawyer, accountants. The witness today, a little less typical, Stormy Daniels, porn star in a New York criminal courtroom in front of a jury more accustomed to the types of witnesses they’ve already seen. There’s a lot that could go wrong.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today, what happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of Donald J. Trump. As before, my colleague Jonah Bromwich was inside the courtroom.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s Friday, May 10th.

So it’s now day 14 of this trial. And I think it’s worth having you briefly, and in broad strokes, catch listeners up on the biggest developments that have occurred since you were last on, which was the day that opening arguments were made by both the defense and the prosecution. So just give us that brief recap.

Sure. It’s all been the prosecution’s case so far. And prosecutors have a saying, which is that the evidence is coming in great. And I think for this prosecution, which is trying to show that Trump falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal, to ease his way into the White House in 2016, the evidence has been coming in pretty well. It’s come in well through David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer, who testified that he entered into a secret plot with Trump and Michael Cohen, his fixer at the time, to suppress negative stories about Trump, the candidate.

It came in pretty well through Keith Davidson, who was a lawyer to Stormy Daniels in 2016 and negotiated the hush money payment. And we’ve seen all these little bits and pieces of evidence that tell the story that prosecutors want to tell. And the case makes sense so far. We can’t tell what the jury is thinking, as we always say.

But we can tell that there’s a narrative that’s coherent and that matches up with the prosecution’s opening statement. Then we come to Tuesday. And that day really marks the first time that the prosecution’s strategy seems a little bit risky because that’s the day that Stormy Daniels gets called to the witness stand.

OK, well, just explain why the prosecution putting Stormy Daniels on the stand would be so risky. And I guess it makes sense to answer that in the context of why the prosecution is calling her as a witness at all.

Well, you can see why it makes sense to have her. The hush money payment was to her. The cover-up of the hush money payment, in some ways, concerns her. And so she’s this character who’s very much at the center of this story. But according to prosecutors, she’s not at the center of the crime. The prosecution is telling a story, and they hope a compelling one. And arguably, that story starts with Stormy Daniels. It starts in 2006, when Stormy Daniels says that she and Trump had sex, which is something that Trump has always denied.

So if prosecutors were to not call Stormy Daniels to the stand, you would have this big hole in the case. It would be like, effect, effect, effect. But where is the cause? Where is the person who set off this chain reaction? But Stormy Daniels is a porn star. She’s there to testify about sex. Sex and pornography are things that the jurors were not asked about during jury selection. And those are subjects that bring up all kinds of different complex reactions in people.

And so, when the prosecutors bring Stormy Daniels to the courtroom, it’s very difficult to know how the jurors will take it, particularly given that she’s about to describe a sexual episode that she says she had with the former president. Will the jurors think that makes sense, as they sit here and try to decide a falsifying business records case, or will they ask themselves, why are we hearing this?

So the reason why this is the first time that the prosecution’s strategy is, for journalists like you, a little bit confusing, is because it’s the first time that the prosecution seems to be taking a genuine risk in what they’re putting before these jurors. Everything else has been kind of cut and dry and a little bit more mechanical. This is just a wild card.

This is like live ammunition, to some extent. Everything else is settled and controlled. And they know what’s going to happen. With Stormy Daniels, that’s not the case.

OK, so walk us through the testimony. When the prosecution brings her to the stand, what actually happens?

It starts, as every witness does, with what’s called direct examination, which is a fancy word for saying prosecutors question Stormy Daniels. And they have her tell her story. First, they have her tell the jury about her education and where she grew up and her professional experience. And because of Stormy Daniels’s biography, that quickly goes into stripping, and then goes into making adult films.

And I thought the prosecutor who questioned her, Susan Hoffinger, had this nice touch in talking about that, because not only did she ask Daniels about acting in adult films. But she asked her about writing and directing them, too, emphasizing the more professional aspects of that work and giving a little more credit to the witness, as if to say, well, you may think this or you may think that. But this is a person with dignity who took what she did seriously. Got it.

What’s your first impression of Daniels as a witness?

It’s very clear that she’s nervous. She’s speaking fast. She’s laughing to herself and making small jokes. But the tension in the room is so serious from the beginning, from the moment she enters, that those jokes aren’t landing. So it just feels, like, really heavy and still and almost oppressive in there. So Daniels talking quickly, seeming nervous, giving more answers than are being asked of her by the prosecution, even before we get to the sexual encounter that she’s about to describe, all of that presents a really discomfiting impression, I would say.

And how does this move towards the encounter that Daniels ultimately has?

It starts at a golf tournament in 2006, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Daniels meets Trump there. There are other celebrities there, too. They chatted very briefly. And then she received a dinner invitation from him. She thought it over, she says. And she goes to have dinner with Trump, not at a restaurant, by the way. But she’s invited to join him in the hotel suite.

So she gets to the hotel suite. And his bodyguard is there. And the hotel door is cracked open. And the bodyguard greets her and says she looks nice, this and that. And she goes in. And there’s Donald Trump, just as expected. But what’s not expected, she says, is that he’s not wearing what you would wear to a dinner with a stranger, but instead, she says, silk or satin pajamas. She asked him to change, she says. And he obliges.

He goes, and he puts on a dress shirt and dress pants. And they sit down at the hotel suite’s dining room table. And they have a kind of bizarre dinner. Trump is asking her very personal questions about pornography and safe sex. And she testifies that she teased him about vain and pompous he is. And then at some point, she goes to the bathroom. And she sees that he has got his toiletries in there, his Old Spice, his gold tweezers.

Very specific details.

Yeah, we’re getting a ton of detail in this scene. And the reason we’re getting those is because prosecutors are trying to elicit those details to establish that this is a credible person, that this thing did happen, despite what Donald Trump and his lawyers say. And the reason you can know it happened, prosecutors seem to be saying, is because, look at all these details she can still summon up.

She comes out of the bathroom. And she says that Donald Trump is on the hotel bed. And what stands out to me there is what she describes as a very intense physical reaction. She says that she blacked out. And she quickly clarifies, she doesn’t mean from drugs or alcohol. She means that, she says, that the intensity of this experience was such that, suddenly, she can’t remember every detail. The prosecution asks a question that cuts directly to the sex. Essentially, did you start having sex with him? And Daniels says that she did. And she continues to provide more details than even, I think, the prosecution wanted.

And I think we don’t want to go chapter and verse through this claimed sexual encounter. But I wonder what details stand out and which details feel important, given the prosecution’s strategy here.

All the details stand out because it’s a story about having had sex with a former president. And the more salacious and more private the details feel, the more you’re going to remember them. So we’ll remember that Stormy Daniels said what position they had sex in. We’ll remember that she said he didn’t use a condom. Whether that’s important to the prosecution’s case, now, that’s a much harder question to answer, as we’ve been saying.

But what I can tell you is, as she’s describing having had sex with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is sitting right there, and Eric Trump, his son, is sitting behind him, seeming to turn a different color as he hears this embarrassment of his father being described to a courtroom full of reporters at this trial, it’s hard to even describe the energy in that room. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. And it was just Daniels’s testimony and, seemingly, the former President’s emotions. And you almost felt like you were trapped in there with both of them as this description was happening.

Well, I think it’s important to try to understand why the prosecution is getting these details, these salacious, carnal, pick your word, graphic details about sex with Donald Trump. What is the value, if other details are clearly making the point that she’s recollecting something?

Well, I think, at this point, we can only speculate. But one thing we can say is, this was uncomfortable. This felt bad. And remember, prosecutor’s story is not about the sex. It’s about trying to hide the sex. So if you’re trying to show a jury why it might be worthwhile to hide a story, it might be worth —

Providing lots of salacious details that a person would want to hide.

— exposing them to how bad that story feels and reminding them that if they had been voters and they had heard that story, and, in fact, they asked Daniels this very question, if you hadn’t accepted hush money, if you hadn’t signed that NDA, is this the story you would have told? And she said, yes. And so where I think they’re going with this, but we can’t really be sure yet, is that they’re going to tell the jurors, hey, that story, you can see why he wanted to cover that up, can’t you?

You mentioned the hush money payments. What testimony does Daniels offer about that? And how does it advance the prosecution’s case of business fraud related to the hush money payments?

So little evidence that it’s almost laughable. She says that she received the hush money. But we actually already heard another witness, her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, testify that he had received the hush money payment on her behalf. And she testified about feeling as if she had to sell this story because the election was fast approaching, almost as if her leverage was slipping away because she knew this would be bad for Trump.

That feels important. But just help me understand why it’s important.

Well, what the prosecution has been arguing is that Trump covered up this hush money payment in order to conceal a different crime. And that crime, they say, was to promote his election to the presidency by illegal means.

Right, we’ve talked about this in the past.

So when Daniels ties her side of the payment into the election, it just reminds the jurors maybe, oh, right, this is what they’re arguing.

So how does the prosecution end this very dramatic, and from everything you’re saying, very tense questioning of Stormy Daniels about this encounter?

Well, before they can even end, the defense lawyers go and they consult among themselves. And then, with the jury out of the room, one of them stands up. And he says that the defense is moving for a mistrial.

On what terms?

He says that the testimony offered by Daniels that morning is so prejudicial, so damning to Trump in the eyes of the jury, that the trial can no longer be fair. Like, how could these jurors have heard these details and still be fair when they render their verdict? And he says a memorable expression. He says, you can’t un-ring that bell, meaning they heard it. They can’t un-hear it. It’s over. Throw out this trial. It should be done.

Wow. And what is the response from the judge?

So the judge, Juan Merchan, he hears them out. And he really hears them out. But at the end of their arguments, he says, I do think she went a little too far. He says that. He said, there were things that were better left unsaid.

By Stormy Daniels?

By Stormy Daniels. And he acknowledges that she is a difficult witness. But, he says, the remedy for that is not a mistrial, is not stopping the whole thing right now. The remedy for that is cross-examination. If the defense feels that there are issues with her story, issues with her credibility, they can ask her whatever they want. They can try to win the jury back over. If they think this jury has been poisoned by this witness, well, this is their time to provide the antidote. The antidote is cross-examination. And soon enough, cross-examination starts. And it is exactly as intense and combative as we expected.

We’ll be right back.

So, Jonah, how would you characterize the defense’s overall strategy in this intense cross-examination of Stormy Daniels?

People know the word impeach from presidential impeachments. But it has a meaning in law, too. You impeach a witness, and, specifically, their credibility. And that’s what the defense is going for here. They are going to try to make Stormy Daniels look like a liar, a fraud, an extortionist, a money-grubbing opportunist who wanted to take advantage of Trump and sought to do so by any means necessary.

And what did that impeachment strategy look like in the courtroom?

The defense lawyer who questions Stormy Daniels is a woman named Susan Necheles. She’s defended Trump before. And she’s a bit of a cross-examination specialist. We even saw her during jury selection bring up these past details to confront jurors who had said nasty things about Trump on social media with. And she wants to do the same thing with Daniels. She wants to bring up old interviews and old tweets and things that Daniels has said in the past that don’t match what Daniels is saying from the stand.

What’s a specific example? And do they land?

Some of them land. And some of them don’t. One specific example is that Necheles confronts Daniels with this old tweet, where Daniels says that she’s going to dance down the street if Trump goes to jail. And what she’s trying to show there is that Daniels is out for revenge, that she hates Trump, and that she wants to see him go to jail. And that’s why she’s testifying against him.

And Daniels is very interesting during the cross-examination. It’s almost as if she’s a different person. She kind of squares her shoulders. And she sits up a little straighter. And she leans forward. Daniels is ready to fight. But it doesn’t quite land. The tweet actually says, I’ll dance down the street when he’s selected to go to jail.

And Daniels goes off on this digression about how she knows that people don’t get selected to go to jail. That’s not how it works. But she can’t really unseat this argument, that she’s a political enemy of Donald Trump. So that one kind of sticks, I would say. But there are other moves that Necheles tries to pull that don’t stick.

So unlike the prosecution, which typically used words like adult, adult film, Necheles seems to be taking every chance she can get to say porn, or pornography, or porn star, to make it sound base or dirty. And so when she starts to ask Daniels about actually being in pornography, writing, acting, and directing sex films, she tries to land a punch line, Necheles does. She says, so you have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?

As if to say, perhaps this story you have told about entering Trump’s suite in Lake Tahoe and having sex with him was made up.

Just another one of your fictional stories about sex. But Daniels comes back and says, the sex in the films, it’s very much real, just like what happened to me in that room. And so, when you have this kind of combat of a lawyer cross-examining very aggressively and the witness fighting back, you can feel the energy in the room shift as one lands a blow or the other does. But here, Daniels lands one back. And the other issue that I think Susan Necheles runs into is, she tries to draw out disparities from interviews that Daniels gave, particularly to N-TOUCH, very early on once the story was out.

It’s kind of like a tabloid magazine?

But some of the disparities don’t seem to be landing quite like Necheles would want. So she tries to do this complicated thing about where the bodyguard was in the room when Daniels walked into the room, as described in an interview in a magazine. But in that magazine interview, as it turns out, Daniels mentioned that Trump was wearing pajamas. And so, if I’m a juror, I don’t care where the bodyguard is. I’m thinking about, oh, yeah, I remember that Stormy Daniels said now in 2024 that Trump was wearing pajamas.

I’m curious if, as somebody in the room, you felt that the defense was effective in undermining Stormy Daniels’s credibility? Because what I took from the earlier part of our conversation was that Stormy Daniels is in this courtroom on behalf of the prosecution to tell a story that’s uncomfortable and has the kind of details that Donald Trump would be motivated to try to hide. And therefore, this defense strategy is to say, those details about what Trump might want to hide, you can’t trust them. So does this back and forth effectively hurt Stormy Daniels’s credibility, in your estimation?

I don’t think that Stormy Daniels came off as perfectly credible about everything she testified about. There are incidents that were unclear or confusing. There were things she talked about that I found hard to believe, when she, for instance, denied that she had attacked Trump in a tweet or talked about her motivations. But about what prosecutors need, that central story, the story of having had sex with him, we can’t know whether it happened.

But there weren’t that many disparities in these accounts over the years. In terms of things that would make me doubt the story that Daniels was telling, details that don’t add up, those weren’t present. And you don’t have to take my word for that, nor should you. But the judge is in the room. And he says something very, very similar.

What does he say? And why does he say it?

Well, he does it when the defense, again, at the end of the day on Thursday, calls for a mistrial.

With a similar argument as before?

Not only with a similar argument as before, but, like, almost the exact same argument. And I would say that I was astonished to see them do this. But I wasn’t because I’ve covered other trials where Trump is the client. And in those trials, the lawyers, again and again, called for a mistrial.

And what does Judge Marchan say in response to this second effort to seek a mistrial?

Let me say, to this one, he seems a little less patient. He says that after the first mistrial ruling, two days before, he went into his chambers. And he read every decision he had made about the case. He took this moment to reflect on the first decision. And he found that he had, in his own estimation, which is all he has, been fair and not allowed evidence that was prejudicial to Trump into this trial. It could continue. And so he said that again. And then he really almost turned on the defense. And he said that the things that the defense was objecting to were things that the defense had made happen.

He says that in their opening statement, the defense could have taken issue with many elements of the case, about whether there were falsified business records, about any of the other things that prosecutors are saying happened. But instead, he says, they focused their energy on denying that Trump ever had sex with Daniels.

And so that was essentially an invitation to the prosecution to call Stormy Daniels as a witness and have her say from the stand, yes, I had this sexual encounter. The upshot of it is that the judge not only takes the defense to task. But he also just says that he finds Stormy Daniels’s narrative credible. He doesn’t see it as having changed so much from year to year.

Interesting. So in thinking back to our original question here, Jonah, about the idea that putting Stormy Daniels on the stand was risky, I wonder if, by the end of this entire journey, you’re reevaluating that idea because it doesn’t sound like it ended up being super risky. It sounded like it ended up working reasonably well for the prosecution.

Well, let me just assert that it doesn’t really matter what I think. The jury is going to decide this. There’s 12 people. And we can’t know what they’re thinking. But my impression was that, while she was being questioned by the prosecution for the prosecution’s case, Stormy Daniels was a real liability. She was a difficult witness for them.

And the judge said as much. But when the defense cross-examined her, Stormy Daniels became a better witness, in part because their struggles to discredit her may have actually ended up making her story look more credible and stronger. And the reason that matters is because, remember, we said that prosecutors are trying to fill this hole in their case. Well, now, they have. The jury has met Stormy Daniels. They’ve heard her account. They’ve made of it what they will. And now, the sequence of events that prosecutors are trying to line up as they seek prison time for the former President really makes a lot of sense.

It starts with what Stormy Daniels says with sex in a hotel suite in 2006. It picks up years later, as Donald Trump is trying to win an election and, prosecutors say, suppressing negative stories, including Stormy Daniels’s very negative story. And the story that prosecutors are telling ends with Donald Trump orchestrating the falsification of business records to keep that story concealed.

Well, Jonah, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Of course, thanks for having me.

The prosecution’s next major witness will be Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer who arranged for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen is expected to take the stand on Monday.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a defiant response to warnings from the United States that it would stop supplying weapons to Israel if Israel invades the Southern Gaza City of Rafah. So far, Israel has carried out a limited incursion into the city where a million civilians are sheltering, but has threatened a full invasion. In a statement, Netanyahu said, quote, “if we need to stand alone, we will stand alone.”

Meanwhile, high level ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been put on hold in part because of anger over Israel’s incursion into Rafah.

A reminder, tomorrow, we’ll be sharing the latest episode of our colleague’s new show, “The Interview” This week on “The Interview,” Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with radio host Charlamagne Tha God about his frustrations with how Americans talk about politics.

If me as a Black man, if I criticize Democrats, then I’m supporting MAGA. But if I criticize, you know, Donald Trump and Republicans, then I’m a Democratic shill. Why can’t I just be a person who deals in nuance?

Today’s episode was produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Lexie Diao, with help from Paige Cowett, contains original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.

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• May 14, 2024   •   35:20 Voters Want Change. In Our Poll, They See It in Trump.
• May 13, 2024   •   27:46 How Biden Adopted Trump’s Trade War With China
• May 10, 2024   •   27:42 Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand
• May 9, 2024   •   34:42 One Strongman, One Billion Voters, and the Future of India
• May 8, 2024   •   28:28 A Plan to Remake the Middle East
• May 7, 2024   •   27:43 How Changing Ocean Temperatures Could Upend Life on Earth
• May 6, 2024   •   29:23 R.F.K. Jr.’s Battle to Get on the Ballot
• May 3, 2024   •   25:33 The Protesters and the President
• May 2, 2024   •   29:13 Biden Loosens Up on Weed

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jonah E. Bromwich

Produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Lexie Diao

With Paige Cowett

Original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

This episode contains descriptions of an alleged sexual liaison.

What happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump?

Jonah Bromwich, one of the lead reporters covering the trial for The Times, was in the room.

On today’s episode

Jonah E. Bromwich , who covers criminal justice in New York for The New York Times.

Background reading

In a second day of cross-examination, Stormy Daniels resisted the implication she had tried to shake down Donald J. Trump by selling her story of a sexual liaison.

Here are six takeaways from Ms. Daniels’s earlier testimony.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state criminal courts in Manhattan. More about Jonah E. Bromwich

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